Some Canadian security and intelligence experts say they’re concerned Prime Minister Mark Carney’s latest shakeup in the senior ranks of the public service has broken up
a key role at the centre of the federal bureaucracy
during a moment of heightened international tension.
On March 4, Carney announced his second significant deputy minister shuffle in less than three months. This shakeup installs
fresh faces at or near the top
of the public service in 16 government organizations.
Taken together, the two recent shuffles have remodelled a wide swath of the upper echelons of the federal bureaucracy to fit the priorities of Carney and Clerk of the Privy Council Michael Sabia.
When the changes were announced, one element of the reorganization stood out to Vincent Rigby, professor at the Max Bell school of public policy at McGill University in Montreal.
“The NSIA (National Security and Intelligence Advisor) position seems to have disappeared,” said Rigby, who served in that role under former prime minister Justin Trudeau from 2020 to 2021.
The NSIA, a position dating back in some form to the 1980s, counsels the prime minister on domestic and international security threats and co-ordinates Canada’s security and intelligence community.
In announcing the deputy minister shuffle, the government named David Morrison senior diplomatic and international affairs advisor to the prime minister and Dominic Rochon deputy secretary to the cabinet on national security and intelligence.
Mention of the NSIA was left out.
Rigby called the omission “a bit of a shocker,” and national security experts
raised concerns about the move, questioning whether changes to the office would split up the domestic and foreign responsibilities of the job.
In response to questions from the Ottawa Citizen, Privy Council Office (PCO) spokesperson Pierre-Alain Bujold clarified how the responsibilities of the job would be broken down.
Morrison will replace Nathalie Drouin in the role of NSIA on top of his other new roles advising the prime minister on international affairs and acting as “Sherpa” for the G7 and G20 summits.
Rochon “will be responsible for ensuring Canada’s security and intelligence strategies and processes are resilient and capable of meeting our security requirements in a changing world,” according to Bujold.
Rochon will also be responsible for domestic security issues.
“
These appointments reflect the increased focus by the Government of Canada on issues of national and international security,” Bujold said.
Explanation ‘confirms my worst fears,’ security expert says
For Wesley Wark, senior fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo, that explanation leaves much to be desired.
“It confirms my worst fears,” Wark said, adding the changes amounted to a “terrible” piece of organizational change.
“Dividing the NSIA function in that regard, I think, is a recipe for dysfunction,” he said. “I think it’s unfortunate.”
Wark warned the new arrangement created the potential for infighting and “clogged intelligence flows.” He questioned whether Morrison’s role would be further clarified in a mandate letter, like
the one issued
to his predecessor.
Rigby agreed. He said the NSIA was
“one of the most important positions in government” and called the changes “bizarre.”
Domestic and international intelligence considerations are deeply interwoven, he said, and splitting one from the other is “fundamentally wrong.”
“A lot of the threats we face at home — foreign interference, China, Russia — they obviously are sourced overseas,” Rigby said.
“To split those two up into two separate stovepipes, into two solitudes so to speak, is just going back in time to another era when we realized we shouldn’t be doing that anymore and we changed things.”
“I don’t get exercised about titles,” former NSIA says
Not everyone in security and intelligence circles shares those concerns.
Jody Thomas, who served as NSIA under Trudeau from 2022 to 2024, said the position needed some restructuring.
“I don’t get exercised about titles,” she said. “I care about function, and the function is there.”
Thomas said she respected both Wark and Rigby “enormously,” but wasn’t as concerned about form.
As NSIA, Thomas said, she spent so much time working with the international community that she advocated for the creation of a deputy NSIA to support her in other areas of the job.
She said she expected Rochon would provide similar support to Morrison, adding she believed both were excellent candidates who would “hit the ground running.”
Regardless of their view on how the NSIA is structured, observers agreed the changes came at a perilous moment in global politics.
“We are facing threats like we’ve never seen in decades, domestically, internationally, geostrategic rivalry,” Rigby said. “A United States that has become almost a hostile state actor, China, Russia, things blowing up in the Middle East, the list goes on and on.”
The current threat environment is unlike any other time in the past 20 to 30 years, Thomas said.
“(Morrison and Rochon) will be called upon almost immediately to help organize the talent to give good solid advice,” she said.
