Demanding Answers, Avoiding Responsibilty: the Canadian Parliamentarians Always Disappoint

 Canada has a base in Kuwait, a legacy of the counter-ISIS mission and part of a program having spots around the world facilitating potential operations.  It got hit by Iranian missiles, and opposition parliamentarians are outraged that they were not told.  Fun grandstanding, sure.  But what's going on here?

Yes, the government may have chosen to hide the attack because they didn't want criticism of their crappy stance on Iran and that the US risked its allies without notifying/consulting them.  But perhaps there may have been a reason to keep stuff classified--that telling the public about the attack also tells Iran how accurate their targeting was and maybe to try again.

In a mature democracy (or even one that is in rapid decline), there is a way out of this conundrum: that some members of the legislature, let's say the defence committee or the opposition leaders, have security clearances so that they can be informed when secret stuff happens.  No, they can't then release that info to the public, but they can talk about the generalities so that the public can be informed of the basic idea. 

See how Senator Chris Murphy does it:

I was in a 2 hour briefing today on the Iran War. All the briefings are closed, because Trump can't defend this war in public. I obviously can't disclose classified info, but you deserve to know how incoherent and incomplete these war plans are. 1/ Here's what I can share:

— Chris Murphy (@chrismurphyct.bsky.social) March 10, 2026 at 10:03 PM

And even if the stuff is so secret that the legislators can't talk about it, their ability to know can be a key constraint on government.  Dave, Phil, and I wrote a fairly recent book about exactly this stuff.  I initiated the project because I was stunned by the deliberate ignorance of Canadian members of parliament--that they would prefer to know less and talk more than know more and have to be responsible.  Canadian MPs will say that this is way it is done in Westminster governments, and now Dave, Phil, and I have the receipts to say: bushwah.  Nope, the Aussies and Brits have managed to find ways to actually engage in oversight (that is, they know what the military has done, not that they have a say in what they do, for those who interpret the word oversight differently).  

But for MPs, it is more fun to blast the government for covering things up than actually knowing stuff.  A long running story in Canadian politics has been that the opposition leader, Pierre Poilievre, has refused to be cleared.  My bluesky followers suspect that PP has skeletons that a clearance process would reveal, but the answer is more obvious and direct: he does not want the responsibility of knowing stuff.  He'd rather be ignorant and wrong than have to be careful about his criticism of government.  As Murphy shows above and plenty of opposition legislators around the world know quite well, you can be informed and still provide trenchant, on-target, critical criticisms of the government the day and yet not violate secrecy of the info one has received.

So, I have no sympathy for whiny Conservatives on this.  I also think that the Liberals, like all Canadian parties in power, treat the public like kids and not adults.  When pushed on this, Carney said: “I’m not the only spokesperson for the government, but I’ll just confirm that members of the Canadian Forces are all safe and sound,” said Carney.

 Sorry, sir, but, yes, that actually is a key part of the job.  The best way to fight disinformation is to be as transparent as possible.  The best way to de-fang opposition criticisms is to be ahead of the story and tell the public as much as you can.  Don't act like your job does not include informing the public.  You are not a central banker anymore.

I post this because the Canadian public (and others, most democracies have largely ignorant legislatures) should know that the opposition MPs are playing a game, a dumb game that helps to reduce trust in government (abetting the far right populists), as they could know but choose not to.   

 

Participant-Observer Methodology Strikes Again: Appearing before Canada's Defence Committee

 Today, I got stretched pretty good, as I was asked to testify before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence.  The focus was supposed to be the Baltics/Ukraine security situation, but I ended up helping to, um, expand the conversation.  I was on with two sharp people who are far more knowledgeable about Ukraine and Baltic security stuff, so I made that clear at the top of my initial statement.

Because dropbox no longer lets one share files easily, I will just summarize my opening statement: lots of uncertainty, much hinging on the US election (which had the effect of derailing the conversation a bit, I think), that Canada is contributing to NATO via the mission in Latvia, that it is no longer doing the air patrolling stuff, that my civ-mil hat is causing me to ponder how is Zelensky managing his military and how likely is it for the Russian military to mutiny.

