BBC News - March 04, 2026 - Dan Haygarth & Davied Maddox

Three men – one of whom is the partner of a sitting Labour MP and former ministerial special advisor – have been arrested on suspicion of spying for China. 

The men were arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of assisting China’s foreign intelligence service, the Metropolitan Police confirmed. 

Counter Terrorism Policing London arrested a 39-year-old man at an address in London, a 68-year-old man in Powys in mid-Wales, and a 43-year-old man in Pontyclun, south Wales. 

Labour MP Joani Reid, whose husband David Taylor is one of the people arrested, said: “I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law. 

“I am not part of my husband’s business activities, and neither I nor my children are part of this investigation, and we should not be treated by media organisations as though we are. Above all I expect media organisations to respect my children’s privacy.

The Labour MP (Joani Reid) said: ‘I have never seen anything to make me suspect my husband has broken any law’

Those arrested were taken into police custody, where they remain.

 

Officers have searched the addresses where the men were arrested and have also carried out searches at three other addresses in London, East Kilbride, and Cardiff. 

Commander Helen Flanagan, head of Counter Terrorism Policing London, said: “We have seen a significant increase in our casework relating to national security in recent years, and we continue to work extremely closely with our partners to help keep the country safe and take action to disrupt malign activity where we suspect it. 

“Today’s arrests are part of a proactive investigation, and while these are serious matters, we do not believe there to be any imminent or direct threat to the public relating to this. Our investigation continues, and we thank the public for their ongoing support.” 

In a statement released after her spouse’s arrest, East Kilbride and Strathaven MP Ms Reid said: “I have never been to China. I have never spoken on China or China-related matters in the Commons. I have never asked a question on China-related matters. 

“As far as I am aware, I have never met any Chinese businesses whilst I have been an MP, any Chinese diplomats or government employees, nor raised any concern with ministers or anyone else on behalf of, even coincidentally, Chinese interests.

“I am a social democrat who believes in freedom of expression, free trade unions and free elections. I am not any sort of admirer or apologist for the Chinese Communist party’s dictatorship.” 

Mr Taylor is the director of policy and programmes at the London-based Asia House think tank, but was previously a senior political advisor for the Labour Party and a special advisor to the then-Welsh Secretary Peter Hain in 2010. Among his current roles, he is also an advisor to the Central Asia All Parliamentary Group, chaired by Labour MP Pam Cox. 

A spokesman for Asia House said: "We cannot comment on a live investigation, but no further information has been provided to us beyond what has been made public." 

The arrests come at a time of heightened concerns about China trying to spy on British democracy after recriminations over the collapse of a court case last year involving a parliamentary researcher and a teacher. Both denied any wrongdoing. There have also been concerns expressed in the Commons over China being permitted to build a super embassy in London just days before Sir Keir Starmer made a trip to Beijing. 

Addressing the latest arrests in parliament, security minister Dan Jarvis warned there will be “severe consequences” if it is proven that China attempted to interfere with UK sovereign affairs. 

Mr Jarvis said the investigation “relates to China” and “foreign interference targeting UK democracy”. 

He told MPs: “Let me be clear, if there is proven evidence of attempts by China to interfere with UK sovereign affairs, we will impose severe consequences and hold all actors involved to account. 

“The government is taking robust action to ensure the UK’s democratic institutions and processes are a hard target for this activity. The National Security Act provides our intelligence agencies and law enforcement with the modern legal tools they need to deter, detect and disrupt the full range of state threats. 

“The action counter-terrorism police have been able to take this morning is an example that legislation is working well.” 

But Tory shadow Cabinet Office minister Alex Burghart said: "Here we are again, another year, another Chinese spy scandal, and the backdrop to it is this government's failed policy of appeasement. 

"The government must now surely be coming to the realisation that unless the United Kingdom stands up to these threats, our country will continue to be treated with disdain." 

Mr Burghart referenced the previous collapsed spy scandal case involving China and the recent approval of the Chinese mega-embassy in central London and recalled Sir Keir Starmer's visit to Beijing for trade deals. 

He added: "We in this House watched as these things happen, and the Chinese state watched too and saw that it could act with impunity. The minister says there is no trade-off between our democratic and national interests, and security interests, and our economic interests. But I'm afraid that is exactly what has happened."

English - Pillar Talk Winter 2026.pdf

French - Nouvelles Pillar Hiver 2026.pdf

A Bug Sitting At A Desk

Every so often problems with the intelligence culture in Ottawa come crashing into the open. By intelligence culture, I am talking about a process to ensure well-informed and well-crafted intelligence is greeted by decision-makers with respect and understanding. I mean the ability of the intelligence community, with its many independent actors, to arrive at an agreed picture of a threat, the ability to disseminate its threat intelligence, the ability of decision-makers to receive and read it, and, because reading is never enough, finally the good judgement of decision-makers in deciding what it means and how to apply it to policy and action, including in any public discussion. It’s a complex process that often suffers from divides between intelligence and its consumers, each failing to fully understand the other across the secrecy and professional experience barriers.

