The Ben Mulroney Show - Is Canada in danger of being kicked out of the five eyes alliance?

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Does the U.S. want to kick Canada out of the five eyes alliance? with Guest: Phil Gurski, CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting, former CSIS Senior Strategic Analyst on Terrorism -Who are the Barr Colonists? with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Well the headline would be par for the course these days given the toxic relationship that Donald Trump seems intent on building with Canada. But when we hear that one of one of Donald Trump's trusted advisors wants to push Canada out of the five eyes, that's very concerning to some and confusing to others, because some people don't know what the five eyes is. And so to explain it is Phil Gursky, CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk

Consulting, former CSIS Senior Strategic Analyst on terrorism. Phil, welcome back to the show. Hey, Ben, how are you? I'm good. So to those who don't know, explain the Five Eyes Alliance. Okay, so the Five Eyes is not some science fiction creature like movies I used to watch as a kid, Ben. It's the Anglo-centric Alliance of Intelligence Agency, a date back to the pretty well the aftermath of the Second World War, where it was originally Americans and the Brits, and then Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were brought in in 1956. Essentially, Ben, it's the single greatest intelligence sharing apparatus in the history of our planet,

and it allows the five partners to share very sensitive signals intelligence. So like where I used to work at CSE, Communication Security Establishment at SIGINT, as well as human and other information to ensure our mutual prosperity and safety from threat actors, espionage, terrorism, and the list goes on and on and on. And so, you know, you just bring up something very important that there is a duty to country above party.

I mean, above party and above politics. And a lot of people in the intelligence world sort of hold themselves to that standard. And I have to believe that the relationships between our intelligence communities, between our military organizations, between our supranational relationships, like NATO, for example, they transcend

whether or not Donald Trump likes Canada or not. And I have to believe that despite the toxicity of the current relationship, those relationships are more important in a lot of ways. I'm so glad you said that, Ben. So when I worked for CSE and CES, I took a note to Canada, not to the liberal. I started when Pierre Trudeau was Prime Minister. That's how old I am, Ben. I've worked for liberals, I've worked for conservatives, and you're absolutely right. Those of us who worked in Sagan and Humitt in Canada and across the five

Irish partners, our allegiance was to protecting our country and our allies, irrespective of who was in the White House, who was in Westminster, who was in parliament, and you are seeing a very vindictive and as you said, you know, a sort of a transactional leadership now in the United States.

I would like to think, and I'm pretty confident on this footing, that NSA, the American Secret Agency, the CIA, MI5, MI6, etc., etc., they would be aghast at this mere mention of retrenching or kicking out Five Eyes partners. Whether or not the Americans can kick us out is actually a really interesting question. I think the answer to that question is no, they can't unilaterally, but I trust in the professionalism of those who work in the agencies. We became partners, we became colleagues, and in some cases, very close personal friends. And I have every confidence that that will go that will obtain going forward.

Well, as noble as your oath to Canada was, the flip side is this Peter Navarro character. He's a, you know, he's a trade advisor to Donald Trump. And during Trump 1.1, I remember him going on TV and saying some exceptionally insulting things about our prime minister, our government, Canada in general. And I thought to myself, if my dad had been in office and somebody representing his interests spoke that way against an ally,

that person would be on the way out immediately. It was so disrespectful. And so to hear something like this, that I mean, I don't understand what a trade advisor has talking about security relationships. He doesn't. No, he doesn't. And that's the point.