The committee was smart to keep the regional questions aimed at my colleagues.  Marta Kepe of RAND spoke about hybrid warfare and other unconventional threats facing the Baltics.  Arel was quite critical of the lack of political will on the part of the west in general in not supporting Ukraine earlier and letting its fear of escalation inhibit support now.  I found myself agreeing with them on pretty much everything they said except for that political will stuff.  The Q&A ran for nearly 2 hours with each MP getting somewhere between 1 and 5 minutes to ask questions (the MPs from the NPQ and Block got 1 minute each--smaller parties get less time).  

The first question to me was by Conservative MP Cheryl Gallant asked about very specific drone capabilities and why don't we have more systems to combat higher level air threats.  My response focused on the fact that our allies have anti-aircraft capabilities to help us, and that the drone procurement thing is happening.  I forget when I mentioned that there had been opposition to weaponized drones a while back because of concerns about their being used to assassinate individuals, but that the Ukraine war has shown us of the importance on a conventional battlefield.

The second question to be was by Christine Normandin of the Bloc, who is one of the Vice Chairs of the committee--wouldn't Poland paying more than 2% of its GDP on defense insure that Trump would still respond to an attack on Poland?  Nope, that Trump couldn't be counted on for anything like that given his hostility to NATO and his positive attitude towards Russia/Putin.

The next question to me was from the NDP's Lindsay Mathyssen about the links between the far right and Russia, and I, well, really went to town on that one--mentioning their joint interest in eroding trust in democratic institutions, their weaponization of all kinds of hate (transphobia, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, anti-semitism, Islamophobia) to divide democracies, and their joint fondness for autocracy.  I didn't mention DeSantis by name, but I did link Orban to all of this.  This got picked up by some far right media folks so here's the video of that sequence.

Conservative Don Stewart pushed again on drones--whether it would be right to train our troops on them before shipping them out to our troops in Latvia and why we don't have so many.  I mentioned the procurement challenges, here or later, including the fact that with everybody wanting to buy drones, there is a supply problem.

Liberal Emmanuella Lambropoulous asked a question of Arel that she then directed to me--why support Ukraine?  In addition to the stuff Arel mentioned, I pointed out that our inflation was partly caused by the commodity shock of Russia invading Ukraine's grain growing area.  I also mentioned our commitment to NATO, and this is a war that directly implicates NATO.

Normandin asked again about Trump, and I forgot if I said much different from the first time.

Liberal Marcus Powlowski asked about a reference I mad to Russian soldiers mutinying.  I said that what we know from civ-mil is not that we can pinpoint when one might happen, but the reckless disregard for the welfare of Russian troops might lead to units munitying.  He asked for evidence, and I had none except stories of individual soldiers attacking superior officers.  That time was not necessarily on Russia's side.

Conservative Vice Chair James Bezan asked about whether we should have sent some of the LAVs to Ukraine earlier, and I basically said yes.  

Liberal Chad Collins asked a long question about disinformation, which followed up from my previous answer about democratic institutions and the far right.  Either here or before, I pointed out that across the democracies, a key for preventing the rise of the far right is for right-wing parties to oppose them. 

My notes deteriorate from there.  We were asked about Ukraine and membership in NATO--I pointed out that won't happen until the war is over, as admitting a member mid-war is essentially NATO declaring war.  I was then asked if Ukraine could become a member if Trump was President, and I reminded folks that NATO operates by consensus, and Trump, having been impeached the first time for trying to extort Ukraine, would probably not support membership for Ukraine.

One can find the video online to get the whole hearing--the other two folks were super sharp and I learned much for them.

