Latest in Canada
The Canadian Supreme Court rules that a son of Russian spies is a Canadian citizen, and the killing of Qassem Soleimani—and the deaths of Canadian citizens aboard a jet downed by Iran—throws the country’s policy toward Iran and Iraq into question.
Canada’s Attorney General issues a security certificate, Canada debates the War in Afghanistan and other Canadian national security news.
The U.S. extradites a Canadian citizen on terror charges, Canada debates its relationship to China and other Canadian national security news.
On Sept. 13, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP)—Canada’s national police service—arrested Cameron Ortis, formerly the director-general of the service’s National Intelligence Coordination Center. Ortis was one of the RCMP’s top civilian officials.
The next Canadian federal election, which will largely pit Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party against Andrew Scheer’s Conservative Party, is set to take place on Oct. 21.
Canada Looks for a New Fighter Jet
At the end of June, Canadian Defense Minister Harjit Sajjan announced that his country will continue to command NATO Mission Iraq (NMI) until November 2020, rather than handing off leadership to another country in November of this year, as had been previously planned.
In 1957, Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in resolving the Suez Crisis. Pearson was the first to push for the idea of a large-scale peacekeeping mission, and Canadians have since celebrated Pearson as the father of peacekeeping. The world today is radically different than the one Pearson inhabited—but his exploits demonstrate that Canadians have long charted their own solutions to global security issues, even while working closely alongside the United States and within a multilateral framework.
The U.S. criminal case against Huawei for sanctions-busting and fraud, and against its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, for fraud, may prove an example of geopolitical “lawfare,” fought on many fronts.
Over the past week, Global News Canada has released a series of reports from Syria detailing the detention of Muhammed Ali (aka Abu Turaab Al-Kanadi), a high-profile Canadian Islamic State (ISIS) member, by Kurdish forces inside the country. Journalist Stewart Bell and researcher Amarnath Amarasingam travelled to Syria where they interviewed Ali and several other Canadians held in a makeshift detention center in the northeastern part of the state.