Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making: The Canadian Experience

Key Chapter Title List

1. Governance and Structure
2. Managing Analytical Units
3. Managing the Intelligence-Policy Dynamic
4. Analytical Methods: What Makes a Product Useful?
5. Recommendations and Future Directions
6. Case Study: Privy Council Office Intelligence Assessment Secretariat
7. Case Study: Canadian Security Intelligence Service Intelligence Assessment Branch
8. Case Study: Global Affairs Canada and Intelligence Matters
9. Appendix: Guide to the Government of Canada and the National Security and Intelligence Community

Document Introduction

This study provides the first comprehensive, systematic, and empirical assessment of how Canada's intelligence analysis community has supported high-level foreign, defense, and national security policy-making from the 2001 9/11 attacks through 2019. It aims to answer a core question: To what extent has intelligence analysis effectively supported policy-making in Canada, and how can it be improved? As the only G7 member within the "Five Eyes" alliance lacking a foreign human intelligence agency, Canada's experience offers a significant case for understanding the unique challenges and opportunities faced by a middle-power intelligence community.

The research is based on in-depth interviews with 68 current and former national security practitioners, combined with analysis of official documents, media reports, and academic literature. The findings reveal a series of structural characteristics and challenges within Canada's intelligence analysis community concerning governance structures, management practices, interactions with the policy community, and product utility. The report notes that while the standing and relevance of intelligence analysis in policy-making have improved since 2001, moving from "poor" to "fair," its overall performance remains far from optimal. This improvement has largely been driven by a series of "shocks" (such as the war in Afghanistan, foreign investment reviews, the emergence of foreign fighters, and online threats to democratic institutions) that forced the system to adapt.

The report uses four key elements as an analytical framework to assess the performance of Canadian intelligence analysis: the overall governance and structure of the intelligence community, the management of individual analytical units, the management of the interface between intelligence analysis and policy-making, and the analytical methods themselves. The study finds that Canada's intelligence community is relatively fragmented, with limited coordination capacity from central bodies, leading to an outsized influence of individual leadership; analytical units lack unified standards in recruitment, training, and career paths; the cultural divide between the policy and intelligence communities (manifested in analysts' insufficient policy literacy and policymakers' low intelligence literacy) remains significant; and analytical products face obstacles to their utility in terms of format, alignment of content with policy priorities, and over-classification.

Despite these challenges, the report also points to positive evolutionary trends. The establishment and strengthening of high-level committee mechanisms have improved coordination; new review and oversight architectures hold promise for enhancing transparency and public trust; analytical units have made progress in providing shorter, more timely, and more policy-implication-focused products; notably, the Global Security Reporting Program has become a unique asset for Canada in international intelligence cooperation.