Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making: The Canadian Experience

by Thomas Juneau, Stephanie Carvin

Canada is a key member of the world's most important international intelligence-sharing partnership, the Five Eyes, along with the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. Until now, few scholars have looked beyond the US to study how effectively intelligence analysts support policy makers, who rely on timely, forward-thinking insights to shape high-level foreign, national security, and defense policy. Intelligence Analysis and Policy Making provides the first in-depth look at the relationship between intelligence and policy in Canada. Thomas Juneau and Stephanie Carvin, both former analysts in the Canadian national security sector, conducted seventy in-depth interviews with serving and retired policy and intelligence practitioners, at a time when Canada's intelligence community underwent sweeping institutional changes. Juneau and Carvin provide critical recommendations for improving intelligence performance in supporting policy—with implications for other countries that, like Canada, are not superpowers but small or mid-sized countries in need of intelligence that supports their unique interests.

240 pages, Hardcover

Published December 7, 2021

About the author

Thomas Juneau is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, acts as a consultant for various departments in the Canadian government, and is a frequent commentator in Canadian and international media. He is the author of Squandered Opportunity: Neoclassical realism and Iranian foreign policy and and the co-editor of Top Secret Canada: Understanding the Canadian Intelligence and National Security Community.