Episode 336 – How do we manage needed immigration with needed security?
As a country of immigrants by definition, most Canadians have a positive view on newcomers. I would imagine that the public believes that the proper checks are done to ensure – where possible – we are not importing threats to national security and public safety (criminals, terrorists, etc.). But when immigration under Justin Trudeau went off the scale these views began to change. What is worse, those entrusted with doing security checks were told to ‘skip steps’ to help get through the backlog (which was unsustainable). What serious country does it this way? Are things better with a new Prime Minister? I talk with a leading Canadian political commentator on these issues.
About my guest
Tasha Kheiriddin is one of Canada’s best-known political analysts, thought leaders, and strategists. She is a best-selling author, national political columnist for Postmedia, a writer for GZero Media, author of In My Opinion on Substack, and a political analyst for Radio Canada. Ms. Kheiriddin is also a fellow at the Clayton Riddell program at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Tasha has written two best-selling books on conservatism, including The Right Path: How Conservatives can Unite, Inspire and Take Canada Forward, and Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution. She has contributed chapters on tax policy and justice to two other books, How To Cut Public Spending (and still win an election), and The Harper Factor: Assessing a Prime Minister’s Policy Legacy.
Bill C-12 will not solve Canada’s immigration problems | National Post
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Canadian Intelligence Eh
In a world of multiple voices and opinions it can be very hard to know where to turn. One choice is to look to those who actually worked in counter-terrorism in the national security world.
In these half-hour podcasts, 30-year Canadian intelligence veteran Phil Gurski is joined by a fascinating array of individuals with something meaningful to say about these issues as they provide insight into what they mean and what we need to do about them.
About Phil Gurski
Phil worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019 and the Director of the National Security Programme at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute from 2020-2022. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world.
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism , When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019) and The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and tweets (@borealissaves) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
He was an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in the Netherlands and is currently a digital fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies at Concordia University. He is also a visiting fellow at the International Security and Risk Management programme at the University of South Wales
Mr. Gurski is a regular commentator on terrorism and intelligence for a wide variety of Canadian and international media.
