Surveillance Strategies and Populations at Risk: Biopolitical Governance in Canada’s National Security Policy COLLEEN BELL* Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada 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 biopoliti- cal 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 demo- cratic 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 repre- sents 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 surveil- lance 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’. Keywords biopolitics • surveillance • ‘war on terror’ • racism • Canada A PRIL 2004 SAW THE INTRODUCTION of Canada’s first national security policy in a document entitled Securing an Open Society: Canada’s National Security Policy. The policy document outlines a broad and integrated approach to national security in response to what former Prime Minister Paul Martin outlines in the opening remarks as an © 2006 PRIO, www.prio.no SAGE Publications, http://sdi.sagepub.com Vol. 37(2): 147–165, DOI: 10.1177/0967010606066168