But again, you're talking about a very, a very strange administration in the first month and a bit since they've been in power. Look, Ben, you know, whether or not he said it, you've noticed the backpedaling very quickly after the news broke, right? Fake news, whatever they want to call it. But this to me, if he said it, and I don't know that he did, but I'm gonna go on a limb and say he probably did suggest this in some kind of meeting, this is just one more effort by the Trump administration to throw everything at the wall at Canada

and see what sticks and see if they can embarrass us or frighten us into doing things that are in their interest. So you're absolutely right. Mr. Navarro has nothing to do with intelligence and has no business talking about the Five Eyes relationship. Well, let's talk about the Five Eyes relationship then because a lot of Canadians, I think they'd be forgiven,

given the steady stream of stories of the priorities of this current government have not been in making Canada stronger, have not been about strengthening the institutions that promote our values. And so generally we're talking about the military and the sort of the anemic funding and the lack of pride in those institutions.

But I guess people could be forgiven if they assumed military and intelligence overlap completely. Now in the Venn diagram, there's probably some overlap, but they are not one in the same. So give me the state of play, the state of health of Canada's intelligence community and our ability to gather, understand, and disseminate that intelligence. Okay. So I answer that in two ways, Ben. The agencies are very professional and very capable of what they're doing. So I worked at CESES, I worked at CSE, I knew people at DND, etc., etc. We're very good at what we do. The problem is, and you rightly pointed it out, is that we have a government in power right now that has a very poor intelligence culture, a very poor understanding

of national security. We saw it with the Chinese foreign interference. The list goes on and on and on. Somewhere in our history, in post World War II, we lost that security culture. I think it was very strong during the war. In fact, Canada was a major player during the Second World War in defeating Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. And then we kind of rested on our laurels and we didn't fund it and didn't resource it properly. So to me, it's not the agencies are the problem. Not that they're perfect, but they're not the problem. It's the government officials, both elected and unelected, that don't understand intelligence, don't know what to do

with it, mistrust it, sometimes don't even bother reading it, as we saw in the Chinese interference issue. And as a consequence, all this great work done by a lot of great Canadians is going to the wayside. So, but could we get to a point where if the investments are not made in the Canadian intelligence gathering apparatus, that we could see ourselves less of a valued partner and more of a liability in organizations like the Five Eyes? Wow, that's a really good question. We definitely feel, okay, I'm 10 years out, Ben, since I retired, so I gotta be careful as to how I say this,

but we clearly played a part. And I would say we punched above our weight traditionally when I worked back to the 1980s. Has that changed? Impossible for me to say, but we are a valued member. You just ask our allies, the actual agencies, and they would say, yes, we're a very valued member. But I think if we going forward, we don't make the proper

investments and contribute less and less to the totality of the Five Eyes relationship, we could be perceived as being a bit of a hanger on, you know, the poor country cousin that simply takes and takes and never gives back. But I hope we don't get there. As I said, very good people that work at CACIS and CSE and other agencies. And so I trust them. I just, I'm not sure I trust the people who, you know, hold the purse drinks, whether they're gonna invest in this thing properly.

Now maybe, and I'm just putting it out there in the world, maybe our Canadian intelligence apparatus in order to show Peter Navarro how valuable we are. Maybe we should dig up some dirt on him and just hand him a manila envelope. Ooh, ouch, ouch. That's a big no-no, Ben, because one thing about the Five Eyes, they don't spy on each other.

Although under this administration, in itself, I wouldn't say. Yeah, who knows? Who knows? Who knows what they're doing? Yeah, do as I say, not as I do. That is a very, very Donald Trump thing that he could be saying.

But I want to thank you very much, Phil G Gursky the CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting former CSIS senior strategic analyst on terrorism it's a mouthful but it's absolutely well deserved I want to thank you so much for your service and I want to thank you for coming on the Ben Mulroney show and laying this out for us. Thanks Ben have a great day. But we also try to be educational and that's where our next guest comes in. Craig Baird is the host of Canadian History X, and every single time he's on the show, I learn something new. And I know a lot of you do as well, because we hear from you and we say how much you appreciate this next segment.

So welcome back to the show, Craig. Oh, thanks for having me. Okay, so we're talking about the bar colonists. And this is a story again, one I never knew. And the payoff for the story is the way that my producer put the notes together is in the final word of this, of the piece. So I understand exactly how we got the, you know, the payoff of where these people settled is kind of cool.

