Global experts gather in Vancouver for summit on international security

Money laundering, disinformation, electoral interference, economic security, drug trafficking and espionage.

It’s not the plot to the latest Mission Impossible. It’s the agenda for a major international conference in Vancouver this week that’s drawn experts from around the world, many of whom say Canada isn’t doing enough to protect itself.

More than 70 specialists from government, academia and industry gathered on Tuesday for day two of the Vancouver International Security Summit, to discuss the links between security and economic and political stability.

The choice to locate the summit in Vancouver was no accident.

In the last five years, British Columbia has seen allegations China tried to directly influence municipal politicians, while Indian state officials are being tied to organized criminals operating in Surrey. Security experts say the issue runs deeper and is more complex than most people realize.

“Vancouver does have a reputation in terms of being a significant convergence of threat actors and activities, and we thought Vancouver would be a great place globally to have a platform for our international partners to talk about it,” Calvin Chrustie, a partner with Critical Risk Team and former RCMP officer told Global News Morning BC.

Chrustie said one of the things the summit hopes to help policymakers see is that many key security threats can’t be viewed — or dealt with — in isolation. It’s something he said has traditionally been a blind spot in Canada.

“Political interference is connected to money laundering, connected to corruption, connected to fentanyl trafficking, connected to other acts of foreign interference, connected to transnational repression,” he said.

Chrustie added that he believes Canada’s democracy has already been compromised. But the country, he said, doesn’t have the tools it needs to push back.

Canada doesn’t have dedicated national police agencies like the FBI or Department of Homeland Security, and the agencies it does have like CSIS and the RCMP don’t have the necessary powers, he argued.

He said the international perception Canada isn’t taking the issue seriously has led to issues like the U.S. threatening to impose stiff new tariffs related to border security.

“Canada doesn’t have a national strategy on national security,” he said. “So no plan, plan to fail.”

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Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West, an outspoken critic on foreign interference, delivered one of the summit’s keynote speeches on Tuesday.

West told Global News that questions about foreign meddling undermine people’s confidence in Canada’s institutions, something he said threatens our democracy.

Foreign adversaries see Canada as a “soft underbelly” that’s easy to exploit, he argued, pointing to allegations of Chinese interference in the 2019 and 2021 federal elections levelled by both CSIS and parliamentary committees.

But he said the federal government has failed to meet the threat head-on.

“Right now the prime minister says he has the names of parliamentarians who are under foreign influence, and those names have not been released,” he said, adding that Canada also lacks a foreign agents registry.

“So we have our work cut out for us, but we haven’t even met the lowest bar of what we are on the receiving end of.”

Canada has launched an inquiry into foreign electoral interference, and while there is an admission of a small number of irregularities, it found likely not enough to alter the outcome.

Critics want to see more done at the federal level to ensure transparency and security.

“If we are going to be a serious country where decisions are made in the best interest of our citizens, we have to deal with this, no more avoidance,” West said.

Phase two of the federal inquiry will look at steps to take to ensure election fairness.