Preparing for Armageddon: Jic 1 (Final) and the Soviet Attack on Canada

From 1945 to 1947 Canada shifted from a dependency on Great Britain for wartime operational intelligence to a junior partnership with the United States in the production of strategic threat assessments of the Soviet Union. Working through the Military Cooperation Committee the primary objective of Canadian and American officials was to update the wartime Defence Plan (ABC-22), with a Basic Security Plan for the post-war defence of North America. Each country was to produce a detailed 'Implementation' based on an intelligence 'Appreciation' of the threats facing North America in the 'air-atomic age'. Towards this end, the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee prepared JIC 1 (Final), a report on when, where, and in what capacity the Soviet Union would strike Canada in the event of the next major war. The basic problem facing the Canadian Joint Intelligence Committee was to incorporate American sources in the assessment of Soviet capabilities without simply producing a carbon copy version of the assessment of their continental ally. Moreover, the Canadians were particularly concerned that they produce a 'made in Canada' assessment of Soviet intentions. The report was completed and approved by Canadian and American defence officials in 1947 and updated versions became the basis for continental defence planning until the signing of the 1957 Norad agreement.     

All Glory is Fleeting: Sigint and the Fight Against International Terrorism

This article discusses the important role that Signals Intelligence (Sigint) has played, and continues to play, in the war against international terrorism. It sets out what is known or can be authoritatively established about the role that Sigint played in the events leading up to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, especially the performance of America's Sigint organization, the National Security Agency (NSA). The article also analyzes what the potential future role of Sigint may be in the war on terrorism given the ever changing nature of terrorist operations, the growing number of technological impediments to effective Sigint collection against terrorist targets, and shifting geostrategic considerations on the part of the nations engaged in the fight against the international terrorists.     

Barely legal: racism and migrant farm labour in the context of Canadian multiculturalism

This article investigates how colonial attitudes towards race operate alongside official multiculturalism in Canada to justify the legally exceptional exclusion of migrant farm workers from Canada's socio-political framework. The Canadian Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program is presented in this article as a relic of Canada's racist and colonial past, one that continues uninterrupted in the present age of statist multiculturalism. The legal continuation and growth in the use of non-citizens to conduct labour distasteful to Canadian nationals has provided an effective means for the Canadian state to regulate the ongoing flow of non-preferred races on the margins while promoting a pluralist and ethnically diverse political image at home and abroad. In the face of a labour shortage constructed as a political crisis of considerable urgency, the Canadian state has continued to admit non-immigrants into the country to perform labour deemed unattractive yet necessary for the well-being of Canadian citizens while simultaneously suspending the citizenship and individual rights of those same individual migrant workers. By legislating the restriction of rights and freedoms to a permanently revolving door of temporary non-citizens through the mechanism of a guest worker programme, the Canadian state is participating in the bio-political regulation of foreign nationals.     

A practical analysis of shared‐appreciation mortgages

Abstract

When the development of large‐scale public housing projects was discontinued in the 1970s in both Canada and the United States, the policy response was very different. This article reviews the nature of the dissimilar low‐income housing policy paths, documenting the role of federal housing policy in the evolution of a significant nonprofit “third sector” in Canada's housing system; the decision of the U.S. federal government to rely on the private sector for subsidized rental supply; and, with very little help from the federal government, the ‘bottom‐up” attempt to develop a nonprofit housing sector in communities throughout the United States. In Canada, a permanent stock of good‐quality, nonprofit social housing was created along with a growing and increasingly competent community‐based housing development sector.

The Canadian experience demonstrates that it takes time to build the capacity of the nonprofit sector. The U.S. experience demonstrates that there is a great deal of community‐based talent ready and willing to provide nonprofit housing if reliable and adequate funding is available. Canada has made outstanding progress relative to the United States in the area of affordable housing supply, creating yet another small but significant difference in the quality of life for lower income households. The general Canadian approach to consistent national support of nonprofit and cooperative housing can be applied in the United States. Canada's relative success is not based on unique structural or systemic differences—that is, it is a matter of political choice and political will. The United States should look to Canada's 20‐year experience to determine whether some of the mechanisms used to support Canada's nonprofit sector might be transferable to the United States.     