And so I find it really interesting that the story of the Barr colonists were settlers that came over in 1903. And it was, I guess, would you say it was a story of a sort of a colonist adventure gone wrong? I would absolutely say that. You had the person at the head of it all, Isaac Barr. He had these, this dream of creating this British colony in the Canadian West in, you know, the very

early 1900s and it kind of just runs away from him. I mean, so many people decide to sign up for this thing. He starts with wanting to have 500, he gets upwards of 2000, and he was very bad at organizing things. So bad at organizing, but clearly a good promoter. He wanted 500, he got four times as many. Oh yeah, absolutely. And then he was joined by Reverend George Lloyd, who also wanted to do the same thing, and they kind of joined forces. So they would write letters, and they would, you know, hold speeches in England. And what did he sell people on? Well, he sold them, he kind of misled them a bit.

He did tell them like, you know, it's as simple as walking through a park to get from Saskatoon all the way to their destination. And you know, he's saying the winters are brisk, you know, they're not that bad. I'm born and raised in Alberta. The winters here are far from brisk. Hey, listen, and we'll talk more about it

on the other side of a clip that you have on the Bar Colonist. For those who had departed, their bad luck would be made worse by one of the coldest springs on record. Despite it being May, the pond still had an inch of ice on them and a bitter cold wind blew,

freezing colonists not dressed for the weather. At the midway point of the journey and east of Battleford they reached the imposing Eagle Creek Ravine. It loomed and appeared like a nearby impassable barrier. The ravine was 8 kilometers wide and the river at the bottom was higher than usual due to the extra spring runoff. This meant the colonists had to get down the ravine wall, cross the river, and then climb back up the other side before they continued their

endless walk west. Very few wagons had brakes and as the colonists descended the slope became littered with the wreckage of wagons and cargo. Only a few locked the rear wheels with chains which helped slow down the wagons. After that almost insurmountable task they had to cross the water and then climb up the other steep side. It was extremely difficult on livestock and humans alike. Some wagons needed double or triple the number of oxen or horses to pull them up. Many animals collapsed from exhaustion once they reached the top and had to be left behind. It took them five days to reach Battleford by foot, a journey that takes an hour and a half by car today.

What's fascinating to me about this, Craig, is the assumption that I had of the colonizing of the Canadian West was, well, I always compared it to the history of the American West, where the rugged individuality that sort of makes, that's so core to the American identity was born in that idea of going out West, staking your claim, fighting for your right to homestead and fighting against the elements. And sadly also fighting against the people who were there at first.

But that's part of sort of the myth and the mythos of the American West and in part who Americans are. In Canada, we sent in the Northwest Mounted Police, then we sent in the railway, and then we sent in the colonists. At least that's the story that I was told. And to hear that even with that infrastructure and security, that's then turned into our far more inborn trust of

government, it was a heck of a lot harder to do than I thought it was. Oh, absolutely. I mean, the railroad only went to Saskatoon, so there was still 300 kilometers to go. And it was more or less just walking at that point. And with what you said with America, it was the First Nations who actually helped these colonists quite a bit in teaching them how to live off the land. Cause these people, what he had wanted was people who could actually farm and what he got were people who had spent their lives living in the city

and had no real idea how to farm or live off the land. That is, it's fascinating to me. He sold them a bill of goods. I mean, was it all well-intentioned? Was he a good faith operator or was he flying by the seat of his pants and being reckless? Jared Sussman I think originally he probably did have, he did want to create this colony and he, you know,

he wanted to have it successful. But then also things like greed do get in the way and, you know, people had to buy things through him that he would buy from merchants and then he would mark it up. So he was kind of- So he was doing the marking up. Yeah, he was doing the marking up. So it was kind of a scheme, but it wasn't really like he was conning them, but he was trying to make money off of them and he was terrible at organizing things and he would tell them things that would, you know, they would be there for them and they weren't there for them and people eventually got fed up. Well, people eventually got fed up, but prior, not before be there for them and they weren't there for them. And people eventually got fed up.