The intelligence-policy maker gulf is not unique to Canada, but it is often said that the Canadian intelligence culture lacks maturity and sophistication. That’s probably too blanket a statement, but there are clear challenges in the de-centralized architecture of Canadian intelligence, its competing centres of authority (CSIS, CSE, RCMP, PCO, DND, GAC, Public Safety), its relative weakness when it comes to intelligence assessment, and the presence of an intervening layer of political staffers who inhabit in growing numbers Minister’s officers and, above all, the PMO, and whose grasp of intelligence may be deficient. Political staffers may feel, as might their bosses, that they know best, or even have better sources. At the top we have a new Prime Minister, without political background, whose response to intelligence remains an enigma.

Problematic intelligence culture on recent display.

During a background briefing to the media on the eve of Mark Carney’s trip to India, a “senior” (unnamed) Canadian official is reported to have made a series of remarkable statements. They are reported to have said that the government believed that Indian government transnational repression and foreign interference had ceased and is quoted as saying “if we believed that the government of India was actively interfering in the Canadian democratic process, we probably would not be taking this trip.” This senior official cited the new channels for engagement with India on national security issues, and appeared to argue that because of these channels, there could be confidence “that the activity [foreign interference and transnational repression] is not continuing.” ^[1]

A media story by CTV correspondent, Annie Bergeron-Oliver, who also attended the briefing, has a slightly different account of the statements made, citing two separate government officials, both of whom emphasised the engagements with India on security matters and the mechanisms in place “to detect and disrupt threats.” The CTV story also quotes one of the unnamed officials as saying “I really don’t think we’d be taking this trip if we thought these kind of activities were continuing…” ^[2] The language quoted is slightly different from that in the Globe story cited above, but the message is the same.

Over at CBC News, Evan Dyer also quoted one official as saying “I think we could say we’re confident that the activity is not continuing,” adding that, “If we believed that the government of India was actively interfering in the Canadian democratic process, we probably would not be taking this trip.” ^[3] Word perfect with the quote in the Globe and Mail story.

There is no public transcript of the background briefing, so no way of checking what was actually said and in what context.

In response to these media reports, two former National Security and Intelligence Advisers to the PM, Jody Thomas and Vincent Riby, both expressed doubts about the prognosis. Jody Thomas is quoted as saying “It would be lovely to know that all of the threats and the interference have ended. That would be a really positive thing…” “but it would surprise me.” ^[4] Vincent Rigby, while supporting the Carney trip to India as an example of “pragmatic diplomacy at its best,” urged political leaders not to make security intelligence a footnote and not to dismiss the concerns of the Sikh community in Canada. ^[5]

Media reporting on these statements by government officials have sparked outrage in the Sikh community and denunciation from some Liberal MPs. Sukh Dhaliwal, who represents the Surrey-Newton riding in BC, with a large Sikh population, called the claims of the cessation of Indian government foreign interference “totally irresponsible” and asked for heads to roll. He wants an investigation into “the judgement and responsibilities exercised by the individual who made these remarks,” adding that their “conduct and suitability for their role must be reviewed.” ^[6]

A coalition of Canadian Sikh groups have issued an ultimatum to a list of 20 MPs and to the leaders of the three major federal parties, demanding that there be a full disclosure of all intelligence on transnational pressure campaigns, the continuation of a parliamentary study into Indian government interference, and a public inquiry into the 2023 murder of Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar. ^[7] Their anger is palpable, but their demands unlikely to be met. Intelligence will not be released and the RCMP continues its criminal investigation into the Nijjar murder, foreclosing any public inquiry.

What do you do with a hot potato? Catch it, and dance to avoid being burned. There has been lots of that on display, including statements from both the Public Safety Minister and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, from PMO and from CSIS.

Here is the Public Safety Minister, Gary Anandasangaree’s, version of the dance. One day after the background briefing, he stated that “there are certainly issues around safety and security of Canadians that we continue to engage in.” He added, “what I’m suggesting is that there’s still more work to do, and we will do that work.” ^[8]

PMO’s version: a reminder that Canada and India have established regular top-level channels on security and law enforcement. “Canada will continue to take measures to combat any forms of transnational repression, transnational organized crime and any contravention of the Criminal Code or rule of law on Canadian soil.” ^[9]

Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand: “We are raising the issues relating to public safety and security and will do that on this trip [to India]…We need to be at the table to raise the concerns relating to transnational repression, to the rule of law.” ^[10]

CSIS. The security dialogue with India is an important step. According to the CSIS spokesperson, “CSIS takes all allegations of foreign interference and transnational repression seriously and we consider threats in a country-agnostic way. This hasn’t changed.” ^[11] Country-agnostic? Code-word meaning can include India.

As the government searches for the (Orwellian) memory hole to consign the message from the background briefing into the flames, what can we learn from this incident about the intelligence culture in Canada? First, it must be said that we don’t have the full picture of who exactly made these statements, who authorized them to make these statements, and on what intelligence basis the statements were made. This will all probably go into the memory hole.

But what is concerning is the question of who is authorized to speak, on or off the record, for the assessments of the Canadian intelligence community about transnational threats. There is only one official that holds that responsibility. It rests in the office of the National Security and Intelligence Adviser. ^[12] It is the duty of the NSIA to speak on behalf of the intelligence community to government decision-makers and to the PM. The NSIA is also responsible for transparency efforts—getting the intelligence community message out to the public.^[13] That is the nature of the job. It can involve some tough calls when the community may be divided in its views or when, as will be true in many cases, the intelligence picture is far from complete or clear. It can involve some head-butting with senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, who may want to convey a different, more politically convenient message. Tant pis. The NSIA must be the final and over-riding voice on the threat picture. That is not to say that a PM or his Ministers must be dictated to by the intelligence community’s assessment of threats, only that they must pay attention and be respectful of the intelligence message.