Did I tell the parliamentarians that my next book, with Phil and Dave, compares defence committees around world and found that the Canadian version was deliberately irrelevant?  No.  I will save that for the book launch.  I was very conscious that all parties were trying to play me and the others into giving them the soundbites that they wanted.  Perhaps I am biased, but the Conservatives seemed the most consistent, focusing on a particular message--that the Liberals are responsible for the CAF being under-equipped--which is not wrong, but I didn't want to get pinned down to say this was a uniquely Liberal problem--the Conservatives helped to get us here as well.  I probably gave the Liberals and the NDP the soundbites they wanted, but I did sense that there was a bit more genuine interest in the stuff and a bit less ruthless focus on point scoring.  As I said, I might be more aware of the stuff on the right than on the left.

I was asked by someone later whether this was stressful or whether I was frustrated.   Nope, this was fun--talking about this stuff is what I like to do, and talking to a committee that is, um, sort of responsible for this stuff is still cool even if I am a critic of how it does its business.

 

When Transparency Meets Partisanship, Transparency Dies?

 This tweet touched a nerve apparently.

Damn it. Mr. O'toole. This committee was a good innovation to deal with a thorny problem.

Instead, MPs get no information and we undermine the one way to review intel stuff.

Well done, sir. Way to keep parliament ignorant and useless.

— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) January 20, 2022

The tl:dr of this whole thing is that there is a real problem that democracies face--how to have transparency and accountability while keeping bad guys (foreign and domestic enemies) from knowing stuff that they should not know--that Canada is poorly armed to handle this challenge, and that the primary reform that managed to finesse some of this is now being crapped on by the Conservatives because ... it is better to score points than to help the country be both democratic and accountable.  

What is the longer version of this?  When I was interviewing politicians about the mission in Afghanistan in 2007, I was stunned to learn that members of the House of Commons Defence Committee lacked security clearances.  I said "how can you do oversight if you don't have access to the secret stuff?"  The response: "we don't do oversight,* we hold the Minister to account."  How can they do that if the Minister (in this case of Defence) has all the info and the members of parliament (MPs) have none?  "We get leaks," and their primary concern was agenda control of the committee, not info.  Why?  Mostly because they would prefer to talk aloud about stuff that they don't know much about than know more via security clearances but not be able to use that stuff in question period or other public fora.  As I framed it, better to be an ignorant critic than informed overseer.  The editor of the journal where Phil and I published the piece softened the title.  

This was not just a theoretical issue for us social scientists (although it did inspire the current book project and trips to many democracies) but also a major political issue.  During the Afghanistan war, one of the major points of contention (the most debated issue in Parliament--my book has handy figures on this) was the plight of Afghans detained by the Canadian Armed Forces--whether they were beaten after being turned over to the Afghan authorities.  The opposition wanted the info on this, the government said they couldn't, but since it was a minority government, the opposition was able to compel the government to produce documents under a very limited process.  The opposition leaders were able to go to a room where the documents were, sans recorders and notepads, and look through the documents, and then ask a judge or judges to declassify stuff. This effectively buried the issue, but it raised questions about how to provide accountability when there is not a minority government or when the opposition does not have consensus about pushing things.

NSICOP--National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians--is an innovation that is about five years old.  The idea here is that there is a committee of parliamentarians and senators who have security clearances and can get access to the secret stuff so that they can access the strengths and weaknesses of Canada's national security stuff.  The focus is mostly on intel agencies, but defence and other stuff gets reviewed as well.  The trick about this committee that causes much controversy is that it is not a parliamentary committee because it reports to the Prime Minister.  Mostly, this has not be a problem as they have issued unclassified reports that have been extensive and informative reviews (my colleagues who do intel stuff track this more closely than I do).  This process does mean that the committee does not serve at the whim of the Parliament, and the PM can limit what is produced.

This became a hot issue this past year as the Conservatives have wanted all the classified documents relating to a biohazard lab in Winnipegs.  They find NSICOP to be insufficiently focused on this, and have undermined it by not sending MPs to join it in the current session.  What do they want?  Damned if I know.  

