Canada urged to hasten sharing of intelligence
Spectre of threats made by Russia, others
OTTAWA • Canada and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are being urged to share more information faster in a bid to get ahead — and stay ahead — of Russia and other threats to the military alliance.
The request came Thursday from NATO assistant secretary general Arndt Freytag von Loringhoven as senior military intelligence officers from across the 29-country alliance wrapped up two days of closed-door meetings in Ottawa.
“I think we need to work on the rapidity of intelligence,” von Loringhoven told a group of journalists. “So we are encouraging to send us, to share intelligence with us at the speed of relevance, as quickly as possible.”
The comments coincide with a renewed focus on military intelligence by the Trudeau government, whose defence policy has promised to assign hundreds more service members and civilians to such tasks in the coming years.
They also come as NATO has struggled to predict and counter Russia’s unpredictability and use of hybrid warfare, which includes propaganda, misinformation and cyberattacks to destabilize countries and keep Canada and its allies off balance.
Yet despite their shared commitment to countering Russia’s tactics and keeping it in check, von Loringhoven said NATO members have often been reluctant to provide timely information to their allies.
“Because you have to speak about vulnerabilities in your own countries and this has to be balanced against the benefits for all of us to know what’s going on,” said von Loringhoven, who previously led Germany’s foreign intelligence agency.
Rear-Admiral Scott Bishop, Canada’s chief of defence intelligence who hosted the meeting, said Canada shares as much intelligence with NATO as possible and has been pushing other countries to do the same.
And such efforts have borne fruit, Bishop said, pointing to the multinational force that Canada is leading in Latvia as an example of where there has been a marked improvement in information co-operation among NATO allies.
But Bishop also acknowledged that there are certain things that Canada, whose closest intelligence partnership is with the so-called Five Eyes involving the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand, does not share with NATO.
“Canada works very hard to share all of its intelligence that is pertinent to NATO and alliance members,” he said.
Among the victories credited to Moscow’s unpredictability in recent years have been its invasion of Georgia in 2008, its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and subsequent support for separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine.
The latter two, combined with concerns about Russia’s broader intentions in eastern Europe, prompted Canada to agree to lead the NATO battlegroup in Latvia, one of four such multinational forces in the area.
The fog that has surrounded Moscow’s decisionmaking was highlighted in a report in February by the Rand Corp., a respected U.S. think-tank that said the West missed numerous warning signs before Russia’s recent actions.
The Liberal defence policy, released last year, made a specific commitment to add 120 new military intelligence officers and 180 civilian counterparts at the Department of National Defence, as well as adding new equipment.
The planned investments reflect an understanding “that all operations today are intelligence-driven operations,” Bishop said, “and we have to understand the environments that we are operating in.”
But it has also forced the Defence Department and Canadian Forces to take a hard look at exactly what will be needed to provide the best intelligence to government and military leaders.
“Right now, our focus is on with that growth, what does that new structure look like? How will our command function differently in the future?” Bishop said.
“So we have a little bit of work to do before we go out and start bringing those people on board.”