Search: “CSIS”

We all get a feeling of deja vu at times, don’t we? You’ll see something and remark that you definitely seen it before. Sometimes it is a little spooky while at others it is more mundane. Today’s blog is about the latter. The MacDonald Laurier Institute, a Canadian thinktank, has just published a paper by […]

When it comes to terrorism I suppose the mantra that most people hold to is somewhat akin to that found in the real estate industry: location, location, location. Attacks that happen in countries most cannot find on a map, or have no intention of ever visiting, or frankly don’t really care about (as harsh as […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on April 1, 2019. If you are like me – and I really hope you are not for many, many reasons! – you probably read the news with a certain slant and through a certain filter. In my case, I read almost everything via a terrorism lens – […]

Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass are two of my favourite books, in large part because of the way in which the author played with language. There is so much of linguistic interest in these (allegedly) children’s novels that one of my textbooks during my undergraduate courses in linguistics at […]

You know you are getting old when you come across a story about an event you were heavily involved in and realise that it happened so long ago that most of your friends, family and acquaintances really have no idea what you are talking about when you raise it. In my case the story centres […]

Every month or so a bunch of us who used to work together in the security intelligence community in Canada meet at a local watering hole to quaff a few pints and rib each other for an hour and a half. We are all retired more or less so the risks of disclosing sensitive/classified information […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 18, 2019. One of the many beauties of living in a liberal, secular democratic society is the freedom to disagree and debate. There are always many sides to an issue and we have the liberty to express our opinions without the fear of being arrested. Many […]

It has been two days or so since the massacre in New Zealand and I have already lost track of how many articles, op-Ed’s, tweets, FaceBook postings and other material have called for more action to prevent acts of that nature. Everyone seems to think that governments, and especially security intelligence and law enforcement agencies, […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on March 4, 2019. There is a small plaque on Queen Street in Ottawa, two blocks south of Parliament Hill. It is not that prominent and easy to miss. It commemorates the assassination of Thomas D’Arcy McGee, “considered one of the eloquent of the Fathers of Confederation” (that […]

This piece appeared in the Hill Times on February 25, 2019. If there is one legal tool that divides Canadians like few others it is the so-called ‘national security certificates’. These are administrative processes whereby the government can remove those who are not Canadian citizens and who are seen as ‘undesirable’. To cite Public Safety […]