Erin O'Toole has been grandstanding on this issue in ways that may undermine NSICOP and pour gas on the conspiracy theories out there.  My basic take, having not seen any of the secret stuff, is that the Winnipeg lab thing is an excuse to accuse the government of conspiring to be soft on China.  There is plenty of other stuff out there that can come in handy that way--this particular axis of effort is destructive to that good governance and order Canadians are supposed to care about.  Because O'Toole is killing the one thing parties could agree to that would provide some oversight* over the intel folks in Canada.  

The funny thing is that my tweet above, I think, was the reason I got a call from Mark Holland, the Liberal who is "Leader of the Government in the House of Commons."  He focused on the problem of redactions--that there had been materials that had been declassified but some stuff had been redacted.  The Conservatives think the redactions are problematic and that Parliament should be able to see everything and decide what can be shared with the public.  Holland's alternative is to take the Afghanistan detainee scandal process and make it more of a lasting thing: that some MPs could see the documents in their entirety subject to the usual security clearance laws, and that if they think some stuff should be released unredacted, then a committee of jurists should decide.  This would take the matter out of the hands of the government, and it would also mean that the opposition could not release stuff willy-nilly.  

Again, I am not the expert on this stuff, but this seems like a good compromise that gets at the heart of this--if the opposition cares about the issue itself.  They get access to the info, and then being able to talk about some of it if a panel of judges consent.  I haven't seen yet what O'Toole would say is wrong with this.  It seems quite reasonable.

What is my preference?  That Canada has committees that have security clearances.  This would not be sufficient, of course, because these committees have little heft--they can't change budgets, they have no influence on promotions, etc [the US Congress and German Bundestag are relevant actors not just because their defence committees can get the info but they also have power to use it--to shape budgets].  So, we'd have to innovate to give them a bit more heft so that their increased knowledge would have some relevance.  

But that ain't happening. The MPs don't have an incentive to know more--their incentives all point towards talking more, scoring points, not really focused at all on improving governance. So, this compromise, like NSICOP, is the best we can do. The alternative that O'Toole seems to want--for Parliament to have the power to release whatever it wants--seems problematic especially when at least one party seems to be more focused on spinning up conspiracy theories.  When people say that Canada's politics are immature and its politicians can't be responsible, this is what they (or I) have in mind.

* Oh, and about oversight, this is something where I get into fights with my colleagues.  For some reason, in Canada, oversight in the intel sphere has a different meaning than I have understood it anywhere else.  To me, oversight is about actors getting more information to know what other actors have been doing.  It can be and is usually retrospective (my friends suggest that it is more directive--that oversight is telling the actors what to do--that it is controlling, I think).  Parliamentarians don't need to know what Special Operators are doing right now in the field, but they should know what they did last summer.  Why is this important?  For many reasons, such as democracy requiring transparency (Colaresi has a great book on the contradictions between democracy and secrecy), but for my principal-agent-informed outlook, oversight is important because those who are delegated responsibility for doing something (spying, breaking codes, running special ops missions, whatever) will know more than those who give them those jobs about what actually happens.  One way to insure that those doing the work do the work as they are supposed to do it is make them feel as if they are being watched.  Oversight best works when those who are overseen anticipate that they will be caught if they behave in undesired ways, which then leads them to behave in the desired ways.  

Why can't we just leave this to the government of the day and civilian servants?  Why does civilian control of the military (or of the intel folks) have to involve other elected officials?  Because those in government may be tempted to hide stuff if revelations might hurt them politically.  Civil servants are not accountable to the public, so if you leave it in their hands, things tend to disappear.  There has been talk, for instance, of having the Privy Council Office supervise the various independent agencies that might get responsibility for overseeing the military (Ombudspeople, Inspector General, whatever), but that would be a black hole, not transparency.  

Anyhow, that's a lot for a Saturday morning post explaining a tweet.  Glad I provided the tl;dr up top.