This should never have been hard in the context of the PM’s trip to India. The message that should have been conveyed is that we have an ongoing security dialogue with India, itself a break-through, that we continue to monitor foreign interference threats and will not hesitate to call them out, that the security of Canadians will always be a top priority, and that “guardrails” will always be in place, as PM Carney has said in relation to deal-making with China, when we negotiate trade pacts with foreign countries. Easy.

But here’s the rub. We are in an interregnum when it comes to the NSIA. The current office holder, Nathalie Drouin, is leaving the job shortly to take up a post as ambassador to France. ^[14] Rumours swirl about a replacement but no announcement has been made. ^[15]

There is also the question of whether the Cabinet National Security Council, chaired by the PM, is being used effectively to ensure that the government is getting the best strategic intelligence picture available.

To ensure a strong intelligence culture in Canada, you need a strong NSIA, heading a strong intelligence machinery, you need high-quality intelligence reporting flowing regularly to Cabinet and the PM, you need a Cabinet table where intelligence is discussed and any temptation to intelligence politicisation set aside. You need a system where professional officials sit above political staffers.

The suggestion from the background briefing on Indian foreign interference is that all is not well with Canadian intelligence culture. Let’s hope it doesn’t reflect a bug deep in the system.

Transnational-repression-in-Canada_MIGS.pdf

Transnational repression is emerging as one of the most serious yet least
understood threats to security and democracy in Canada. As foreign states
increasingly target individuals on Canadian soil, through intimidation,
surveillance, digital harassment, coercion of family members abroad, and,
in some cases, plans for physical harm, Canada faces a challenge that strikes
at the core of its democratic values and institutions.

This report highlights the urgent need to recognize transnational repression
not merely as a set of isolated incidents, as it was long regarded, but as
a systemic threat affecting thousands of people across Canada’s diverse
diaspora communities. The consequences are profound. Individuals
live in fear, communities become fractured and politically silenced, and
democratic processes are weakened as voices are pushed out of public life.
The reach of authoritarian governments into Canada’s social and political
space undermines the state’s sovereignty and its ability to protect those
who seek safety within its borders.

By Andrew Amaro

This piece is a response to “Canada can’t tackle national security if we don’t understand our intelligence services” by Matthew A. MacDonald, published in The Globe and Mail on February 18, 2026. MacDonald is an Ottawa-based filmmaker and political scientist developing a major documentary series on CSIS called The Service. I encourage every Canadian to read his article.

Read the original: theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-cant-tackle-national-security-if-we-dont-understand-our

All views expressed belong to Shadow Tactics IIS Carbon Copy and do not reflect the position of any sponsor.

⚠️ Warning Label: This article examines why half of Canada can’t identify its own intelligence service. The uncomfortable truth about a country that wants national security but can’t be bothered to understand who provides it. Side effects may include frustration, patriotic discomfort, and the sudden urge to actually read the CSIS Act.

THE BRIEFING NOBODY ATTENDED

Ottawa. A government building you’ve driven past a hundred times without knowing what happens inside.

Third floor. A room with no windows and no nameplate on the door.

Inside, an intelligence officer is writing a threat assessment that will land on a decision-maker’s desk by morning. The assessment is about a foreign state actor who has been systematically mapping Canadian critical infrastructure for the past eighteen months.

The officer knows the actor. Knows the methodology. Knows the timeline.

The decision-maker will read it, nod, and file it under “concerning but not urgent.”

The Canadian public will never know this assessment existed.

And according to a recent survey — half of them wouldn’t even know which agency wrote it.

HALF THE COUNTRY DOESN’T KNOW WE EXIST

Matthew MacDonald wrote something in the Globe and Mail today that every Canadian should read. Go read it. I’ll wait.

His piece, “Canada can’t tackle national security if we don’t understand our intelligence services,” nailed something that those of us in the intelligence community have known for decades but have struggled to articulate publicly: Canada has an intelligence literacy problem.

And it’s not a small one.

A 2025 Ekos Research survey found that only half of Canadians could identify CSIS as the agency responsible for investigating threats to Canada. Nearly twenty percent said they’d never even heard of it.

Let that land for a second.

One in five Canadians has never heard of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The agency that has been protecting this country’s national security since 1984. The agency born out of the McDonald Commission after the RCMP Security Service got caught doing things that made everyone uncomfortable enough to build a civilian intelligence service from scratch.

And one in five Canadians doesn’t know it exists.

— Grumpy Bob: “Half the country can name every judge on a reality TV show but can’t name the agency that keeps them from getting blown up. This is fine. Everything is fine.”

MacDonald’s Globe article was a call to action about intelligence literacy. But he’s not just writing about this — he’s doing something about it. Over the past year, he’s been meeting with over thirty former CSIS officers and others across Canada’s intelligence community to develop a major documentary series called The Service. And the theme he keeps hearing is the same one I’ve heard my entire career:

Canadians are kept in the dark. And the darkness breeds distrust.

WHAT IT ACTUALLY LOOKS LIKE FROM THE INSIDE

I’m going to say something that might surprise people who think intelligence officers are some Hollywood caricature of trench coats and dead drops.

We’re your neighbours.

