Search: “The Hill Times”

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 19, 2018. July 1 is, of course, our national day.  Whether you celebrate it like we do here in Ottawa with a series of events centred on Parliament Hill capped by the awesome fireworks display or in your own local way (at the cottage, in your […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018. Way back in medieval times there was a concept known as sanctuary.  Under this notion, those who had committed crimes could place themselves beyond the long arm of the law by hightailing it to a church or monastery, where supposedly divine law trumped the […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 26, 2018. We all know that many nations have a foreign intelligence service that sends spies here, there, and everywhere to collect the information its government tells it to in order to protect state interests. There is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which has been featured […]

This piece appeared  in The Hill Times on November 19, 2018. I imagine that most Canadians are already very tired of this story and yet here I am weighing in on it, from the perspective of national security.  To sum up this debacle, not that I think anyone does not know the salacious details, MP […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 12, 2018. Australia and Canada are very similar countries in many ways.  Both former British colonies, both (relatively) open to immigration, both members of the 5 eyes intelligence community.  I have visited Australia on many occasions and I must admit that I always feel at home […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 5, 2018. For a country that is thankfully rarely touched by terrorism we in Canada sure seem to talk about it a lot.  I suppose I am partly responsible for this as I tend to write about violent extremism ad nauseum, but given my career in […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 29, 2018 Now that we are two weeks and counting away from the ‘incident’ involving Saudi dissident Jamal Kashoggi at the Kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul I have lost track of how many versions of the story we have received from our Saudi ‘friends’.  First Mr. Kashoggi […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 15, 2018. There is no question that when the topic around the water cooler turns to terrorism – not that I hope or think that it often does – as far as the average citizen is concerned the particular brand of terrorism that garners the most attention […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 22, 2018. Imagine if you will the following scenario. In the wake of two successful terrorist attacks in October 2014, in which two innocent Canadians were killed, the Harper government initiated a system of concentration camps for Muslims living in our country. Anyone caught in possession […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on October 22, 2018. Imagine if you will the following scenario. In the wake of two successful terrorist attacks in October 2014, in which two innocent Canadians were killed, the Harper government initiated a system of concentration camps for Muslims living in our country.  Anyone caught in possession […]