When Casey’s blood pressure rose: a case study of intelligence politicization in the United States

This article contributes to the debate on the politicization of intelligence with a case study of a major attempt of politicization that so far largely escaped academic attention: the Special National Intelligence Estimate on the Soviet Union’s role in international terrorism produced by the US Intelligence Community in spring 1981. Despite direct and indirect manipulation by members of President Reagan’s Cabinet, this case differs from those usually discussed in a decisive way – politicization failed. Based on the empirical analysis, a theoretical model of intelligence politicization is introduced that extends Joshua Rovner’s oversell model, which can explain why policymakers demand intelligence support but is insufficient due to its exclusive focus on the consumers of intelligence, by integrating the incentives of intelligence producers and specifying the determinants of whether politicization succeeds or fails.     

Cold War counter-terrorism: the evolution of international counter-terrorism in the RCMP Security Service, 1972–1984

This piece provides a detailed case study of the evolution of counter-terrorism within a specific domestic security agency of a liberal-democratic state in the context of the Cold War. It does so by examining the creation of a counter-terrorism unit within Canada’s Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service and how it responded to international terrorism. This occurred in between major terrorist attacks in Canada in 1970 and 1985 and included a growing focus on counter-terrorism even as counter-subversion remained a top priority within a still dominant Cold War domestic security framework. Ultimately, the article, based on thousands of pages of previously secret documents, argues that the Security Service could conceive of in a broader strategic sense the threat of terrorism but found it more challenging, for a variety of reasons, including the dominance of the Cold War and the difficulties around infiltrating ethnic communities, to collect intelligence.     

Britain Betwixt and Between: Uk SIGINT Alliance Strategy's Transatlantic and European Connections

Intelligence alliances are among the most intimate and enduring international security relationships. International partnerships have proven to be especially relevant to signals intelligence (SIGINT), where collaboration among allies has been crucial for extending the range and scope of geographic coverage. One of the earliest and most enduring SIGINT alliances dates back to the Second World War, when Great Britain and the United States collaborated in intercepting German and Japanese electronic communications and shared the intelligence product. This Anglo-American wartime partnership subsequently evolved and expanded during the post-war and Cold War eras, and continues up to the present as the core of a wider plurilateral SIGINT alliance involving Australia, Canada and New Zealand as well. Britain's accession to the European Communities, now the European Union (EU), did not, at first, detract from its transatlantic intelligence connection. By the late 1990s, however, European partners had begun to challenge Britain's alliance strategy for SIGINT, in particular, out of heightened concern for their own communications security and in response to the increasing salience of economic intelligence in contemporary international affairs. British statecraft now found itself confronted by mounting pressure from EU partners to reorient the UK intelligence away from its long-standing transatlantic SIGINT connection, so as to undermine American reach and also promote a potentially competing European capability to achieve global coverage in signals intelligence collection. While the 2003 war against Iraq certainly consolidated the trans-Atlantic alliance between the UK and USA, while alienating the Americans from the so-called 'Old Europe' led by France and Germany, the longer term spin-offs from that conflict seem likely to exacerbate those pressures on British intelligence strategy.     

Roger Hesketh and the de Guingand letter

Historians have long questioned the extent to which British Intelligence knew about Japan's impending operations on the eve of the Pacific War. An examination of archival sources from Britain, Canada and the United States, as well as credible post-war testimony from former participants in Second World War intelligence operations, produces several conclusions. Throughout 1941, British Intelligence pointed to a war with Japan in South-East Asia. On the eve of the Pacific War, intelligence staff of the British Commonwealth monitored the vast expanses of the North Pacific. Apart from anticipating conflict in South-East Asia, British Intelligence, according to some sources, also suspected that a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was imminent, an assessment shared with the United States.     

Intelligence and National Security Strategy: Reexamining Project Solarium

This article reexamines President Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1953 competitive review of Cold War strategy known as Project Solarium. It argues intelligence played a key role in this exercise and in the design of NSC 162/2, Eisenhower's ‘New Look’. Intelligence professionals were involved in all aspects of Project Solarium. Intelligence products provided a common baseline of analysis while stimulating debate. The process – a transparent system of structured deliberation among experts – encouraged a thorough consideration of intelligence and productive dissent. These findings underscore the need for a broader reexamination of the role of intelligence in the design of national security strategy.     

