CANADA AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
TESTIMONY OF
DAVID B. HARRIS
PRESIDENT, INSIGNIS STRATEGIC RESEARCH,
OTTAWA, CANADA;
FORMER CHIEF OF STRATEGIC PLANNING,
CANADIAN SECURITY INTELLIGENCE SERVICE
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON IMMIGRATION AND CLAIMS
OF THE
UNITED STATES
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
OVERSIGHT HEARING
ROOM 2226
RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
WASHINGTON, DC
10:00 A.M., 14 APRIL 1999
Copyright © 1999 by D. Harris. All rights reserved.
14 April 1999
Check against delivery
CANADA AND INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM
David B. Harris, President, INSIGNIS Strategic Research, Ottawa, Canada
(613) 233-1220
Mr. Chairman, Ms. Jackson Lee and Members of the Subcommittee, thank-you for your invitation to testify on important Canadian aspects of the northern boundary security situation. My name is Dave Harris. I am a Canadian citizen, President of INSIGNIS Strategic Research , and formerly served as Chief of Strategic Planning of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). I continue to pursue my specialties in intelligence, counterterrorism and international affairs as a lecturer and commentator in Canada and abroad.
Americans often tell me that it is difficult to think of Canada and international terrorism in the same context. Canadians themselves have the same problem. But the largely untold truth is that Canada and terrorism do go together. A failure to see this stems from a failure to realize that Canada is simply not the country it used to be.
Abroad, Canada is often regarded as a land of milktoast and honey. Even with the occasional French-English tiff, Canadians are considered a well-intentioned and largely harmless species of North American, awash in crystalline lakes, grizzly bears and mounted police. We almost revel in the historical label, "the peaceable kingdom."
To be sure, Canada has seen history's sharper edges. Its losses in the First World War were greater per capita than those of the United States. In WWII, Canada had the world's third largest navy, and Canadian forces suffered through the Korean stalemate with the rest.
But, in the half-century following all this, much changed in the Canadian experience and attitude. Canada drifted far from the concept of a threat-aware, front-line nation. While the US, for example, was in the agony of Vietnam, strategic nuclear doctrine and European force balance, Canadians were largely removed from such concerns, living under America's protective nuclear and conventional force "umbrella". Indeed, Canadians practically liquidated their military, and have developed an essentially inward-looking national self-image embracing peacekeeping, medicare, bilingualism, multiculturalism, and - our national sport - constitutional debate. At 29 million in population, the country recently boasted the highest standard of living among OECD nations.
All this explains something of Canada's unthreatening profile on the world scene and Canadians' belief that they are almost innately free from international political violence. However, although the myth has largely endured, it is increasingly misleading. For, the last decade or two have seen quiet shifts in the country and its society, with the development of pronounced undercurrents that highlight both the potential for political violence, and the lack of national resolve in confronting this potential.
Let me highlight just a few examples from the 1980s and 1990s of signs pointing to the engaging of Canadian territory and residents in internationally-related violence. It is crucial to bear in mind that international political violence - terrorism and its networks - had been practically non-existent in Canada before this period. These examples therefore represent a new trend which finds Canadians and their contacts engaged in planning, fundraising, arms' transfer and storage, and execution of international terrorism. In short, these episodes should be viewed as the tip of a variety of icebergs and reflective of a disquieting trend.
EXAMPLES OF GROWING VIOLENCE
In separate incidents in Ottawa in the mid-1980s, Armenian-related violence resulted in the assassination of a Turkish diplomat and severe injury to another. The Turkish embassy itself was invaded.
The world's single biggest terrorist toll was linked to Canada in 1985 when over 300 passengers died in the bombing of an Air India Boeing 747. The explosive was planted in Canada by Sikh extremists working for an independent Sikh state in India. Another was placed at about the same time in Canada on another airliner, exploding later than planned, after the aircraft landed in Japan, and killing baggage handlers. In British Columbia in the 1980s a visiting cabinet minister from India was wounded in an assassination attempt linked to Sikh extremism.