That’s not a recruitment slogan. That’s the literal truth. Former CSIS Assistant Director Alan Jones said it best when he told MacDonald he wishes Canadians would see the people who work for the Service as the neighbours they are — Canadians trying their best to serve their country.

But let me tell you what “serving their country” actually looks like for the people MacDonald’s article doesn’t mention. The people who never get mentioned. The TechOps side of the house.

Because when Canadians think about intelligence work — if they think about it at all — they picture analysts at desks reading cables. Maybe a handler running a source at a café. That’s the clean version.

Here’s the version nobody talks about.

THE OPERATORS IN THE WALLS

Technical operations personnel don’t sit at desks.

They crawl through attics at three in the morning. They navigate ventilation shafts in buildings they were never officially inside. They work in tunnels, crawlspaces, and confined areas that would give most people a panic attack — in the dark, in silence, on a clock, with zero margin for error.

They pick locks. Not the YouTube hobbyist kind. The kind where failure means compromise, where compromise means an officer is in danger, where “in danger” means something very specific and very permanent.

They attack servers. They exploit Bluetooth vulnerabilities in devices that belong to people who would very much like to know they’re being watched. They breach cybersecurity systems designed by nation-states with budgets ten times the size of ours. They deploy technical collection capabilities in environments where getting caught doesn’t mean a performance review — it means an international incident.

They operate regionally. Not just in Ottawa. In places across this country and beyond that I can’t name, doing things I can’t describe, for reasons that will never be declassified in our lifetimes.

And they do all of this alongside allied services — the FBI, CIA, NSA, and others — on joint operations involving critical infrastructure protection, supply chain threat analysis, and counter-proliferation work that most Canadians don’t even know Canada participates in.

I know this because I was one of them. CSIS TechOps. That was my world.

— Grumpy Bob: “People think intelligence work is Jason Bourne. It’s actually closer to a plumber who can pick locks, hack servers, and fit through a ventilation shaft — except nobody thanks you and you can’t tell anyone what you fixed.”

These are the people MacDonald’s documentary needs to capture. Not just the analysts and the policy advisors — though their work matters enormously. But the operators. The regional teams. The technical specialists who built capabilities from nothing, improvised solutions in impossible conditions, and came home to families who could never ask how their day went.

When Jones told MacDonald he wants Canadians to see intelligence officers as neighbours — this is who he’s talking about. The person next door who can’t explain the bruises, the odd hours, the phone calls at 2 AM, the trips with no itinerary. The person who carries things they can never put down.

And that’s the part of intelligence work that no survey will ever measure. Not just whether Canadians know CSIS exists — but whether they have any concept of what it costs the people who serve inside it.

Intelligence work, when done correctly, is invisible. You don’t see it because it worked. But here’s the cost of that invisibility: when something does go wrong — when there’s a leak, a failure, a controversy — the public has no framework for understanding what happened. No vocabulary. No context.

They judge the work based on what they see in movies. And movies get it spectacularly, dangerously wrong.

— Grumpy Bob: “Hollywood thinks hacking means typing fast with green text on screen. Real TechOps means lying flat in a crawlspace with a laptop balanced on your chest, sweat in your eyes, and thirty seconds before someone checks a door. But sure, tell me more about how Jason Bourne did it.”

THE THINGS NOBODY TELLS YOU

MacDonald raised an example that stopped me cold — not because I didn’t know it, but because someone finally said it in public.

Canada’s F-35 fighter jets rely on U.S.-controlled intelligence mission data, developed and validated at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. If Washington decides to withhold that data — for any reason, political or otherwise — it could theoretically compromise our jets and our pilots.

Will they? Probably not. Unless things between Canada and the U.S. go somewhere nobody wants them to go. But the point isn’t whether they will. The point is that this is the kind of dependency most Canadians have never contemplated.

And it’s just one example.

Do Canadians understand the distinction between intelligence and evidence? Do they know that CSIS officers can’t arrest anyone? Do they understand why intelligence can’t always be shared in a courtroom? Do they appreciate the moral and psychological toll of doing this work for years, in silence, with no public recognition?

These aren’t academic questions. These are operational realities that shape how Canada protects itself. And if the public doesn’t understand them, they can’t make informed decisions about the policies, budgets, oversight, and accountability structures that govern intelligence work.

You can’t think carefully about something you don’t understand. That’s not my opinion. That’s the conclusion of the Mackenzie Commission. In 1966.

— Grumpy Bob: “We’ve been having this same conversation since the sixties. The only thing that’s changed is the threat actors got better and we got more confused.”

THE SECURITY ILLUSION

Here’s what frustrates me most.

Canada is in the middle of the most complex threat environment it has faced since the Cold War. And I’m not being dramatic. I’m being measured.

China is conducting systematic espionage operations against Canadian institutions, universities, and technology companies. Russia hasn’t stopped. Foreign interference in our democratic processes is documented and ongoing. Our critical infrastructure — energy, telecommunications, financial systems — is being probed by state actors on a regular basis.

And Canada-U.S. relations are at a point where we can no longer assume our closest ally will always have our back unconditionally.

This is the moment where intelligence literacy stops being a nice-to-have and becomes a national security imperative.

Because here’s the thing: a country that doesn’t understand its intelligence services can’t properly fund them, can’t properly oversee them, and can’t properly support them.

And a country that can’t do those three things is a country that is flying blind.

— Grumpy Bob: “We want world-class intelligence but we fund it like a bake sale and understand it like a spy novel. Good luck with that.”

