By Sumayya
OTTAWA – Canada has started an updated plan for national safety with a demand to get ready for all emergencies, including the chance of war.
The new plan, which replaced an old one written more than 20 years before, puts the safety of the economy at the center of the strategy.
“It is not enough to fuel, feed, and protect ourselves,” Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Thursday from Montreal, where he was hosting the Canada-European Union meeting.
“Independence now demands safe access to computer chips, important minerals, money payment systems, clean energy technology, vaccines, space-based communication systems, and artificial intelligence.”
The warning about a possible war came from page five of the 13-page paper named “The Plan for a Stronger Canada.” It stated that Canada will “prepare for all possible situations up to and including war and other worst-case events.” “We do think it is the right time that all of Canada, Canadian businesses, and Canadian university experts are more aware of the outside danger environment and that we as a country are more ready for the dangers that Canada faces,” a senior government official said during a private information meeting with reporters.
The release of the plan comes as the trade war with the United States grows deeper. Since coming back into the White House, U.S. President Donald Trump has constantly spoken badly about Canada and threatened to turn it into the 51st state of America.
In a recent talk with The New York Times, Carney said he studied the “extreme and unlikely danger” of U.S. military action against Canada.
Wesley Wark, a senior worker at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, said the wording of the paper, while making people remember the prime minister’s talk, is more likely meant to make people aware that Canada can be pulled into a fight in another country.
“I think the statement in the plan is really a proof that Canada stands with its NATO partners in taking seriously the chance that there could be a war involving NATO because of Russian attacks,” he said.
Wark said war could happen as a regular military attack or as hybrid war, which combines military power with computer attacks, spreading lies, and economic pressure.
More than 2,000 members of the Canadian Armed Forces are currently stationed in Latvia.
United States is the only other country named in the paper
The plan also asked for a changed foreign policy that creates “a new partnership with the United States.”
The U.S. is the only country named directly, even though the paper asked for building strength by creating different economic and safety connections around the world. It called Europe a “long-standing and like-minded partner,” and stated a willingness to work with nations in the Indo-Pacific area that promise to fix arguments through talking and fair business cooperation.
Although it is not directly written, Wark said “it is clear that the message is about lowering Canada’s trust on undependable partners like the United States.”
The government said it will strengthen its ability to gather secret information. Canada gets much more secret information from others than it collects itself, and that is a problem, national safety expert Stephanie Carvin said.
Carvin, a researcher with Carleton’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs, said Canada mostly gets secret information through its Five-Eyes partners in the U.S., United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.
“We have been successfully doing that for a number of years. But what it means is that the secret information that is collected is mostly helping American interests first, or British interests first. It might not be collected with Canadian interests in mind.”
Government officials said they would look for new technology but did not count out the chance of creating a group of Canadian spies who work in other countries, made like the U.S.-based CIA or the U.K.’s MI6.
Carvin said a new spy group might not be needed in the time of AI and body-tracking technology.
“These spy groups make less sense than they did in the past because individual people are much easier to find as they cross country lines. The problem is in not changing or buying new technology fast enough.”
Main changes to the safety plan
The old plan, written more than 20 years ago, did not have a strategy for economic safety. This new plan gives priority to protecting the economy by asking to keep eight main areas safe, which include:
- New technologies (like AI and Quantum computing)
- Important minerals
- Military defense
- Energy power
- Transportation and moving systems
- Medicines and biotechnology
- Food safety
- Money movements (including payments, settlements, and investments)
Carrying out this plan will include making new laws and giving more money in five areas: economic safety, foreign connections, military defense, public safety, and secret information gathering.
There will also be a meeting of the country’s top political leaders focused on national safety.
More details will be shared over the next few months through different government offices. Officials say they see the “break in the world order,” and that the updated plan will decide how the federal government will guide the country through it.
