‘It’s a critical menace and we’ve to consider it,’ Vincent Rigby informed a world affairs convention
The Canadian Press
Kyle Duggan
Revealed Feb 12, 2025 • 2 minute learn
OTTAWA — A former prime intelligence adviser to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he fears the U.S. would possibly put intelligence sharing on the desk in talks in regards to the state of Canada’s defence spending.
Vincent Rigby mentioned he worries about intelligence getting used as a negotiating instrument because the Donald Trump White home seeks to extract features from Canada.
“We hear a lot about protection spending and two per cent, and what the U.S. might or might not do if we don’t step as much as plate,” Rigby informed a crowd at a Canada International Affairs Institute convention Wednesday afternoon. “I’m afraid at one level, intelligence goes for use as a negotiating instrument.”
President Trump and different U.S. lawmakers have been sharply crucial of Canada’s failure to satisfy its NATO dedication of spending the equal of two per cent of its GDP on defence.
Canada has fallen behind the pack throughout the safety alliance and at present spends about 1.37 per cent of GDP on defence. Trudeau has pledged to satisfy the goal by 2032.
Rigby was Trudeau’s nationwide safety and intelligence adviser through the early years of the pandemic.
He mentioned the Trump administration may even resolve to weaponize entry to American intelligence over another irritant as Trump performs tough with conventional allies.
“Some individuals scoff at that, however I do know from my very own expertise that it wasn’t a lot a veiled menace final time that he was in, and this difficulty was raised on one or two events,” Rigby mentioned of the primary Trump White Home. “I received’t get into the specifics of it, however it’s a critical menace and we’ve to consider it.”
Final yr, then-public security minister Dominic LeBlanc informed the general public inquiry into overseas interference that such shared intelligence is important to anti-terrorism investigations and defending Canada’s safety.
“I used to be struck after I grew to become minister of public security the extent to which we’re web importers of intelligence info,” he mentioned on Feb. 2, 2024.
Canada advantages from nationwide intelligence as a part of the 5 Eyes intelligence sharing alliance of nations, which incorporates Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the U.S.
Ottawa incessantly depends on info from allies with large, built-up overseas intelligence techniques, comparable to Britain’s MI6 and the American CIA.
“The 5 Eyes has offered us with very, superb info at little or no price,” mentioned Stephanie Carvin, affiliate professor of worldwide affairs at Carleton College. “There is no such thing as a query that Canada is an intelligence client greater than it’s a producer. That’s to not say that what we produce isn’t helpful or related.”
Ten years in the past, southwestern Ontario resident Aaron Driver posted a video on-line saying he was a suicide bomber planning an assault. The FBI handed on details about the video and Canadian authorities intervened to cease him.
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