SO WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?

MacDonald is doing something with The Service that I think matters more than most people realize. And frankly, it’s something our intelligence community should have done years ago. He’s giving former intelligence officers a chance to tell their stories. Not operational secrets. Not classified material. Their stories. What the work felt like. What it cost them. Why they did it.

That’s not a security risk. That’s a bridge.

Because intelligence literacy doesn’t start with reading the CSIS Act. It starts with understanding that the people who do this work are human beings making impossible decisions under impossible constraints, on behalf of a country that mostly doesn’t know they exist.

Here’s what I think needs to happen:

We need to talk about intelligence openly. Not operations. Not sources and methods. But the role, the purpose, the value, and the limitations of intelligence in a democracy. We need Canadians to understand what CSIS does the same way they understand what the RCMP does or what the CAF does.

We need former officers to step forward — especially the operators. Within the boundaries of what’s permissible, we need people who’ve done this work to speak publicly about it. Not just the analysts and the executives. The TechOps people. The regional operators. The ones who picked locks and crawled through ducts and breached systems. MacDonald found thirty who were willing. There should be three hundred. And the TechOps community — the people whose work is the most invisible and the most misunderstood — should be leading that charge.

We need the government to make intelligence literacy a priority. Not just in policy circles. In schools. In public discourse. In the same way we talk about defence spending and military readiness, we need to talk about intelligence capability and why it matters.

And we need the media to do better. CSIS makes the news when something goes wrong. It almost never makes the news when something goes right — because when it goes right, nobody knows anything happened. The public narrative is permanently skewed toward failure.

Go read MacDonald’s piece in the Globe. Share it. And if you know anyone working on The Service documentary — support it. This is the kind of work that moves the needle.

— Grumpy Bob: “We stand on guard for thee. It’d be nice if thee knew we were standing.”

ORIGINAL ARTICLE

“Canada can’t tackle national security if we don’t understand our intelligence services”

By Matthew A. MacDonald • The Globe and Mail • February 18, 2026

theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-canada-cant-tackle-national-security-if-we-dont-understand-our

MacDonald is an Ottawa-based filmmaker and political scientist who has taught at Carleton University. He is currently developing The Service, a major documentary series on CSIS featuring interviews with over 30 former intelligence officers.

ABOUT SHADOW TACTICS

Shadow Tactics IIS Carbon Copy

Security discussions from an ex-CSIS TechOps member. Current news and historical references with a spy and security spin.

https://klavansec.substack.com/p/the-country-that-forgot-it-had-spies?triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=web

Observations from Wesley Wark.

NATO countries are planning for an Arctic security force, to be called “Arctic Sentry.” ^[1] Its purpose (nor necessarily stated as such) is to demonstrate to the Trump administration that the alliance is serious about defending the Arctic and has the capacity to do so, without the US resorting to a takeover of Greenland, or any other Arctic “piece of ice,” as Trump calls it (think the Faroe Islands, or Iceland (which Trump gets mixed up about), or maybe the Canadian Arctic).

Canada will be called on to play a lead role in Arctic Sentry as the world’s second largest Arctic nation by land-mass, with a critical stake in the security of the region and in the well-being of its inhabitants. It will be joined, among others, by the Nordic members of NATO—Finland, Sweden, Norway, and the Kingdom of Denmark, all of whom have their own big stake in securing what is being called NATO’s northern and western flank.

While Canada is in the midst of a ten-year plan to modernize and re-equip its military, Arctic Sentry needs force commitments now.

What can Canada offer? More than many Canadians, and perhaps even our NATO allies, might appreciate.

First, there are intelligence assets to be shared, including Arctic-focused signals intelligence, long a prime Canadian mission, from the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). The most recent CSE annual report noted that they issued 196 reports on Arctic security in 2024-2025. This stream of reporting will need to be shared with Arctic Sentry partners.

Canada also possesses some unique space platform assets, including the Radarsat “constellation” mission, a trio of small synthetic aperture radar satellites launched in 2019 that can provide coverage of the polar regions. Though operated by the civilian Canadian space agency for wide-ranging earth-observation purposes, the satellites also provide data to the Canadian military for analysis. The Constellation mission could be fine-tuned to meet the needs of Arctic Sentry.

Canada also possesses long-range maritime patrol capabilities, in the Aurora CP-140 plane. The airframe is old, dating back to the early 1980s, but the plane has been updated with modern sensor capabilities and was deployed as part of the anti-ISIS coalition in 2016-2017. ^[2] The Auroras, numbering 14 in total, are split between detachments at Greenwood, in Nova Scotia and Comox in B.C.

A replacement for the aging Aurora was announced in November 2023. ^[3] The government selected the Boeing P-8A Poseidon aircraft (between 14 and 16 of the planes). Deliveries are meant to begin this year.

Canada could also, of course deploy CF-18s for air interdiction patrols around Greenland. Three CF-18s were recently reported to have been deployed to the US Pittufik space base in Greenland on an unspecified NORAD exercise, so there will be familiarity with the operating environment. ^[4]

For operations at sea in or near Greenlandic waters, the RCN could call on one or more of its new class of Arctic and Offshore patrol vessels (AOPS).^[5] There are six of these ships in total available to the RCN. The first, HMCS Harry deWolf, was commissioned into service in June 2021 and conducted a circumnavigation of North America, including a transit through the North West Passage.

