Governments have taken Canada’s economic security for granted

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It may seem on first blush that Canada has taken a number of steps to protect its businesses in the past few years, given it has restricted Chinese companies from investing in this country’s critical minerals sector and introduced cybersecurity bills to protect critical infrastructure.

But a new report by the Business Council of Canada, a group of about 150 companies, including Microsoft Canada Inc. and Google Canada, said successive governments have “ignored, overlooked or simply taken for granted” this country’s economic security.

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Rising geopolitical tensions accompanied by technological advances in cyberspace that can better penetrate defence systems has put Canada “in the midst of the greatest, most complex, and unpredictable security environment” in a generation, said the authors of Economic Security is National Security, which came out on Sept. 7.

“Canadian companies, in almost every region and sector of our economy, now face unprecedented dangers,” the report said. “They are operating on an increasingly skewed playing field in which traditional private commerce is always at a disadvantage.”

Canadian companies, in almost every region and sector of our economy, now face unprecedented dangers

Business Council of Canada report

The report, which was based on consultations with businesses, security experts and former government officials, urges the need for a new national security strategy, the core of which should be based on economic security. Canada passed its last national security policy in 2004.

“During that time, terrorism, weapons of mass destruction were the preoccupations of the day,” said Trevor Neiman, director of Digital Economy and a legal adviser at the Business Council of Canada. “The strategy made almost no mention of the modern economic security threats we see today.”

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Canada, along with the United States, has taken a number of steps in recent years to redesign its supply chain away from countries such as China and Russia and towards more friendly nations amid rising geopolitical tensions.

Neiman said Canada introduced bills to strengthen the Investment Canada Act and the country’s cybersecurity policies, so the country has made some progress. But he said those were “piecemeal reforms” and it’s unclear how they fit in a much broader national security framework.

While it’s been nearly two decades since Canada has passed a new national security policy, some allies, including Japan, the U.S and Germany, have published security strategies that put economic security at their core, the report said.

A similar strategy in Canada would “streamline decision-making” and provide clear direction on the steps required to tackle such issues, Neiman said.

“Right now, the government’s approach has been kind of ad hoc and reactive,” he said. “The government hasn’t been doing a lot of long-term proactive planning for the future, and that’s important because we are dealing with state-sponsored actors that think well beyond the length of an average Canadian political cycle.”

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The report recommends amending the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act so that it can proactively share intelligence about any threats with businesses being targeted instead of sharing that information with just the government.

It also said there’s a need to strengthen Canada’s international ties. For example, establishing a North Atlantic Treaty Organization type of pact for trade, where allies could defend each other in case of an economic threat. In addition, it said more research is needed in this field.

“These threats have the potential to wreak large-scale havoc on Canadians’ daily lives,” the report said. “The impacts include mass layoffs caused by the theft of intellectual property, disruptions to Canadians’ ability to heat and power their homes due to paralyzing cyberattacks, and skyrocketing cost of everyday household products because of weaponized supply chains.”

The federal government wasn’t immediately available for a response.

• Email: nkarim@postmedia.com

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