 

 

 

Dream On or Basic Realities: Canadian Senate Defence Report

I don't have time to read the whole thing while I wander around Brasilia asking folks about the role of their Congress in overseeing the military, but I can't help but skim and comment on the Canadian Senate's report on defence.  After all, the big Dave/Phil/Steve project is inspired by how lame Canadian legislative oversight of the military is.

Let me start by reacting to the first part of the exec summary (my comments in blue):
1. Increase spending to the military from the present level of 0.88% of Canada’s gross domestic product (GDP) to 2% of GDP by 2028;

The More We Know About Canadian Military Operations

The more questions we have, and that is why folks don't share much info most of the time.  I was unable to be on this phone press conference since I am 13 hours or so in the future, but the news story here is very interesting.

First, the Canadian Special Operations Forces in Iraq are not doing anything different under this more violence-averse government.  They are still advising at the frontlines, which can lead to combat.  It ain't called combat because politicians say it ain't combat.  What it is not: sustained combat operations.  What it is: violence conducted by Canadian SOF from time to time when they are near the adversary.  Lots of folks will get caught up in the definitional game, when we should focus on the central issues instead:

• How much risk are the CANSOF being exposed to on a regular basis?
• How efficacious is the training?
• The larger political challenge--making the most effective force in the country more effective still may be problematic down the road when the Kurds feel a separatist itch.

The article does get at a big question--whether the mission will be renewed once again?  The folks mentioned in the piece seem to suggest that it will not be continued. This actually makes some operational sense (not just politics back home, not just budgetary/operational tempo stuff) if the Kurds and the rest of the Iraqis take Mosul between now and the exit.  If Mosul falls to the Iraqis, then there will be much less need for training/advising/assisting the Kurds as ISIS will mostly be ejected from Iraq and others can train the Iraqi forces how to patrol territory they own, rather than taking back territory they lost a few years ago.

Of course, this will raise a political challenge--what would Canada be contributing to the counter-ISIS fight after pulling out the CANSOF folks?   That is a challenge for the Trudeau government--to continue to stay in the fight against ISIS in some way that is recognized by those that Canada wants to recognize Canada.

There is another issue in all of this: Murray Brewster noted the lack of details.  Guess who is also not getting any details?  Parliament.  All of the parliamentary discussion about getting access to the secret stuff is about surveillance and not operations.  And, to me, this is a problem since that leaves democratic control of the military in the hands of the Prime Minister and the Defence Minister and no one else.  And those guys might just be tempted to hide questionable stuff.  Oops. 

Canada is not alone in this oversight oversight.  Which is why I am writing this from Japan.

Engaging the Object of My Research: Parliament and Civ-Mil

Parliament owns the small building that appears to be
part of the big hotel to the right but is not.

Today, I had the chance to participate in the Opposition's Defence Review.  The Conservatives are running a parallel process to that of the Minister of Defence.  I will be participating in the latter Def Review next week in Montreal.  I am not sure what the rules are for today's, in terms of Chatham House or whatever, so I will only discuss my views and my experience with some broad descriptions of the event itself.

It was a smallish group of around 12 participants plus two members of Parliament (James Bezan, the Defence Critic, and Cheryl Gallant, one of the two Vice-Chairs of the Standing Committee on National Defence), and their staff.  Besides Hon. Gallant and a staffer, the participants were male, and I was at or below the median age.  The group included retired military officers, retired public servants, defence contractors, and two academics (my colleague Jeremy Littlewood and myself). 

What did I have to say?  Well, I was reacting in part to the Conservative defence review document, which was fairly (extremely) partisan.  My basic point was that the problems Canada faces in dealing with its various defence challenges are not due to any party, but due to structural dynamics (including the partisanship that focuses on point scoring rather than improving governance).

Which structural dynamics?

Spiffy room with heaps of technology
for translation, video, etc.