The AOPS, while lightly armed, are not warships; they are not designed for combat, but as the name suggests, they are operated as patrol vessels to conduct surveillance, and are rated as “Polar Class 5” ships in terms of ice-breaking capacity. Not heavy-duty ice-breakers, but the designation means they can operate year-round in medium 1^st year ice, and their reinforced hulls can break ice at depths of 1 metre at 3 knots. Some critics were a little harsh in calling these ships “slush breakers.” Their capacity would allow them to navigate offshore around much of Greenland. Where they can’t go, it is unlikely that surface adversary ships would be present. They could complement the Danish frigates that are regularly deployed to Greenland. The AOPS can also carry surface or sub-surface drones and can deploy a helicopter, including the Cyclone type, from its hangar deck.^[6]

Submarines?—that will have to wait until the mid-2030s, and depends on which manufacturer the Government of Canada selects. ^[7]

As for land forces, while the Arny is currently stretched by its commitment to lead the NATO multinational brigade in Latvia, it could deploy small contingents to Greenland for exercises and training. These deployments could even involve the Rangers reserve forces, in particular, the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group, some 2,000 strong, which operates across the Canadian North and Arctic. ^[8]

Altogether then, Canada has important assets across many force domains that it could contribute to Arctic Sentry.

Let’s see how it is built out.

Canada is uniquely unprepared for the dire national-security crisis we are now in

Andrew Coyne

Prime Minister Mark Carney, centre, during a tour of a Canadian Forces Base in Trenton, Ont., in August, 2025.

It is doubtful any country has ever been in quite the national security dilemma Canada now finds itself in: with so much land and so few people to defend it; wedged between two expansionist superpowers, one of which was until very recently our best defence against the other, but which has since become more or less aligned with it.

The dilemma is particularly acute in light of our charmed history. A country that had always considered itself invulnerable to attack – because of the oceans that surround us, because of the forbidding climate in our North, because of the Americans – wakes up to discover that it has suddenly become peculiarly vulnerable.

We have no experience with this, psychologically. Other countries have long lived in the shadow of invasion, past or potential. Canada is unique, not only in the degree of our exposure, but in our utter unpreparedness to deal with it. It had literally never occurred to us until now that we might be a target.

That psychological unpreparedness is reflected in our security arrangements. Again, what is striking is not just how weak they are, but how uniquely weak. We are an outlier among nations in almost every respect: not only with regard to national security narrowly defined – the military, intelligence and police forces – but in the broader sense of our ability to withstand coercive pressure: things like economic resiliency, political cohesion, and, increasingly, state capacity.

Carney says Canada too reliant on U.S for security as he announces major boost in military spending

Let’s go down the list. Canada has, by any measure, the weakest military of any major democracy, certainly one with comparable security needs, alliance responsibilities, and international pretensions. In the most recent fiscal year for which we have actual data, we spent 1.47 per cent of GDP on defence (we may or may not reach the 2 per cent of GDP the Carney government has promised for the current fiscal year). That put us 27th out of what were then 31 NATO members.

We spend less, relative to GDP, than any other G7 country. We spend less than non-NATO democracies like Australia, South Korea and India. You can find countries that spend less than us. But they are smaller, and strategically sheltered: surrounded either by friendly buffer states, as in the case of Spain, Portugal and Belgium, or by oceans, as with the small island states of Ireland, Iceland or New Zealand.

Spending is only one measure. With 68,000 active forces (plus 27,000 reserves) we field the smallest military relative to population of any comparable democracy. A single brigade-level commitment (such as the current mission in Latvia) is about all we can manage. Our forces are chronically underequipped, flying aircraft that are 40 years old or more, sailing rusted-out ships and second-hand submarines, beset by key ammunition and logistical gaps.

The procurement system, what is more, is so bureaucratic, politicized and overspecified – often with requirements that have nothing to do with military capacity and everything to do with regional-development boondoggles and industrial-strategy fantasies – that there is real doubt whether Canada is even capable of getting the money we have promised to spend out the door on a timely basis.

But what did it matter? What did any of it matter? Not only were we invulnerable, but we had, so we imagined, no natural predators. We were so nice, so inoffensive. Many Canadians even imagined we were some kind of neutral power, never considering that in the real world neutral powers are typically armed to the teeth. Because, unlike Canada, they cannot rely on other countries coming to their defence.

Then there is intelligence. Canada is the only major democracy without a strategic foreign-intelligence capacity. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) does its best, but it is primarily confined to domestic intelligence-gathering; while that limitation has been partially relaxed in recent years, its foreign activities are still restricted to countering direct threats to Canadian security – such as terrorism, foreign interference, and so on – rather than the broader national-interest objectives served by other countries’ intelligence agencies. The Canadian Security Establishment (CSE), likewise, is limited to signals intelligence – valuable, but limited.

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In the world we are now in – a world in which war is conducted not just by overt military attacks but by economic coercion, weaponized migration, and disinformation campaigns; a world in which we cannot necessarily depend on the intelligence provided by our “allies” – that is not enough. We need our own full-service foreign-intelligence service, comparable to the CIA or MI6 – or, for that matter, to similar services across the democratic world.

