Enhancing Canada’s Security Posture in an Increasingly Uncertain Global Environment
Deterrence of Partisanship as Canadian National Security Strategy Laurence Deschamps-Laporte
T
imothy Sayle’s essay ends with a reference to how the dire state of our national archives makes it incredibly difficult to study national security history (Marsden 2021). As a contemporary scholar and practitioner, I must agree. It is similarly challenging to reflect strategically on Canada’s national security today, for two distinct reasons. First, national security cannot be studied as a standalone concept. No analysis in this area can be divorced from a broader discussion of international affairs. Canada projects itself as a multilateralist power, a promoter of alliances. While this internationalist worldview is part of the Canadian ethos, it means that, as a middle-power, Canada is also deeply dependent on alliances. And while Ottawa’s engagement in the world is a strength, Canadian national security is a constant negotiation of that dependency. The second reason is that contemporary national security challenges are rarely discussed in a non-partisan manner. Sayle argues that “if there is a pattern to Canada’s national security history, it is that, for more than 150 years, the viability and integrity of the state has been preserved first and foremost by ensuring that Canadians remain united.” I agree and, as a result, a fracture in the Canadian public’s unity when it comes to existential threats poses a critical challenge to national security. Consider, for example, the deep partisan fracture over the early 2022 convoy protests and invocation of the Emergencies Act (West, Carvin and Juneau 2022). The establishment of a National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians (NSICOP) in 2018 was meant to increase cross-partisan collaboration, but its work was temporarily compromised in the spring of 2021 by a boycott by the official opposition over the government’s refusal to provide Parliament with unredacted documentation regarding the dismissal of scientists from the National Microbiology Lab in Winnipeg in July 2019 (Fife and Chase 2021). 82