Canada Ponders Entry into World of Foreign Espionage

HALIFAX, CANADA - Senior veterans of Canada’s intelligence community are publicly advocating for the country to consider whether to enter a sphere it has, until now, largely left to others — foreign espionage.

Three retired government officials, all of whom held high-ranking positions dealing with intelligence, argued in Canada’s most prominent national newspaper this month that the government should explore the idea of creating a stand-alone agency akin to America’s CIA or Britain’s MI6. “Has the time come for Canada to develop a capacity to gather foreign intelligence from human sources abroad? … Perhaps it is,” the three wrote in a June 11 op-ed in the Toronto Globe and Mail. Foreign intelligence gathering has never been a priority for Canada, which enjoys the security of broad oceans to the east and west and a friendly neighbor to the south. Even the job of rooting out foreign spies on Canadian soil was long left to the vaunted Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) — better known internationally for their ceremonial red jackets and Stetson hats.