Nest of Spies is a thoroughly damning document of Canada’s overall security, including military, economic, industrial, government and technical security and their internal associated services. It’s especially damning of industrial, technical and economic, and reserves special criticism, even scorn, for Canada’s political leaders, saying, “… Canadian laws are flabbily written and poorly enforced (arguably they are not enforced at all), and the unfortunate truth that our police officers are not trained to investigate in our domain.” They go on to say that Canada is “…a country where successive governments of all political stripes have ignored the problem. Canada has lacked the courage, or the resolve, or perhaps the simple ability to grasp the size of the challenge.”
Nest of Spies, written by a Montreal journalist (de Pierrebourg) and a former bureau chief for CSIS (Juneau-Katsuya), the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, outlines overall and goes into some specifics on the comparison by United States intelligence of “… Canada’s military security to a kitchen strainer.” Virtually no organization within the Canadian government, military or civilian, responsible for protecting the integrity of Canada’s economy, military or government gets a pass in this scathing review of the inefficacy of the entire Canadian security establishment.
CSIS “… is the information agency responsible for investigating threats to national security both inside and outside Canada … including espionage, terrorism and sabotage …” Bear in mind, these words came, either directly or indirectly, from one of the former bureau chiefs responsible for Canada’s national security and one immediately grasps the depth and breadth of the security problems Canada is facing.
On the international side of the matter, few of Canada’s closest friends get a pass, either. Listed in 1994 are “… the (countries) most actively involved in economic and political spying” are, in order, China, India, Iran, Israel, Morocco, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Ukraine. (The USA was on the 1984 list.)
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