CSIS director outlines security threats posed by Russia, China, Iran, India

The director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service catalogued the espionage and transnational repression efforts of Canada’s adversaries.

The head of Canada’s intelligence service described his fight against the national security challenges posed by China, Russia, Iran and India on Thursday in his first public speech on the threats facing the country.

The normally guarded director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Dan Rogers, named the four countries as he catalogued the espionage and transnational repression efforts of Canada’s adversaries.

Russia has been spying on the government and private sector in the Arctic, trying to send intelligence officers to Canada and procuring goods in the country for its war in Ukraine, he said in his first annual speech.

China’s military and intelligence services are seeking “classified and sensitive Canadian government information” while working to gain a “strategic and economic foothold” in the Arctic, Rogers added.

Over the past year, the Iranian intelligence services have targeted several individuals they view as threats, prompting CSIS to disrupt multiple “potentially lethal threats against individuals in Canada.”

India’s government, meanwhile, was named among a list of countries engaging in “transnational repression,” in which foreign states target activists, journalists and “cultural, ethnic and religious groups.”

“We’ve observed this in Canada in the form of surveillance; in the spreading of false and discrediting information; extortion; the threatening of loved ones abroad; and, at its most extreme, threats to safety and life,” he said.

“These actions have deeply harmful consequences for those targeted. They also intimidate others, deterring them from exercising their right to free speech and lawful advocacy, or from fully participating in their community or democracy.”