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As Geoffrey Weller has written, for a country with a small intelligence establishment, Canada has “produced quite a sizeable literature on such matters.”18 Regrettably, in the first instance, the ‘lion’s share’ of this literature has been related to security intelligence, overly focused upon oversight and accountability, and fixated upon the circumstances surrounding RCMP wrongdoing and the resultant McDonald Commission.19 The Commissioner’s ultimate finding that the “university study of intelligence is, indeed, quite healthy in Canada,”20 is somewhat overstated when one considers the all-source intelligence dimension. First, while there have been many improvements generated through intelligence studies conducted at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University, the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies at the University of Calgary, the Centre for Conflict Studies at the University of New Brunswick, and the War Studies program at the Royal Military College of Canada much work needs to be done to improve Canadians’ knowledge of the national security and intelligence community.21 Second, continually portraying intelligence as somehow unsavoury, ‘stealthy’, or trampling on the rights of Canadians does not contribute to an informed debate on the issues at hand. Nor, until recently, would senior officials discuss serious security and intelligence issues, except when responding to a scandal, typically involving CSIS.22 To exacerbate this weakness, public policy groups have paid virtually no attention to security and intelligence matters. Third, continually portraying CSIS or CSE as the ‘intelligence community’ is unhelpful, and it does not acknowledge the contributions of other departments, such as Health, Agriculture and Agri-Food, Finance, and the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA). Nor does it acknowledge the importance of economic issues.23 Fourth, there has been precious little engagement at the political level
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