In April 1992, members of the Iraq-backed Mujahedin-E-Khalq invaded the Iranian embassy in Ottawa as part of a coordinated worldwide response to an Iranian attack on an MEK base in Iraq.
A month later, Hassan al-Turabi, Sudan's power-behind-the-throne, was wounded in an assassination attempt at Ottawa International Airport. A resident Sudanese exile was charged.
In 1993, Zaire's Ottawa high commission was invaded by Congolese. At about this time an Irish-born Canadian was arrested for involvement in a major IRA weapons and technology network.
By the late 1990s, immigration proceedings brought several revelations. In one, the Federal Court of Canada considered a security certificate issued by Canada's Solicitor General and Minister of Citizenship and Immigration against Mr. Mohamed Husseini al Husseini under s. 40 of the Immigration Act. Mr. Al Husseini confirmed that Hizballah members were in Canada. Two years ago, a similar proceeding was undertaken in the Federal Court with respect to Mr. Hani Abd Rahim Al Sayegh, a suspect in the June 1996 Al Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia. The Court accepted as proved, government evidence that Mr. Al Sayegh was a member of Saudi Hizballah, that Hizballah has networks in Canada, and that these are directed from south Lebanon.
Only weeks ago, Serbian-Canadians Molotov-cocktailed Toronto's US consulate. Days before, in response to Turkey's capture of a Kurdish guerilla leader, Kurdish supporters invaded a Montreal consulate and attacked an Ottawa embassy with Molotovs.
All of this underscores the potential in Canada for "homelands"-related terrorism.
A major element in this situation is immigration. For about two decades roughly a quarter of a million immigrants have entered Canada yearly, making the country the biggest recipient of immigrants, by proportion, in the western world. Every year immigration adds another percent to the national population.
The composition of immigration reflects a dramatic shift from the regional - many would say European-based - preferences of 40 years ago. Four decades ago, 80% of each year's immigrants were coming from relatively stable European regions. Today, and for some years now, 80% of our quarter-million annual immigration intake has been coming from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and other regions thought to include trouble spots. A great many of these trouble spots are areas where, as counterterrorist specialists would say, "homelands" disputes predominate.
It is trite, of course, to say that the overwhelming mass of our immigrants are peaceful, productive citizens. But it is also undeniable that a small portion have imported with them the issues and hostilities - the resentments - from foreign homelands. The result of this influx has been Canada's growing engagement in world terrorism. From the limited, relatively minor Quebec terrorist activity that petered out in the early 1970s, we have now progressed to more expansive and ominous activity on a variety of fronts connected with global political violence. Intelligence highlights the use of Canadian territory and resources in the planning, funding, recruiting and provision of cover for international terrorist activity.
In the face of this situation, Canada's security and intelligence community have done heroic work. But Government reaction at the political level has not been adequate to the counterterrorist task, and is reflected in a number of ways.
One serious area of concern involves the collecting of funds destined for terrorism, by groups benefiting from charitable tax status. Mr. John Bryden, a highly-respected Member of Parliament and author, has condemned the fact that, under Canada's antiquated accountability regime for "charitable" organizations, tens of millions of dollars in tax-free donations are channeled to groups supporting international terrorism. Thus Canadians, through their tax system, inadvertently subsidize terrorism and send abroad the message that Canada is a soft source for the soft money of terrorism. Mr. Bryden points out that "the only law on the books as far as Revenue Canada is concerned that actually describes what charities are supposed to do is an Elizabethan statute of 1601." Little has been done to make legislative adjustment.
Nor has Canada any statutes comparable to the US terrorism legislation that allows the government to declare certain countries and groups "terrorist" in nature, with the triggering of derivative sanctions, measures and intelligence targeting.
