Surveillance Strategies and Populations at Risk: Biopolitical Governance in Canada’s National Security Policy

Abstract

This article examines how Canada’s new national security policy operates through language and practices that take elusive risks to the health and safety of the population as an opportunity for action, and is made possible through an expansion of surveillance. The biopolitical character of security has greatly reduced the traditional distinction between the state as a military apparatus and the state as a service provider and manager of the citizenry. The article argues that the biopolitical governance strategies of Canada’s national security policy treat the problems for political freedom, equality and democratic accountability posed by encroaching security measures as largely negligible in the face of indeterminable danger. Using a Foucauldian analysis, the article establishes the connection between biopolitics and security. It subsequently examines how the Canadian policy deploys truth claims about the immanence of ‘threat’ and how claims about Canadian values produce an internal ‘other’ that represents the proliferation of threats. The article then focuses on two principle techniques of governance: first, guarding the freedom, health and safety of the population, and, second, expanding surveillance to give national security a totalizing reach. The article concludes by theorizing the implications of security governance for legitimating racial profiling and the ‘war on terror’.