The COVID-19 pandemic has been arguably “the most disruptive event” since 9/11 for Canadian national security agencies, according to one of the country’s top intelligence officials.
Tricia Geddes, a deputy director with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, said Wednesday the pandemic has both accelerated particular national security threats and made the work of Canadian intelligence agencies more complicated.
Geddes said CSIS “saw new threat vectors emerging immediately” at the start of the pandemic: domestic extremists harnessing COVID-19 conspiracy theories for recruitment, an increase in cyber espionage targeting Canadian research and development, and locked-down Canadians conducting sensitive corporate work from unsecured home computers.