1. Every democracy screws up defence procurement in its own special way.  For Canada, everything is more expensive, takes longer, etc.  If we can figure out how to just fix it a little bit so that things cost 5% less, things are just a little bit less late, etc, that would be a major contribution.
1. I did raise the problem of "industrial benefits" as being a major factor in choosing contractors.  How so?  That any protectionist measure ultimately costs more per job than whatever that job pays.  It is unlikely that Canada will develop a comparative advantage in naval ship-building, for instance.  And in those areas where Canada can compete, it ends up selling stuff to yucky places like Saudi Arabia.
2. The forces of the status quo will always raise the argument that Canada needs to be flexible and have stuff across the full spectrum of military capability so that it can do combat. Yes, conflating niche/specialization with not being able to do combat. This rhetorical device is ever present in Ottawa and is aimed at avoiding decisions.  I hammered away at this:
1. Canada is already a specialized force as it has no aircraft carriers, attack helicopters, etc, etc.  Choices have already been made about what Canada can bring to the fight, and "not everything" is that choice.
2. The example I raised is the troubled shipbuilding program--that we can either have ones that are good at fighting subs or good at knocking down missiles but probably not both.  What do our allies need/want us to do?
3. A key military mantra--don't reinforce failure, only reinforce success.  Do not invest additional resources into something that is not working (I hinted at subs).
3. When we speak of the budget, there are three categories: personnel, procurement, and operations/training/maintenance.  The first two have fan clubs/advocates.  At any of these meetings, there are folks who say not to cut personnel and to spend more on personnel.  Personnel is nearly 50% of the military budget, and this is a big problem. All of Canada's allies face a similar problem but not to this degree.  The procurement issues always have fans/advocates as well: the defence contractors who are involved, the politicians representing the ridings (districts) where the stuff is built, etc.  But outside of the military, there is no one lobbying for money to be spent on maintenance, training, and operations.  Sure, the government can promise to give the military more money for a new operation, but in reality that usually means that some other defence program is cut to pay for that operation.

Anyhow, that was my two bits, plus a short rant in the Q&A about how Russia is not a threat to the Canadian arctic.

As someone doing research in the role of parliament in overseeing the military, this was very much a participant-observer kind of thing. Good times.

Lessons Unlearned: Ottawa Distracted by Squirrels Again

This captures the gist of many defence/foreign policy debates.  The latest one: are the Canadian Forces doing combat in Iraq?  I got sucked into this discussion last year, and probably didn't help it much.

To say that the CF is or is not doing combat is a distraction.  It can be fun to play word games, but having permission to shoot first or second is really not the most important question these days.

This is interesting:

“The rules of engagement allow Canadian Forces to defend themselves, [to] anticipate their defence so that they can engage a hostile act or ... intent before it materializes,” Gen. Vance told the Commons defence committee.

But it ain't that important.  What would be important is if the Canadian Special Operations Forces were engaging in raids (not that we can tell).  Or that the trainers we are deploying might be embedded and engaged in significant offensive operations alongside Kurdish/Iraqi Security Forces.  But they are not.  This is not Afghanistan where Omelets (Observer Mentor Liaison Teams) were fairly standard procedure (although countries varied in the rules they operated under). 

So, what would be the important questions?

• How does training the Kurds help kick ISIS out of Iraq if the Kurds are not likely to be willing to fight very far beyond the territories they claim (Kurdistan)?
• How does training the Iraqi Security Forces work?  Will we be training those that work alongside the Iranian militias?  Will folks we train be better able to engage in ethnic cleansing?
• How do we know that the Iraqi military forces will be used well or poorly by the Iraqi government?
• All this training might not mean that much unless the Iraqi government finds some way to credibly assure the Sunnis and Kurds that the government will not abuse its power .... again.  What role can Canada play in that?

I am having flashbacks to Afghanistan and the detainee issue.  Yes, being accused of war crimes was significant but should not have dominated the parliamentary discussions the way it did (see the handy figures in Adapting in the Dust).  The questions should have been focused on whether the effort was adapting sufficiently to changes on the ground (nope), the challenges of working with those who abused power (the Karzai family), the relationship between Canada's objectives in Kandahar and the larger war effort, etc.

But, no, tis easier to look and see SQUIRREL!