Eight years have passed since the tragedy of 9/11, an event that fundamentally changed the national security landscape. In that time, the RCMP, in conjunction with its partners, has conducted numerous successful national security criminal investigations.
Those successes, however, need to be seen as confirmation of the reality and severity of the threats we face and not as a reason for Canadians to be complacent. We must be prepared with the best intelligence, the right skills and the necessary resources to cope with the ongoing multifaceted, ever-changing threat environment.
What does that threat environment look like to the RCMP?
It looks like al Qaeda, its offshoots, associates and hangers-on. As far as al Qaeda is concerned, Canada is the enemy. There is a great deal of debate, both in the intelligence world and in academia, around the true nature of the continuing threat represented by terrorism in general and al Qaeda in particular. Some contend that al Qaeda is largely a spent force and the real danger lies in radicalized individuals and small groups who meet and plot in their own neighbourhoods or on the internet. Others believe that “al Qaeda central” is reconstituting itself – in Pakistan.
Unfortunately, both of these theories are correct. There is much credible evidence that al Qaeda has successfully rebuilt itself. Its ideological messaging remains strong through networks like the Global Islamic Media Front. Its command and control structures remain in place. Its training camps are up and running. Al Qaeda related and inspired entities are active in the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa and the Horn of Africa, and the organization itself serves as an inspiration to violent extremists all over the globe. Al Qaeda is both a brand and an ideology that is at the heart of the radicalization of citizens of many countries, including Canada.
The threat environment also looks like Hizballah. The Israel-Palestine issue lies at the root of a tremendous amount of political discourse in the Muslim world. From a Canadian national security perspective, Hizballah represents both a domestic and a global security threat that potentially equals – and perhaps outstrips – that of al Qaeda. Hizballah commands tremendous admiration and credibility, not only in the Middle East, but around the world. While it has not articulated any specific grievance with Canada, from its perspective any state that supports Israel or Israeli interests is the enemy, which casts a wide net.
We must also consider the failed state of Somalia. More than 2.5 million Somalis have been rendered homeless by conflict and a million more have been displaced. Somalia has global political and economic significance as a bridge between Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Half of the world’s maritime piracy involves Somali pirates operating in the Gulf of Aden, a chokepoint for much of the world’s sea borne cargo. The ranks of the Somali insurgency are attracting thousands of young men who have been radicalized by the harsh reality of depravation and civil war, as well as foreign fighters – potentially Somali-Canadians – answering the call to establish a caliphate in the Horn of Africa.
The recent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka means that it has ceased to exist as an insurgency. It remains, however, a terrorist group that could have a significant impact in Canada. There are an estimated 250,000 Tamils in this country, more than anywhere else in the world outside of Sri Lanka. Canada is one of the few places where LTTE terrorists and supporters might seek to hide in plain sight, and potentially launch terrorist activities.
On another front, espionage is a re-emerging threat. Weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems are highly sought after by states and non-state actors. Canada is not immune. The arrest of a suspect in Toronto earlier this year accused of trying to procure and export nuclear technology to Iran is testament to this.
No discussion of the threat environment would be complete without some mention of our borders. Most Canadians think of borders as our land border with the United States and perceive the law enforcement challenge as criminal activity along and across the border itself. While some may see the land border as a first line of defence, it should be viewed as one of the last. Both the U.S. and Canada agree that the most effective strategy is to stop criminals and terrorists before they reach the border. We must ascertain their intentions and disrupt their operations. Integrated Border Enforcement Teams with participating agencies from both nations have been one of the great success stories of collaboration.
Finally, though not generally seen as a threat to national security, drug trafficking can have geopolitical and national security implications. One of the largest drug seizures in Canadian history was made this past summer in Toronto: 117 kilograms of heroin, much of it stamped “Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.” The Taliban survives because it is funded by the Afghan drug trade, which also has regional networks that extend into Central Asia, Iran, and most importantly, Pakistan.
Proving such linkages in court would mean that drug couriers and their associates could face terrorism financing charges. That would help send a strong message to the world that we are serious about prosecuting accomplices to terror. Of course, it would also mean that we would have to increase our investigative capacity, including our capacity to conduct and support extraterritorial investigations.
Law enforcement overshadowed?
Over the last eight years considerable resources have been devoted to enhancing national security in Canada. The Anti-Terrorism Act was passed in 2001 and in December of that year the federal budget devoted $7.7 billion to public safety and anti-terrorism initiatives.
The RCMP benefited from a small portion of that to support the creation of the integrated, multi-agency enforcement teams for border integrity and national security. There have been much more significant investments in Canada’s intelligence capacity, notably investments in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the Communications Security Establishment.
