There is no greater governmental purpose than public safety and national security. Since 9-11, the security apparatus of democratic governments has grown dramatically, giving rise to debates and controversies pertaining to the conduct of security agencies and the consequences of their actions. As the scope of security threats has widened – across both physical and virtual realms, governments are continuously challenged to innovate and adapt accordingly.
To what degree such adaptation can and should take place transparently has always been a vexing question – with a myriad of operational and political considerations. National security and intelligence agencies have traditionally operated in the shadows, often in necessarily secretive manners. Their operations, moreover, as with policing services, have been largely sheltered from overt political control, with boundaries meant to ensure professionalism free from politics.
Yet such autonomy has also called into question whether there is accountability, as the reflexive secrecy of the security apparatus may become reinforced and shielded from the public purview. As with any organizational context, moreover, an absence of external review and fresh eyes can reinforce group think, stymie innovation, and foster dysfunction, including corruption, misspending, and systemic racism.
In Canada, such governance tensions were vividly revealed by the O’Connor Commission of Inquiry which examined the treatment and harrowing ordeal of Maher Arar. The Syrian-born Canadian citizen was tortured in Syria for more than a year as a result of deportation by the United States acting on flawed information provided by Canadian authorities. Justice O’Connor’s seminal 2006 report thus called for more political and operational oversight of Canada’s security apparatus.
Canadians themselves have also expressed an appetite for greater transparency when it comes to national security. In 2016, a large scale, pan-Canadian consultation on national security surfaced widespread concerns regarding accountability. It, along with myriad of other studies, also signaled growing distrust in Government generally, and in organizations comprising Canada’s security establishment, more specifically.
Such calls for reform have been gradually answered. Under the 2017 National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians Act, for example, a Committee of Parliamentarians was created to provide the first-ever form of direct political review of security and intelligence agencies in Canada. The National Security Act, 2017, in line with Justice O’Connor’s recommendations, outlined the creation of the National Security and Intelligence Review Agency in order to provide an independent and integrative external review body of oversight for the entire national security community. Additionally, in 2017, a six-point National Security Transparency Commitment focused on information, executive, and policy transparency was introduced building on the aforementioned public consultations.
As part of the Transparency Commitment, Public Safety Canada also recently created a National Security Transparency Advisory Group (NS-TAG), an independent panel of former public servants and outside experts whose task is to provide advice to the Deputy Minister on matters of openness broadly defined. As NS-TAG is co-chaired by an external representative and a senior governmental official, it is not meant to be an additional layer of oversight but rather a forum for dialogue and engagement that can both incite and incubate new ideas on how to expand openness in a measured and meaningful manner.
After our first year of outreach and deliberations, NS-TAG has recently released an inaugural report summarizing the journey to date – and the path ahead. What we found, both within the public sector and across a range of stakeholders, was widespread recognition of the depth of the challenges at hand in keeping Canadians safe – as well as the rising importance of openness and accountability in order to safeguard and heighten public trust while enhancing organizational and policy capacities.
While our full report, available online, details a more complete set of themes examined by NS-TAG, three themes presented here provide some sense of what we heard and where we intend to go: i) the growing complexity of national security governance; ii) the rising importance of data-driven capabilities to the conduct of national security; and iii) the treatment of racialized minorities by national security actors.
In terms of governance complexity, the national security community within the federal government is a large and porous set of departments and agencies from across the Government of Canada (see our report for a visual presentation of the contours of this community). New threats can often create new relationships as well: Covid-19 has not surprisingly given rise to new questions about linkages between health authorities and security agencies. New cyber-security threats, moreover, transcend and bind together multiple organizations from government and the private sector.
These layers of complexity have not been well communicated by governments, in Canada and elsewhere. The risk here is that an absence of public awareness and understanding can erode collective trust and impede the abilities of citizens and stakeholders to engage with security actors. The Government of Canada must, therefore, do a better job of explaining itself – in proactive, contemporary, and culturally sensitive manners, and in reaching new audiences with little appreciation for the security functions at hand. One encouraging example from our own outreach, for example, came from the Toronto Police Services Board which has made important strides in leveraging social media channels to enlarge community awareness and engagement.
With respect to data complexity, we heard from a range of federal government actors struggling to keep up with, and make effective usage of massive data sources accelerating in today’s increasingly virtual and interconnected world. Government’s own obstacles with data management, moreover, are hardly unique to national security, a point acknowledged by the federal government itself in its 2019 Data Strategy Road Map. Yet, many national security efforts, often cloaked in secrecy, have raised important questions about privacy, questions bound to grow in importance moving forward.
The Privacy Commissioner’s many efforts – including a recent examination of Artificial Intelligence is a case in point. Along with him and his counterpart, the Information Commissioner, we also met with experts who examined the privacy and security functionality of federal and provincial (Alberta) Covid-19 contact tracing apps, an area where health and public safety could become more intertwined in the future. The Spanish Government, for example, has already announced plans to create a database of citizens refusing Covid-19 vaccinations, while various testing pilot schemes are refashioning international air travel and giving rise to new questions about personal information storage and sharing.
Regarding cultural diversity and racialized minority groups, such themes have been central within the national security apparatus – especially in terms of workplace culture and recruitment and retention. We learned how security agencies are making important strides in creating more open and inclusive workplace environments – appreciating that the composition of workers within government must increasingly reflect the constituencies that it serves. Yet, as has been made apparent with the RCMP’s own admission of systemic racism within its ranks, much more remains to be done.
Whether and how national security agencies undertake outreach and surveillance of particular ethnic, cultural or other groups is also a key aspect of national security governance where more transparency is clearly required. As such, it will be the sole focus of one of our reports in year two. As with Maher Arar and many related examples, the treatment of Muslim Canadians underscores the importance of such a task.
Along with our own consultations with Muslim representatives, we note with encouragement that the City of Edmonton’s police services has recently launched a community outreach initiative specifically designed to embrace racialized minorities in new and innovative manners. At the same time, the recent New Zealand Public Inquiry into the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre has produced a number of thoughtful recommendations (swiftly and fully accepted by the Government) aimed to infusing a restructured national security apparatus with greater cultural sensitivity and diversity.
Prior to this important endeavour, however, our next report will undertake a more systemic examination of how public sector organizations can better operationalize a mindset of transparency – and measure progress. Our hope is that this report will provide a foundation for subsequent NS-TAG undertakings, while also contributing to open government efforts more widely.
We encourage you to review the full report – and to reach out to NS-TAG members or the Secretariat at Public Safety Canada for more information and to share your own views. As we aim to help preserve and deepen public trust – and facilitate innovative and adaptive governance, our still-nascent journey can hopefully lessen the shadows surrounding this crucial, complex and highly consequential dimension of democratic governance.
