White House official pushes to axe Canada from Five Eyes intelligence group

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A top White House official has proposed expelling Canada from the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network as Donald Trump increases pressure on the country he talks about turning into the 51st US state.

Peter Navarro, one of the US president’s closest advisers, is pushing for the US to remove Canada from the Five Eyes — which also includes the UK, Australia and New Zealand — according to people familiar with his efforts inside the administration.

Trump has said he wants to annex Canada and has vowed to press ahead with 25 per cent tariffs on imports from the country when a one-month reprieve elapses on March 4.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who will step down from office on March 9, was recently caught on an open mic warning that Trump’s ambition to absorb the US’s northern neighbour was a “real thing”.

Navarro did not respond to requests for comment. After the FT’s article was first published, Navarro denied pushing the idea, which he said was “crazy stuff”. “We would never ever jeopardise our national security … with allies like Canada,” Navarro said.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Trudeau’s office declined to comment.

Trump stunned US allies when he made Canada his first big target for tariffs, alongside Mexico, claiming Ottawa was not doing enough to stop migrants and drugs from entering the US.

The people familiar with the situation said Navarro, who has easy access to the Oval Office due to his close relationship with Trump, is arguing that the US should increase pressure on Canada by evicting the country from the Five Eyes.

It is unclear whether the idea has gained traction with Trump but it is being discussed among his officials.

The Five Eyes has for decades been the most important intelligence-sharing network in the world. The US and its allies share extremely sensitive signals and human intelligence in addition to co-ordinating on operations. The CIA-led Pine Gap satellite station in central Australia, which is the most important site for collecting intelligence about China, is just one example of the intimate intelligence relationship.

Dennis Wilder, a former CIA official who was the top editor of the US president’s daily intelligence briefing, said the Five Eyes was “by far the most successful intelligence-sharing arrangement in world history”. He noted that the partnership emerged when American and British code breakers worked together to break German secret communications during the second world war, and was expanded to include the other allies in 1956.

“Any disruption in these decade-old understandings would be met with cheers from our adversaries in Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang,” said Wilder.

While Canada and New Zealand provide the least amount of intelligence in the group, expelling any member would spark criticism from the other allies and also from intelligence officials in Washington and beyond.

One Five Eyes intelligence official said evicting Canada from the decades-old network would be very dangerous.

“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,” the intelligence official said.

Steve Bannon, the former White House strategist who helped Trump win in 2016, said Canada needed to realise that Trump was not trolling Trudeau but was serious about wanting to annex the country.

He said Canada lacked the resources to defend itself particularly as China attempts to become an Arctic power. But he said any move to evict Canada from the Five Eyes would be a counter-productive move that would just end up hurting America.

“Canada punches way above their weight. If you look at military history, they’ve been the best ally we’ve had,” Bannon said.

Navarro served as a White House trade adviser in the first Trump administration. Last year, he served several months in prison for refusing to testify before the congressional commission investigating the January 6 2021 attack on the US Capitol. His views on trade have long been in sync with Trump, who sometimes calls him “my Peter” and named him in December as a senior counsellor for trade and manufacturing.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service was approached for comment.

Additional reporting by Ilya Gridneff in Toronto