(Im)possible citizens: Canada's ‘citizenship bonanza’ and its boundaries

This article discusses a recent amendment to the Canadian Citizenship Act, which retroactively restores or gives Canadian citizenship to ‘hundreds of thousands of unsuspecting foreigners, most of them Americans’ (P. Dvorak, 2009. Canada issues a wake-up call: you may be a citizen. The Wall Street Journal, 17 April. Available from: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123993183347727843.html) while also restricting the inheritance of Canadian citizenship to the first-generation born abroad. Aiming to redress past discriminations based on gender, marital status and dual citizenship while simultaneously curtailing modern citizenship's dubious ius sanguinis provision, the new law might be interpreted as perpetuating Canada's reputation as a world leader in interethnic relations and human rights. A contextual analysis of the new law, by contrast, shows that the opposite is the case: the boundaries that are being drawn by Canada's new citizenship regime follow the now common trend of re-ethnicization and securitization. Specifically, they conflate kinship and Whiteness, thereby leading, on the one hand, to the construction of possible citizens whose authenticity and loyalty to the nation are unquestioned. On the other hand, within the logic of the new laws and their surrounding discourses, non-White, non-Christian ‘impossible citizens’ emerge, whose lack of loyalty and instrumental use of their Canadian passport are said to be eroding the value of citizenship from within.     

Burma's intelligence apparatus

Since it regained its independence in 1948, Burma has developed a complex structure of intelligence and specialized security agencies. After General Ne Win's coup d'etat in 1962, and led by the Military Intelligence Service (MIS), this apparatus was completely dominated by the armed forces, which used it not only to gather combat‐related intelligence but also to stamp out any challenges to continuing military rule. So powerful did the MIS become that, at times, it was seen as a threat to the Ne Win regime, and purged of key personnel. After the creation of the State Law and Order Restoration Council in 1988, the resources devoted to Burma's intelligence agencies greatly increased. Under the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence, more attention was given to purely military intelligence, but there was also closer surveillance of both the armed forces and the civilian population. Since late 1997, this policy has continued under the State Peace and Development Council. Several intelligence failures in recent years, however, have raised serious questions about the ability of even this expanded apparatus to meet all the demands being placed upon it.     

Military Intelligence and Controversial Political Issues: The Unique Case of the Israeli Military Intelligence

Contrary to intelligence services in other democracies worldwide, the activity of the Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence, AMAN, is not merely centered around collection and research regarding military intelligence matters. Instead, AMAN covers the majority of intelligence activity arenas, including intelligence regarding state-related issues. This field of activity presents a situation where AMAN's officers, and predominantly, its research division, are compelled to deal with sensitive issues embedded well within Israeli political and public controversy. This is commonly illustrated in the field of ‘Intelligence for Peace’ in general and more specifically in the Palestinian arena. Intelligence research surrounding the question of Palestinian commitment to peace throughout the Oslo Process and following the onset of the al Aqsa Intifada – activity classified as ‘Intelligence on Intentions’ – placed AMAM at the heart of political debate in Israel and resulted in bitter internal disagreements in AMAN as well as tensions between the intelligence service and the political leadership. Throughout the years, numerous recommendations have been repeatedly voiced to end AMAN's monopoly over Israel's national intelligence assessment (including aspects of intelligence regarding state-related issues). These recommendations were based predominantly on hindsight evaluations, such as AMAN's repeated failures in intelligence assessments. This paper calls for gradual termination of AMAN's activity of intelligence regarding state-related issues, in light of its contradiction with the appropriate military–political separation in a democratic society. Moreover, it places AMAN at the heart of the political debate dividing Israeli society.     

Holes in the safety net,leaks in the roof: Changes in Canadian welfare policy and their implications for social housing programs 1

Abstract

This article surveys recent reforms to Canadian social policy at the national level and welfare programs at the provincial level to determine how social housing policy and programming are being affected. The survey considers Canada's Social Security Review consultation process, which played out over 1994 and 1995. The article outlines various concerns raised over the Canada Health and Social Transfer, a fundamental reform to intergovernmental fiscal and policy relations announced in the 1995 federal budget and elaborated on in the 1996 budget.

The transfer of administrative responsibility for federally funded social housing to provincial and territorial governments is discussed and recent developments in welfare programs across Canada are described, noting housing elements within these programs.     

