Business council says CSIS should start warning private companies of foreign interference

One of the country's leading business voices warned Thursday that Canada's economic security faces external threats — and called on Ottawa to give its spies the power to share intelligence with private firms being targeted for foreign interference.

The Business Council of Canada, composed of chief executives and entrepreneurs in the country's major companies, issued a 19-page report warning that "for decades now, successive Canadian governments have overlooked, taken for granted, or simply ignored the principle that economic security is national security."

The report calls on the federal government to give the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) the power to proactively warn and work with companies that have been targeted for foreign interference. The council also said Ottawa needs to amend the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to give the spy agency more power to "identify, analyze and disrupt threats to Canada's economic security."

The group — which has a long, influential history of pushing for policies like free trade, fiscal responsibility and tax reform — said it believes Canada is deeply vulnerable in this era of renewed great power competition.

"Canadian companies of all sizes are increasingly finding themselves in the crosshairs of strategic threat actors seeking to advance their national interests in ways that can, and do, undermine Canada's national and economic security," said the report.

It cited a suspected foreign disinformation campaign that targeted a Canadian rare earth project in Saskatchewan, along with Russian and Iranian attempts to smear the energy sector.

The report pointed to other examples of trade being weaponized and Canadian business information and intellectual property being stolen.

"It's important for Canadians to recognize that all sectors of the Canadian economy are the subject of attacks from state-sponsored actors," said Trevor Neiman, vice-president of policy at the Business Council of Canada.

"This includes strategically important businesses and sectors of the Canadian economy and these attacks have real-world implications for Canadians' economic safety, security and prosperity."

A new definition of national security

The council has called on the Liberal government to develop a new national security strategy that would, for the first time, establish economic security as a central pillar of the nation's security.

It also calls on the federal government to commit publicly to spending two per cent of gross domestic product on defence to establish Canada's credibility in the eyes of its NATO allies.

The report suggests the debate over foreign interference, which has been raging for months, needs to be expanded beyond its current political context.

"The current narrative surrounding malign foreign influence is rightly focused on the integrity of democratic processes and the safety and security of targeted ethnic or cultural groups," the report said.

"However, strategic threat actors actively target all aspects of Canadian society to advance their strategic interests to our detriment."

The national security community might struggle to wrap its head around the notion of sharing "timely and actionable threat intelligence" with the private sector.

CSIS jealously guards its sources and methods of collecting information. In one espionage case, it even kept the RCMP in the dark about a former sailor who was stealing classified information for the Russians.

In 2022, the director of CSIS was tasked by the public safety minister with ensuring that "organizations working in sensitive domains are aware of current and emerging economic security threats." In its report, the Business Council pointed out the agency doesn't have the legislative authority to do that.

Neiman said Canada's allies have found ways to strike that balance between secrecy and disclosure. 

"We understand that it's possible for domestic security agencies to proactively share threat intelligence with the business community and they have been doing so for several years," he said. "There are ways to do it."

A 'NATO for trade'

The council also said the law should be changed to allow for "the use of intelligence as evidence in the prosecution of criminal activities, while remaining compliant with the constitutional principle of the accused receiving a fair trial."

On a more strategic level, the council said Canada needs to reinvigorate its security partnerships to counter weaponized supply chains. It's calling for something it describes as a "NATO for trade," which would see allies come to each other's assistance to collectively deter and counter economic coercion.

The G7 began talks last spring on developing a common set of tools to allow the world's most advanced democracies to address economic coercion — tools that would include more resilient supply chains and efforts to protect sensitive technologies.

Business leaders who were consulted for the report told the Business Council of Canada they worry that Canada is being seen more and more as an unreliable ally — and a commitment to NATO's often-debated two per cent defence spending target would go a long way toward boosting allies' confidence.

"Considering the most recent NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, this pledge should be viewed as a 'floor' and not a 'ceiling,'" said the report.

The Liberal government has carefully avoided making such a specific, public pledge.

The council insisted it's not asking the federal government to do anything on security and defence that its allies are not doing already.

"The Government of Canada has been responding to our new geopolitical reality. But its actions have been slow, modest and piecemeal," the report said.

Officials at the council acknowledge that national security has not been among its major policy targets in the past few decades.