Danielle Smith, who is basically the public face of foreign interference in Canada, has been given a Canadian “Top Secret” security clearance, her press secretary said on Thursday.
According to Sam Blackett, in conversation with The Canadian Press, “the premier has now obtained her top-secret clearance in order to receive briefings on issues related to national security.”
Earlier this spring, CP’s reporter noted in his story, Ms. Smith demanded the clearance “so she could be aware of any foreign interference attempts in the province.” This hardly seems necessary. All one really needs to do is pay attention to the Twitter/X and Truth Social feeds of U.S. President Donald Trump, his cabinet and family members. But, whatever.
Back in March, Canadian security and intelligence expert Wesley Wark described Ms. Smith’s wish as “both naïve and an admission.”
“The naïve part is that foreign interference will happen if any foreign entity, state or non-state, decides to pursue such a campaign in its own self-interest,” he wrote. “The confession part in Smith’s request for a security clearance is a clear acknowledgement that provincial bodies have no capacity to understand the prospects of foreign interference targeting Alberta.”
On its face, the case for giving Ms. Smith such a security clearance – “Top Secret” is a real thing in Canada, by the way – does not seem like a strong one.
Whether it’s been as an apparatchik for foreign-funded ideological “think tanks,” an economics student in a university department heavily influenced by foreign ideologues, or as an enabler of the Alberta separatist movement from which some amateur diplomats are actively trying to negotiate the dismemberment of Canada with foreign officials, throughout her career Alberta’s premier has run in circles that want to influence, dominate, break up or even take over Canada.
Is she a separatist herself? She says not. She claims to believe in an oxymoronic and vaguely defined sovereign Alberta within a united Canada. She certainly acts like a committed, pedal-to-the-metal separatist, though, one who has taken a deep draught of MAGA Kool-Aid.
The foreign influencers Ms. Smith has worked for and with, however, are by and large from the corporate sector of the United States, although certainly some of the people she posed with for selfies when she raced down to Mar-a-Lago last January to be at President Trump’s side had connections with some of the U.S. Government’s alphabet security agencies.
Canadian media seem to imagine that influence from non-state actors like foreign corporations, no matter how potentially harmful, is innocent and benign simply by merit of the fact it does not originate with an official government agency. This is, of course, nonsense.
In addition, it appears to be very difficult for Canadians to admit that the country on the other side of the world’s longest undefended border may no longer have our interests at heart, let alone might want to destroy our country – despite plenty of evidence to the contrary.
Notwithstanding Prime Minister Mark Carney’s apparent road-to-Damascus moment on this topic, one suspects it hasn’t quite sunk in with the agencies that are charged with protecting Canadian national security. Ms. Smith’s security vetting, whatever its nature was, may have looked harder at her alleged Ukrainian great-grandfather’s loyalties than her own.
Yet as Dr. Wark observed. There is “huge potential for foreign interference from the United States in the separatist process in Alberta, not least given U.S. attitudes towards Canada and all the 51st state rhetoric emerging from the White House and right-wing social media platforms.”
Even without her ideological history, though, Ms. Smith is temperamentally a bad risk for a security clearance. She is a political opportunist and a blabbermouth. Conservative commentator Andrew Coyne recently compared her to a magpie. There is no way, given secret information she could use to her political advantage, that she will be able to resist the temptation. This, we can be confident, Canadian security agencies understand.
It is not completely clear from the Internet – that deep well of questionable information about such matters – who is responsible for giving security clearances to Canadian provincial politicians, who does the scut work, and what the nature of that investigation is. Was Ms. Smith interrogated or did she just fill out a form? I have no idea.
“The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Government Security Screening program investigates and provides security assessments on persons whose employment with the Government of Canada requires them to have lawful access to classified information or sensitive sites, such as major ports, airports, nuclear facilities or the Parliamentary Precinct,” the federal government says.
But is the same process applied to provincial politicians? This is not clear.
According to CP, “the Privy Council Office, which reports to Prime Minister Mark Carney, is responsible for issuing security clearances to provincial officials.” (Emphasis added.) It is doubtful, however, that the PCO has the expertise or the manpower to actually conduct a security clearance.
The federal government website says there are three levels of security with respect to information the release of which could harm the national interest: Confidential, Secret, and Top Secret. In reality, there are almost certainly more and higher levels of security and a significant degree of need-to-know compartmentalization.
Do these levels of security also apply to provincial politicians? Again, this is not clear.
Can we take it on trust that the security clearance Ms. Smith has been assigned is actually Top Secret, as her press secretary believes? There’s insufficient evidence. I suspect it is more likely to be Secret, as suggested in Dr. Wark’s March 19 Substack column.
Moreover, most likely the PCO decision was purely a political one, and the secrets to which Ms. Smith will have access – in the form or oral reports only – will definitely not be off the “top” shelf, let alone unspecified levels above Top Secret.
Finally, relying again on Dr. Wark’s observations, is it even possible for Ms. Smith’s separatist-dominated United Conservative Party Government to work productively with Canadian security agencies when its stock in trade is to frame every issue as a grievance with Ottawa?
“The very best weapon to respond to foreign interference is to be able to tell the public that it is happening,” Dr. Wark stated. “Would the Smith Government make itself so beholden to the feds? Would it be willing to tell the people of Alberta about the potentialities and realities of foreign interference in the separatist petition/referendum process?”
The answer to both those questions is obviously no.
So, will Ottawa set the record straight in the event Ms. Smith lies about or spins what she has learned in her “top secret” briefings? Imponderable.