Today, we have a much clearer, albeit incomplete, picture of who is a threat, their potential methods and their financial and international networks. But has the focus on enhanced intelligence overshadowed the role of law enforcement in protecting Canada’s national security?
I believe the time has come for law enforcement to be even more active in the realm of national security. We need greater capacity to put more terrorism cases before the courts and more terrorists in jail.
An opinion piece in The Economist this past summer suggested that governments “need to be readier to prosecute terrorists for their crimes.” It read: “the struggle against terrorism will be long; in a democracy, methods have to be sustainable. Legal process is not a luxury for good times, but a tool to rob terrorists of legitimacy and show that locking them up is justified.”
People often speak of a balance between national security and human rights. That implies we have to choose between the two. I believe we can have both. And that will be more achievable by a greater reliance on law enforcement.
It must be recognized that in the presence of a credible and imminent threat, our first job is to protect Canadians. That sometimes means disrupting threats to national security before sufficient evidence can be gathered to justify criminal charges. However, counter-terrorism measures based exclusively on intelligence that fall short of the evidentiary threshold are fraught with danger and difficulty.
I believe that law enforcement and criminal prosecution will be the new
paradigm of national security in democratic nations the world over. Most have realized that infringing on the very rights and freedoms we seek to protect from terrorism is ultimately untenable. It is also not very effective in countering terrorist threats.
Terrorism prosecutions are often seen as overly lengthy and complex and there is a perception that terrorism investigations seldom result in criminal convictions. But we have seven convictions to date, since the anti-terrorism provisions took effect, three by pleas of guilty. There are more cases before the courts and more are coming where we will recommend criminal charges. As our experience grows, so will the effectiveness and efficiency of national security criminal prosecutions, especially if ways are implemented to speed up and make more efficient the criminal justice system as a whole.
I do not believe that placing greater emphasis on law enforcement and criminal justice would necessitate a sea change in intelligence gathering and sharing. What is required is closer collaboration between intelligence agencies and law enforcement so that as operations are planned and intelligence is gathered, the requirements for disclosure and the admissibility of evidence are duly considered and, to the extent possible, put in place.
In a 2006 report to the British Parliament from the Joint Committee on Human Rights of the House of Lords and the House of Commons, the authors describe criminal prosecution of terrorists as an obligation of the government and the preferred recourse to threats of terrorism. The report acknowledges some of the impediments to the criminal justice approach, including the fact that intelligence information may not always meet the evidentiary standard required for it to be admissible in court.
“If protection of the public through criminal prosecution is genuinely to be the first objective of counter-terrorism policy, then turning information into evidence should be uppermost in the minds of all those involved in acquiring intelligence at the earliest possible stage in that process. Intelligence should always be gathered with one eye on the problem of how to turn it into admissible evidence before a judge in a criminal court.”
It is generally accepted that intelligence work and counter-terrorism require operational secrecy to be effective. However, we will have to come to terms with – and prepare for – increased scrutiny and judicialization of intelligence information, whether that comes by way of the courts, review bodies, commissions of inquiry or by the media and the public.
As has long been the case in law enforcement, we as a security community will have to make tough choices about what we are willing to reveal in open court, what information we must protect and what we will disclose in our attempt to secure convictions. Decisions on these matters are rarely easy. There are no absolutes and many complicating and competing factors.
However, if we do not draw ourselves closer together of our own volition to better manage and utilize intelligence, could supervision come in the form of a national intelligence czar? There is wide speculation that this may be one of the recommendations to arise from the Air India inquiry. I am personally not convinced that this is necessary. However, I am very interested in what Justice Major may say on this matter and more generally, including potentially about protecting certain information, perhaps by rethinking disclosure requirements and making distinctions between the different stages of national security investigations.
Although there is no doubt room for further improvement and adjustments, I believe the security, intelligence and law enforcement communities are today working together better than ever. Certainly, challenges persist as we reconcile historical, structural, capacity and authority issues. But we are at the table together and working through some notably difficult scenarios to clarify our responsibilities and decision-making processes, and better coordinate our actions.
The next chapter in Canada’s unfolding history of national security must be written by law enforcement. As an effective and democratic deterrent to criminality, as a bridge builder, and as a focal point to all our efforts in protecting Canadians in a complex threat environment, I believe the time has come to step up law enforcement in closing the loop of national security.
William J.S. Elliott is commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. This article is adapted from the John Tait Memorial lecture, delivered to the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies conference in Ottawa in October. For his complete presentation, please see www.rcmp-grc.gc.ca.