A weak pillar for American national security: The CIA's dismal performance against WMD threats

American preemptive or preventive military action against WMD-armed adversaries in the future will simply not be feasible without high-quality and timely intelligence. But is American intelligence up to this load-bearing task for the post-11 September national security? This article surveys the Central Intelligence Agency's record of gauging potential WMD threats for more than a decade and assesses its overall performance as dismal. The CIA's recent intelligence debacle against Iraq was one of the greatest in a long series of failures that has publicly exposed the Agency's profound weaknesses. These intelligence failures were due in large measure to the CIA's poor human intelligence collection and shoddy analysis, areas that cannot be remedied alone by the creation of the new Director of National Intelligence post. This article recommends steps needed to increase the quality of intelligence produced by CIA, or elsewhere in the new intelligence community, to move American intelligence in lockstep with military transformation to give the Commander-in-Chief realistic options for countering hostile nation-states or terrorist groups seeking or acquiring WMD.     

Grain market deregulation: a case study of the Canadian and Australian wheat boards

The recent deregulation in Canada's grain marketing sector with the resultant removal of the Canadian Wheat Board's single‐desk status presents a useful case for policy and institutional analysis. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the Canadian case using deregulation in Australia as a reference. Case studies of deregulation in the two countries are presented, and the different approaches are compared. This is to predict the likely trajectory along which the Canadian Wheat Board may evolve. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Canada's goal in the Asia Pacific

Canada's chief goal in the Pacific is to gain a greater share in the economic growth of East Asia while promoting regional stability through middle power multilateralism. Like other Western countries in the Pacific Canada should strongly support trans‐oceanic groups like the ASEAN PMCs and the APEC group as well as the numerous non‐governmental organizations devoted to keeping the countries on both sides of the Pacific cooperating together, both developed and developing. Both the US under Clinton and Canada under Chretien seem to believe the economic future of their countries depends to a significant extent on participating in East Asian economic development. Giving good economic relations precedence over sanctions suggests that they have committed themselves to that course. If successful, Canada's regional activism may help to counter its weakening European ties and its greater absorption into North America, and it may help to increase its foreign influence and independence.     

Interpreting national security and intelligence in geographic exploration: Explorers and geographers in America's early republic

‘Intelligence’ connotes the collection of information in furtherance of policy and strategic security objectives. Intelligence practitioners tend to look primarily to the histories of battlefield reconnaissance and court intrigue for their profession's discursive precedents. For the Western state, the mastery of territory has also been an important security objective since the Age of Exploration. Specifically, in the American case, territorial expansion and the subduing of new territory long lay at the heart of America's viability as a state. Thus, the intelligence field ought also to recognize geographical exploration as deeply implicated in Western national security discourse and as sharing an epistemological similarity with intelligence gathering. Both intelligence gathering and geographical exploration rely upon ‘Humint’, that is, informants penetrating distant and hidden places and reporting on the features found therein. America's early Republic period offers key examples of this fundamental similarity.     

Mapping the northern frontier: Canada and the origins of the US army's Military Information Division, 1885–1898

In 1885, the United States Army established its first official peacetime intelligence organization, the Military Information Division (MID), at least in part to collect intelligence enabling it to strike Canada in the event of conflict with Great Britain. Examining MID's leadership, information collection methods, intelligence objectives, organizational structure, and officer recruitment criteria during its first dozen years of existence reveals that it devoted significant resources to mapping the Canadian border, restructured its organization in part to increase the efficiency of those scouting expeditions, and selected officers to lead MID and conduct its reconnaissance missions based on their topographical skills, their knowledge of Canada, and their ability to keep their work quiet.     

TILTING TOWARD MARKETIZATION: Reform of the Canadian Pension Plan

Public concern about the earnings‐related Canada Pension Plan has forced the Canadian government to move toward fuller funding, a new investment policy, and changes to benefits and administration. Together, the three initiatives, and particularly the first two, amount to a modest degree of marketization. The assumption behind the reform is that the Canada Pension Plan will remain public and mandatory but the change will create a board and an investment policy which are more sensitive to market pressures and less amendable to government interference. The Canada Pension Plan is one of three tiers of support for the elderly in retirement. It is a contributory social insurance scheme which protects against loss of income. The other two are a social allowance (Old Age Security) as well as an income tested benefit (Guaranteed Income Supplement) which provide basic income support and employment based retirement pension plans as well as group and individual registered retirement savings plans which supplement the other two tiers on a voluntary basis. This article examines the reform of the Canada Pension Plan. After a brief examination of Canada's retirement benefits in an international context, the article summarizes recent debates in Canada, government policies to develop fuller funding and new investment strategies, and reflections on possible developments in the future.