Preparing for a worst-case scenario means we’ll be ready for it, or we’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Every day, the U.S. seemingly launches a new threat to Canada’s economic security and national security.
One day it’s tariffs.
The next is the possible loss of our security guarantee.
Then it’s potential U.S.-Russia cooperation in the Arctic.
The hits keep on coming.
And a few days ago, the threat was a potentially devastating one: The removal of Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence sharing alliance.
“Peter Navarro is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand — according to people familiar with his efforts inside the administration, per an @FT report.”
The White House quickly denied the report, deploying Navarro himself to claim the story was false:
Notably, Navarro pushing for Canada’s ouster from Five Eyes would fit with his past rhetoric towards this country:
And the Financial Times – one of the world’s most credible newspapers – is standing by its report, noting that Navarro was given numerous chances to respond before publication, and chose not to do so:
A/B Testing
I think what we are seeing here is A/B testing.
The Trump Administration is attempting to force a radical reorientation of American foreign policy that shifts the U.S. away from traditional allies like Canada and the European Union, and towards traditional foes like Russia and China.
At the same time, some in the Administration realize that their foreign policy agenda is deeply unpopular (very few Americans went to the polls thinking they were voting for a U.S.-Russia alliance), and that they can’t move too quickly lest they generate an overwhelming backlash.
Thus, the most likely reason that Navarro and the White House didn’t respond prior to the Financial Times story being published is that they wanted the threat of removing Canada from Five Eyes to become public, and then wanted to gauge the reaction to that threat.
The response was overwhelmingly negative (likely receiving intense internal pushback from the few remaining traditional national security Republicans in the White House), hence the rapid denial.
But do I believe for a second that the Trump Administration has no plan to expel Canada from Five Eyes?
Of course not.
Kicking Canada out of Five Eyes would be consistent with Trump’s approach towards Canada since he began his second term: Weakening our nation in every way possible, eroding our sovereignty, and pushing for Canada to become a state.
Remember, Trump doesn’t really ‘negotiate.’
He extorts.
He threatens to take something away from you, and then offers to give it partially back if you make a massive concession to him.
So, taking away Five Eyes would either be used as leverage to extract further concessions from Canada, or to make us look less like a country by deepening our vulnerability.
Thus, the rapid denial of the story is not credible.
And it’s even less credible given that Peter Navarro is seeking to ‘redraw‘ the Canada-US border:
“A senior White House official has reportedly raised the prospect of redrawing the Canada-US border, fuelling concerns over escalating tensions between the two nations.
According to British newspaper The Telegraph, Peter Navarro, one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, has been advocating for changes to the border as part of a broader effort to reshape US-Canada relations.”
What a ‘coincidence’ that someone who wants to redraw Canada’s border also wants Canada removed from Five Eyes.
Preparing for the worst
At this point, we must assume the worst and prepare for the worst. And that means assuming the United States government is actively working to dismantle Canada’s status as a sovereign nation through economic coercion, internal disruption, and withdrawal of security cooperation.
While Canada has many friends in the United States, those friends are not currently in charge. Instead, a faction hostile to Canada – and amenable to authoritarian states like Russia – controls the United States.
To prepare for this, we must rapidly expand funding for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), so it can work more closely with other Five Eyes partners like the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. We should also deepen our intelligence cooperation with nations like France, Germany, Italy, Poland, and more, to ensure that we have a wider range of intelligence partners and are thus more resilient in the case of being cut off from US intel cooperation.
At minimum, we should double the CSIS budget from $700 million to $1.4 billion.
We should also secure commitments from our allies to issue statements in our defence if the United States officially tries to push us out of Five Eyes. After all, our allies would suffer if we were pushed out because every removal of a node from an intelligence-sharing network weakens the entire network.
Like us, many of our allies are looking upon the United States with increasing horror at what’s happening there, and we need to reach out to those allies.
This is a dangerous time for Canada, but we are not alone in facing it. We have agency, we have power, and we can take action in conjunction with other nations to reduce our vulnerability.
But to make that happen, we must acknowledge that the worst-case scenario is looking increasingly likely rather than burying our heads in the sand.
And if it turns out that the worst-case scenario isn’t happening, we will still be more resilient for having prepared for it.
Spencer Fernando
Photo – Twitter
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