‘Building a safe and resilient Canada’: resilience and the mechanopolitics of critical infrastructure

ABSTRACT

This article examines the historical conditions of emergence for the embrace of resilience in the field of critical infrastructure in Canada. Using previously unreleased archival records from the Government of Canada along with contemporary government policies, it traces transformations in how federal planners have sought to diagnose and secure the circulations regarded as essential for life since WWII. It contextualises the embrace of resilience as a recent modulation in these historical processes, one that governs through promoting the adaptive capacities of self-governing entities who operate ‘essential’ or ‘critical’ services. This is an articulation of resilience that is compatible with, and extends, wider forms of advanced liberal governance by promoting managerial and technical means for adapting to uncertainty while renouncing responsibility for the integrity of the systems upon which collective vitality depends.

KEYWORDS:

• Resilience
• critical infrastructure
• vital systems
• biopolitics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Thanks to Jenna Harb, Shannon Speed, and two anonymous reviewers for their contributions to the development of this article.

2. DHH, Joints Chiefs fonds, 2002/17 Box 114 File 4 (2 of 2). Minutes of the Committee on Defence Coordination, July 18 1939.

3. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. War Book Chapter III – Internal Security Measures. September 1948.

4. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. Revision of the September 1949 List of Vital Points. June 22 1951.

5. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. Memo from Assistant Director L.H. Nicholson, Director, Criminal Investigations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police to Wing Commander G.H. Newsome, Secretary to the Interdepartmental Committee on Vital Points. 5 July 1949.

6. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. The Nature and Degree of the Threat of Sabotage to Vital Points in the Light of New Assumptions of Nuclear War. February 1957.

7. LAC RG 12 Transport Canada. Memorandum to Members of the Interdepartmental Committee on Vital Points re: Suggested New Terms of Reference of the Vital Points Committee. 26 February 1960.

8. LAC RG 12 Transport Canada. Memo from Insp. T.C. Jenkins, OIC Security Policy Section, Security Systems Branch to A.F. Wigglesworth, Chairman, Advisory Committee on Vital Points, Emergency Preparedness Canada. 24 October 1979.

9. LAC RG 25 Department of Foreign Affairs. Minutes of the 7^th meeting of the Interdepartmental Committee on Vital Points. 20 April 1951 & LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. Memo to R.G. Robertson re: Report on Peak Loads and Emergency Power Plants, Department of Mechanical Engineering, McGill University. 24 October 1951.

10. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. Record of Committee Decision, Cabinet Committee on Security and Intelligence re: Protection of Vital Points. 21 December 1970.

11. LAC RG 12 Transport Canada. Peacetime Vital Points (Federal Lists). 26 September 1979.

12. LAC RG 12 Transport Canada. Canadian Government Program for the Protection of Vital Points (Responsibilities and Organization). December 1979.

13. LAC RG 12 Transport Canada. Peacetime Vital Points Selection Criteria. 20 February 1979.

14. LAC R1395 Aerospace, Defence & Industrial Benefits. Vital Points Review Working Group Report. 31 March 1994.

15. LAC RG 57 Emergency Preparedness Canada. RCMP Civil Security Inspection Report, Zone Emergency Government Headquarters, Camrose AB. 16 December 1968.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes on contributors

Philip J. Boyle

Philip J. Boyle is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology & Legal Studies at the University of Waterloo. His research is concerned with contemporary developments in policing, security and public safety after 9/11, particularly in relation to cities and urban governance. His current research on critical infrastructure security is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.