About
Canada’s approach to domestic and international security is at a profound moment of change. The shock wave of COVID-19 and its looming future effects highlight the urgent need for a new, coordinated and forward-looking Canadian national security strategy that identifies emerging and non-traditional threats and considers their interrelationships. Complex interactions between foreign policy, domestic innovation and intellectual property, data governance, cybersecurity and trade all have a significant impact on Canada’s national security and intelligence activities.
Reimagining a Canadian National Security Strategy was a CIGI-led project that aimed to generate new thinking on Canada’s national security, inspire updated and innovative national security and intelligence practices, and identify ways that Canada can influence global policy and rule-making to better protect future prosperity and enhance domestic security.
The project examined 10 key themes within national security:
- Reorienting national security to new and non-traditional threats
- Rethinking intelligence
- Making digital living safe and secure
- Emerging technologies, game changers and impacts on national security
- Economic security and a changing global economy
- Climate change and security impacts
- After COVID-19: global pandemics and biosecurity strategy
- Borders and the new geopolitics
- Ensuring democracy
- Canada’s role in international security
Co-directed by CIGI Managing Director Aaron Shull and CIGI Senior Fellow Wesley Wark, this project included interdisciplinary working groups (including government, industry, academia and civil society) for each of the 10 themes. The working groups published a series of reports related to their themes and the co-directors produced a final special report outlining a new national security strategy for Canada.