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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tFormer RCMP security service head John Starnes, who previously served in Canada’s foreign ministry, leaves the Keable Commission hearings in Montreal, Que., Feb. 2, 1972. THE CANADIAN PRESS<\/p>\n
Ottawa\u2019s fractious relations with Washington over the last year have prompted fresh conversations about whether Canada should have its own intelligence service that dispatches people abroad to covertly gather political, military and economic information.<\/p>\n
An understanding of past deliberations about a Canadian foreign intelligence agency \u201cis an important element of an informed public debate\u201d on the question, said Barnes, a senior fellow at Carleton University\u2019s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs.<\/p>\n
Barnes\u2019 paper, published by the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, explains how Canada\u2019s cautious consideration of the idea of an international espionage service stretches back at least eight decades to the days following the Second World War.<\/p>\n
During the war, Canada developed the ability to electronically collect signals intelligence, the Joint Intelligence Committee co-ordinated foreign intelligence activities and produced assessments, and the RCMP gathered information about domestic security threats.<\/p>\n
Missing from the mix was an organization operating outside Canada to collect foreign intelligence clandestinely using human sources, similar to the British Secret Intelligence Service, or MI6, and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, Barnes writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cNevertheless, when officials were considering the shape of the post-war intelligence community, the idea of creating a foreign intelligence agency was in the air,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
An SIS officer visited Ottawa in 1951 to discuss setting up a Canadian spy service with Britain\u2019s assistance. That led to a proposal for a modestly scoped agency which, Barnes surmises, would have operated in the Caribbean. The plan was gradually scaled back and ultimately went nowhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was only the first such proposal to meet this fate,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
Still, Canada was coming under increasing pressure from its allies to contribute more to the collective pool of intelligence information, Barnes writes.<\/p>\n
The CIA informed Ottawa of an American interest in conducting interrogations in Canada of defectors and immigrants from the Soviet bloc.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis galvanized the attention of officials in Ottawa with the concern that if Canada did not do the work, the allies would do it themselves,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
The federal cabinet gave the green light to an \u201cinterview organization\u201d in April 1953.<\/p>\n
In the late 1950s, that organization expanded its work to include debriefings of Canadians \u2014 often businesspeople or scientists \u2014 following their return from travels in the Soviet bloc, Barnes writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn occasion, travellers were briefed on specific intelligence requirements prior to their trip.\u201d<\/p>\n
This activity was now \u201cedging closer\u201d to intelligence collection abroad, \u201cwith the attendant personal and political risks,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
Canadian military officers and diplomats were part of the International Commission for Supervision and Control that operated in Indochina beginning in 1954.<\/p>\n
\u201cWashington was quick to accept Canada\u2019s offer to provide intelligence from the delegation,\u201d Barnes writes. \u201cOver the following years, Canada furnished military, political and economic reporting to the American, British, and later, Australian, intelligence agencies.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Cuba, after the U.S. cut off diplomatic relations with the Castro regime, Canada provided Washington with extensive diplomatic reporting from the Canadian Embassy in Havana, the paper notes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, at the request of the U.S., Canada stepped up its intelligence collection activities in Cuba by assigning an additional officer full-time to this work.\u201d<\/p>\n
At one point, John Starnes, a senior foreign ministry official who would later lead the RCMP\u2019s security service, was approached by a CIA officer who made a strong case for Canada\u2019s engagement in covert intelligence-gathering abroad.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was nonplussed by Starnes\u2019 response that he could see no direct benefit to Canada of an organization which would be largely serving the interests of other countries, or any vital government information requirement that could not be more effectively addressed by other means,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
The RCMP committed illegal break-ins, stole a Parti Qu\u00e9b\u00e9cois membership list and burned a barn to prevent a meeting from taking place \u2014 events that helped spur the formation of the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service in 1984.<\/p>\n
An early meeting of deputy ministers to discuss the proposed new intelligence service raised the idea of \u201cestablishing a separate intelligence gathering unit, particularly with respect to foreign intelligence, along the lines of arrangements in Britain and Australia,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
Officials felt economic and commercial intelligence were of growing importance and the distinction between \u201cnational security\u201d and \u201cnational interest\u201d was often not clear.<\/p>\n
But the legislation governing CSIS stopped short of giving the new agency powers to gather foreign intelligence abroad.<\/p>\n
It authorizes collection of intelligence related to security \u2014 such as a brewing terrorist attack \u2014 both inside Canada and overseas, and the gathering of foreign intelligence within Canada at the request of either the minister of foreign affairs or the minister of defence.<\/p>\n
The period from the 1990s to 2007 saw a number of proposals for a Canadian foreign intelligence agency \u201cof varying detail and completeness,\u201d Barnes says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese proposals were driven by the concerns of officials in Ottawa about how best to adapt Canada\u2019s foreign intelligence capabilities to meet the new demands of post-Cold War conditions and then the new international situation brought about by 9-11,\u201d he writes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey reflected Canadian \u2014 rather than allied \u2014 views of what was needed. But the debate within the bureaucracy was complicated by differing interpretations of what a \u2018foreign intelligence agency\u2019 was actually for, and by a blurring of the concepts of \u2018foreign\u2019 and \u2018security\u2019 intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes reports this period was marked by competition between Canada\u2019s foreign ministry and CSIS over which organization should take the lead in intelligence collection activities outside Canada.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis rivalry currently seems to be in abeyance, but the question has not been settled,\u201d the paper says. \u201cBoth organizations likely believe that they are best placed to take on the task if a future government decides to expand Canada\u2019s foreign intelligence collection activities overseas.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barnes says the question of money was instrumental to the failure of a mid-1990s proposal for a foreign intelligence agency.<\/p>\n
The various proposals over the years for such an agency did not include a full consideration of the cost, he writes. \u201cMost papers downplayed this question, or put it off for later study.\u201d<\/p>\n
The most fundamental element missing from those proposals was clarity about what specific information Canada needed to formulate foreign or defence policies \u201cthat could only be provided by a new foreign intelligence agency, at an acceptable financial and political cost,\u201d the paper says.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of the proposals put forward only a very general idea of the kind of information that a covert agency might provide, or simply assumed that such an agency would be useful.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 8, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2013 The decades-long debate over whether Canada should create a CIA-style foreign spy agency has been coloured…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194296],"tags":[49,48,22073],"class_list":["post-522622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-winnipeg","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-winnipeg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}