People eventually got fed up, but prior, not, not, not before a whole bunch of people died between if he had 2000 to start and by the time they made it to their final destination, I mean, the numbers vary between 1200 and 1600, but that's, that's a, that's a, that's a big rate of death. Yeah. It would, no, it wasn't death actually.

It was just people who got fed up. And so they were like, I'm going to stay in Winnipeg or I'm going to stay in Saskatoon and I'm not going to keep going with this guy. They abandoned him. They abandoned him. Yeah, absolutely. And I have to assume that that did something

to the morale of the group. Oh, absolutely it would. I mean, as you're going on, there's less and less people and you're wondering, should I abandon at this point or should I keep going? You know, the fallacy of sunk costs, I've made it this far, I should just keep going? You know, the fallacy of sunk costs, I've made it this far, I should just keep going

the last few hundred kilometers. So he's got his flock and you've got Isaac Barr and he partnered with the Reverend George Lloyd. What was that relationship like? It was kind of a odd relationship because Isaac Barr liked to drink and you know, on the short voyage across the ocean, he spent most of his time with his secretary in his cabin. Whereas George Lloyd was no drinking, you know,

very rules oriented and to the point that some call this actually felt he was too rules oriented. So they were two people who really shouldn't have matched up or got along and definitely didn't get along as time went on. And it must've gotten even worse because you had Isaac Barr who felt that, you know, he was the leader of this group and I guess they had every intention

of naming the colony after him, but they got so, they got so annoyed with them, the colonists went in a different direction. That's right, yeah. So when they finally reached their destination, Isaac Barr, he strung up the Union Jack to kind of say, okay, I've completed my journey. And then he left and he never returned to the area. And they ended up naming the location after George Lloyd. And that's where Lloyd Minster comes from because he was minister. That see that is the that's the payoff to the story. That's the payoff to the story for me. The history of which you guys have just given us is the history of Lloyd Minster. But that doesn't explain what happened to Barr next. How did he, so he left and where did he go?

Well, he went to the United States and he spent some time in the United States. He eventually did marry his secretary. And then he actually decided. Of course he did. Yeah. And then he decided he wanted to go to Victoria, Australia. And that's where he went. He went with his wife, their two sons.

And he actually did have a settlement there. And the settlement was successful. It was a modest success. And they spent the rest of their lives living in Australia. So I guess he got turned off from what he thought were supposed to be brisk winters and decided to go somewhere where he wouldn't experience that anymore.

Absolutely. And so, 12 to 1600 people, at any point did anybody complain to Barr to say, this is not what you promised us? Oh yeah, there were, even on the ship coming across the Atlantic ocean, people wanted to fight him. I mean, when they got to new Brunswick, he disappeared because people were so angry with him. And then he would pop up at a new spot and, you know,

taking the train across, they were crammed into the train cars and he was in a luxury car. He did, he did himself no favors. Hey, from start to finish, from, from the moment they left the UK to the moment they landed and what would ultimately be Lloyd Minster, how much time did that take? I believe it took about three months in total.

That would have been three very long months for anybody. Absolutely. I can understand Isaac Barr, if he wanted to, he needed some alone time, he needed some me time as we call it today. I can understand taking it. My goodness, what a fascinating story.

Craig, thank you so much. If people need to find Canadian History X, they can find it wherever they get their podcasts on our Curious Cast Network. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. This is Carry the Fire. I'm your host, Lisa LaFlamme.

Carry the Fire, a podcast by the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation featuring inspiring personal stories about what happens when world leading doctors, nurses, researchers, and their patients come together to ignite breakthroughs. Carry the Fire launches Monday, January 27th, wherever you get your podcasts.