The situation is even worse when it comes to the national police force: the invaluable supplement to the intelligence services, who cannot arrest or present evidence at trial against anyone. No other country saddles its national police force with as many conflicting responsibilities as the RCMP: supplying not only a national police service, but, depending on the province, local and provincial as well (two-thirds of RCMP personnel are contracted out), in addition to border enforcement and protective services. We need a dedicated national police force, comparable to the FBI or Britain’s National Crime Agency – or, again, to other democratic countries.

But as we have lately begun to learn, national security is not only a matter for the military, intelligence or police forces. States can also exercise coercive pressure economically. How does Canada stand up on these measures? Not well. With 75 per cent of our exports going to the United States, we have the highest concentration of trade with one country of any major democracy, with the possible exception of Mexico.

There were good reasons for this. Not only is the United States the world’s largest single consumer market, and not only is it next door, but it speaks the same language as most of us, has a similar culture, similar laws, and so on. So long as the United States had a normal government with normal views of international relations, it was a risk worth taking. But this is not a normal government. (No, John Turner was not “right”: His argument was that free trade itself would inevitably lead to our absorption, not that “some day a complete madman will occupy the White House.”)

We are economically vulnerable in lots of other ways. We have arguably the most dispersed population of any major country, measured not only by overall population density (only Australia’s is lower), but by the distance between city centres, and by the small number of links between them, laid out as we are along a single, relatively narrow axis along the border. With so few choke points, it is comparatively easy to disrupt our roads and rail lines, our pipelines, or our electricity links.

This is perhaps unavoidable. What is not is the degree to which we have contributed to our own balkanization through policy – notably, through the proliferation, 159 years after Confederation, of hundreds of interprovincial trade barriers. The result: We have arguably the least integrated national economy in the developed world. Just 18 per cent of Canada’s GDP is accounted for by interprovincial trade, versus the 65 per cent of our GDP that is traded internationally.

Not only do these take a heavy toll economically – the latest estimate by the IMF puts this at 7 percentage points of GDP, every year – but they contribute to our lack of internal political cohesion. In virtually every other federation on Earth, the task of striking down internal trade barriers is assigned to the federal government. Notionally, it is in Canada, too. The difference is that in most other federations the federal government actually does it. Only in Canada is the task left to negotiations between the provinces – as if between sovereign states.

The result is not merely repeated failure, but to instill the very message that the talks were supposedly intended to counteract: that there is no common national interest, but only our distinct provincial interests, separate and incompatible, to be zealously guarded at all costs. Can a country with no common national interests really be said to be a common national community – that is, a nation?

Or can there be a nation without a functioning national Parliament? Researching my book, The Crisis of Canadian Democracy (at better bookstores everywhere!), I was struck, again, by how often we were – quantifiably, in many cases – the outlier: with the weakest Parliament, the most ferocious party discipline, the largest (and therefore weakest) cabinets, the most powerful Prime Minister, the most disproportionate (and therefore regionally divisive) electoral system, and so on.

A political community is formed, in part, by common political institutions, of recognized legitimacy and effectiveness. As Parliament’s relevance dwindles, participation rates decline, until the debate becomes not whether Parliament is answerable to the people, but whether there is any longer a people to answer to.

A last, perhaps most telling point of weakness: We are one of the very few countries on Earth that provides for its own dismemberment and destruction. The constitutions of most other democracies declare, expressly or by implication, that they are permanent and indissoluble. The United States does it. France does it. So do Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Mexico and Ukraine, among a long list.

Canada, almost uniquely, does not – with entirely predictable results: the constant threat of secession, punctuated by repeated referendums, now approaching the reductio ad absurdum of simultaneous referendums in two provinces, with the gleeful support of the Trump administration. As I’ve said in other contexts: Leave a loaded gun lying around, someone is bound to pick it up – especially if it can be used to blackmail the rest of the country.

We have framed the national-security debate, in short, too narrowly. National unity is a matter of national security. The economy is a matter of national security. Democracy is a matter of national security. On all these fronts and more, Canada has left itself exposed and vulnerable, to a degree no other democratic state would tolerate.

We have been almost suicidally complacent. We thought no bad things could ever happen to us – or that if they could, we did not have to do anything to stop them. Not if it involved sweat, or sacrifice, or saying no to anyone – even to those who were trying to break apart the country. We need to think again.

SYNOPSIS

In 2026, intensified geopolitical competition and rivalries will influence and shape the global threat environment. In parallel, non-state armed groups driven by religious, ethnic, and hard-line ideologies will threaten both governments and social harmony in various countries around the world.

COMMENTARY

Insurgent and terrorist entities will mount attacks in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and the West in 2026. Based on the monitoring of terrorist communiques and reporting by government sources, while over 95 per cent of the attacks will occur in conflict zones of Sudan, Mali, Somalia, Libya, Nigeria, Afghanistan and Pakistan, isolated attacks will happen in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

Several major Western cities scaled back or cancelled New Year’s Eve celebrations for 2025-2026 due to heightened security and public safety concerns, as well as recent local tragic events. Nonetheless, the primary theatres of terrorism will be in the Global South, notably in Asia, the Middle East and Africa.

The fewer attacks staged in the West will draw global attention like the family-based attack in Bondi Beach in Sydney in December 2025. As long as migrant and diaspora communities are not integrated, extremism will linger in the physical and digital spaces, radicalising communities, and the West will suffer from periodic attacks in 2026.

