It is believed that the US leads the Five Eyes in which Canada and New Zealand provide the least amount of intelligence in the group.
A Canadian intelligence officer wrote in a military journal in 2020 that earlier US was responsible for Russia, northern China, most of Asia and Latin America. Australia covered southern China, Indo-China and its close neighbours, such as Indonesia, while the UK was charged with Africa and west of the Urals within the former Soviet Union. And New Zealand was responsible for the Western Pacific, while Canada handled the polar regions of Russia.
However, with the fall of the Soviet Union, the attention was shifted to issues like global terrorism.
US looking to expel Canada from Five Eyes
On Tuesday (February 25), the Financial Times reported that Peter Navarro had suggested to US President Donald Trump to axe Canada from the intelligence-sharing group. The move, as per the report, is a way for the US to exert even more pressure on its neighbouring country.
While it is not clear if Trump has backed the idea, Navarro was quick to dismiss the report altogether.
Trump’s team is seeking to evict Canada from the intelligence sharing network as part of the president’s efforts to pressure the country into becoming America’s 51st state. File image/Reuters
However, Stephanie Carvin, a former national-security analyst and a professor at Carleton University, told Globe and Mail that such speculation has been around recently. “This has been a persistent rumour for at least the last two weeks, and knowing the Trump administration and the threats they’ve made against Canada, it’s concerning, even with the denial,” Professor Carvin said of the Navarro story.
Notably, a newsletter published by The Economist on February 24 also mentioned similar speculation. “In Munich, I was told that American officials had earlier threatened Canada with expulsion from Five Eyes,” Economist defence editor Shashank Joshi wrote. “That was probably an idle threat, but it points to the tensions that lie ahead.”
Implications of expelling Canada from Five Eyes
Unsurprisingly, the report has irked Canada with some observers shocked at even such a suggestion. “There’s a special place in hell for Peter Navarro,” Tyler Meredith, a former senior economic adviser to Canadian PM Justin Trudeau Trudeau, wrote on X.
Other security experts also noted that such a suggestion — ousting Canada from the Five Eyes — would upend a key part of the West’s security architecture. As one Five Eyes member told the Financial Times, “Sitting where I’m sitting and looking at the array of threats that are coming at us we need all the partners we can get.”
Phil Gurski, a former Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) analyst from 2001-2015, also told The Financial Times: “What’s driving this? Yes, Canada is the smaller partner but the alliance is effectively sharing very sensitive information, the alliance is working. So why would we be punished? “This seems one more White House tactic to put pressure on Canada for god knows what?” he added.
Experts further noted that expelling Canada would not only hurt Ottawa but the United States as well.
Professor Carvin explained that if Washington were to oust Ottawa from the alliance, the country would be vulnerable to adversaries such as China and Russia. Moreover, Richard Kerbaj, a British journalist who published The Secret History of the Five Eyes in 2022 said that this move would hurt Washington as well. In a Globe and Mail report, he explained that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service has great reach into the North American Chinese diaspora. However, if Ottawa was expelled, then Washington would lose this intelligence asset.
Thomas Juneau, a professor at the University of Ottawa’s Graduate School of Public and International Affairs, also stated that Canada contributes greatly by collecting valuable signals intelligence from the Canadian Forces Station Alert in the High Arctic. “Canada absolutely should be criticised for not doing enough on the security and defence front. But in the Five Eyes, we’re a serious player,” he told The Globe and Mail.
Others also noted that by ousting Ottawa from the Five Eyes, the collective would lose valuable intelligence from the polar regions and it is not a geography that the US will want to lose.
With inputs from agencies
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Publish date : 2025-02-25 15:47:00
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