And security and intelligence budgets have been cut at a very dangerous time. As an example, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), with major counterterrorism responsibilities, has had staff reduced 26 percent, from 2760 in FY 1992-93, to a current level below 2000. Depending on its calculation, the CSIS budget will have fallen by between 21 and 37 percent over the period 1993-94 to 1998-99.
What is the answer? At bottom, the problem is that Canadians lack an attitude appropriate to the severity of the threat and our responsibility for guarding against it. Having been beneficiaries of their peaceful history, Canada and Canadians are becoming victims of it. Canadian political leadership must bring home the message that "it can happen here" and act appropriately on the several fronts noted earlier. This means more in counterterror funding and research. It also means a decisive change in attitude, especially in the framework and ethos underlying immigration.
Observers point out, for example, that federal politicians' delay in taking action against terror funding in Canada arises from the growing political clout of expanding immigrant groups and their lobbyists. The auguries are not good, and to understand this it is important to appreciate the concept of Canadian multiculturalism.
Federally-supported, that is, funded, multiculturalism has meant a lack of real integration of newcomers into Canadian society and values. Public policies and pronouncements have made government-funded multiculturalism untouchable, giving recent immigrants a reasonable expectation that they need not sacrifice allegiance to foreign groups and interests with whom they, as a matter of ideology or other sentiment, might associate themselves. Growing immigration numbers and lobbying power have moved Canada's political leadership further from integration and from dealing directly with related terror potentialities.
Perhaps indicative of the resulting malaise and inaction was a report made a week or two ago by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - CBC Television - as Canadian aircrew were risking their lives in combat over Yugoslavia. The CBC interviewed a few Serbian Canadians who were condemning Canada's action in support of NATO, essentially swearing allegiance to Yugoslavia, and, in one case, baldly declaring his intention to return to his homeland to fight for the Milosevic government against Canadian forces if necessary. (Recall, incidentally, that in the Yugoslav conflict three years ago, a Serb-Canadian participated in chaining United Nations - including Canadian - peacekeepers to NATO targets as human shields.)
Despite the quasi-wartime situation, Canadian authorities have neither condemned nor taken action against such "patriots". This is a telling comment on the laissez-faire attitude of Canada's federal politicians and public in the face of major issues of international security and terrorism.
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Further information:
David Harris
INSIGNIS Strategic Research
Ottawa, Canada
(613) 233-1220
BIO: DAVID HARRIS
TERRORISM, COUNTERINTELLIGENCE & STRATEGIC STUDIES
•President, INSIGNIS Strategic Research; occasional lecturer in National Security and Intelligence Policy, and Defence Policy, at the Graduate School of Public Administration, Carleton University;
•Former Chief of Strategic Planning, Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS);
•Former Special Assistant to the Chairman, Standing Committee on External Affairs and National Defence, House of Commons of Canada.
Media
•Commentator/Interviewee (in French and English) on Terrorism, Intelligence, International Security and International Affairs, on radio and television, including ABC Television, US National Public Radio, CBC Radio, Television, Newsworld and Newsworld International, Global Television, CTV, and Radio-Canada Internationale; quoted in articles from Southam News to Reuters, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine.
Selected Articles
•"Media should have left `spy' out in cold [Paszkowski case]," Edmonton Journal, 21 Jan. 1998.
•"Negotiations with terrorists sure to backfire [Negotiating policy re: terrorism and Peruvian MRTA hostage-taking]," The Ottawa Citizen, Ottawa, 6 Jan. 1997, A9.
•"Ahoy, Gordon Lonsdale: Step right up and get your Canadian spy kit," The Globe and Mail, Toronto, 1 June 1996, D1.
•"Beware the threat of Chinese spy games," The Globe and Mail, 5 Sept 1995, A21.
•OTHER ARTICLES on domestic terrorism; state-sponsored industrial espionage; French intelligence in Canada; various CSIS-related; military intelligence, diplomatic and strategic affairs.
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