The epicentre of global terrorism has shifted out of the Middle East into Africa and Asia. Nonetheless, threat groups remain active in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. Iran’s Axis of Resistance – Shi’ite groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as Sunni groups in Gaza – failed to deter Israel from attacking Iran.

To contain Israel, Iran seeks to restore its ring of fire by renewing support to Lebanese Hezbollah and Yemeni Ansarallah, both severely weakened by Israel in recent times. Except for Iran, a state sponsor of both Shi’ite and Sunni threat groups, Middle Eastern governments have publicly rejected terrorism. Following the devastating war in Gaza after the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, there is a considerable erosion of public support or appetite for violence.

The West will see the steady rise of both the extreme right and the extreme left, leading to intermittent attacks. The rise of far-right political parties will enable far-right extremism in 2026 and in the foreseeable future. Due to enhanced security and intelligence cooperation in the West, most attacks by the far left and the far right, and Islamist groups will be detected and disrupted in the planning and preparation phases. The FBI in the US disrupted coordinated bomb attacks across five locations in Los Angeles on New Year’s Eve. The Turtle Island Liberation Front – a far-left, pro-Palestine, anti-government, and anti-capitalist group has 939 followers, and its Instagram features images with the phrases “Death to America” and “Peaceful Protest Will Never Be Enough”.

As in 2025, most attacks in 2026 will be in the Global South. According to information gathered by counter terrorism databases, around 60-70 per cent of the terrorist attacks will occur in African countries. Islamic State and Al Qaeda affiliates in Africa remain the deadliest terrorist organisations in 2026.

Unless the war between Israel and Hamas and its allies resumes, based on my own interviews with counterterrorism practitioners and terrorist leaders in custody, around 15-20 per cent of attacks will be in the Levant and the Gulf. In 2026, attacks by Tareek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) targeting Pakistan will surpass the attacks by Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) and Islamic State Pakistan Province (ISPP).

Al Qaeda-aligned TTP attacks mounted from Afghanistan could prompt a war between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Similarly, attacks by Pakistan and India could prompt a war between the two nuclear powers. Extremism is on the rise in Bangladesh. With Bangladeshi Islamists and the Afghan Taliban exchanging visits throughout 2025, there will be calls for implementing Shariah, and minorities in Bangladesh, notably Hindus and Christians, will suffer more attacks in 2026.

Most South and Central Asians are recruited by ISKP, both when in their own countries and in the diaspora. With Central Asian governments regulating the religious space, the potential for radicalisation and recruitment in-country has diminished. Nonetheless, Central Asians working overseas have been enlisted by both the Islamic State and Al Qaeda to mount attacks in Russia, Europe, and elsewhere.

The threat in Southeast Asia has diminished, but the remnants of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda continue to operate. Two foreign terrorist fighters visited Mindanao in the Philippines for three weeks in November 2025 in the lead-up to the terrorist attack in Bondi Beach. Manila has maintained its efforts to integrate the identified Islamist elements and supporters into the mainstream community.

In Indonesia, the counterterrorism force, Detachment 88, dissolved Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), both an Al Qaeda and an Islamic State affiliate. A game changer in the fight against terrorism, JI supreme leader Para Wijayanto and Detachment 88 Intelligence Chief Ami Prindani worked together to remove the region’s biggest threat after two decades of JI attacks.

The Malaysian Special Branch dismantled an Islamic State in Bangladesh network in Johor, bordering Singapore. At the same time, other threat groups based in Bangladesh and Myanmar continue their subversive activities overseas through their respective labour diaspora communities.

Conclusion

In a rapidly evolving global and political landscape, all nations require an unblinking eye to prevent and preempt threats from seeding, taking root, and manifesting, harming the state and hurting its citizens. Public spaces in urban settings, especially open facilities, will be vulnerable to mass fatality and mass casualty attacks.

The threat will come from state and non-state actors, including lone-wolf attackers. In addition to disinformation and misinformation operations, states will also engage in attacks on information infrastructure.

The threat of cyberattacks by both state and non-state actors will rise, compelling nations to secure their online domains. With threat groups setting up dedicated digital entities, including an Al Qaeda digital command, governments will need to partner with community organisations and stringently regulate the digital space, including punitive measures against tech companies if necessary. With a fourth to a fifth of the attacks being perpetrated by youth and children, governments will need to address online radicalisation in 2026.

Unless all governments collaborate to mitigate common security threats, risks, and challenges, threat actors will continue to exploit gaps, loopholes, and weaknesses in the global security systems.

Religious spaces should be tightly regulated, hate preachers and their institutions should be investigated, charities and their donors should be monitored, and protests and campaigns instigating violence should be banned. In partnership with community leaders, government leadership must focus on promoting moderation and coexistence.

Terrorism will remain the preeminent national security threat to most countries throughout 2026. Driven by extremist ideologies, terrorism will damage social cohesion between ethnic and religious communities. The focus of governments should shift from downstream counterterrorism to upstream counterterrorism to preempt and prevent attacks.

Terror is not only a tool exploited by non-state actors, but also by state actors, mainly through their partners and proxies. As they need plausible deniability, hostile governments will employ criminal organisations to conduct terrorist attacks. The crime-terror nexus and its infrastructure must not be left unattended. The challenge posed by politico-religious ecosystems of threat groups, networks, cells, and personalities should be tackled with urgency and strategic oversight.

About the Author

Rohan Gunaratna is Professor of Security Studies at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He served as Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) at RSIS from February 2004 to December 2018.

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