"I had a tough pop, my dad is a tough man, it's in me somewhere, and somebody saw it," Klea Scott theorizes about how she won the role as the tough cop who heads an organized crime unit in the CBC series Intelligence.

Klea Scott is well aware that if Intelligence were an American drama rather than a Canadian drama, her position of power would be highly controversial.

"For me, as a woman of colour, playing someone who is slightly younger than some of the men I have to boss around, it's something we haven't really seen," said Scott, who stars alongside Ian Tracey in CBC's Intelligence, which begins its second season tonight.

Scott plays Mary Spalding, the professionally ambitious head of Vancouver's organized crime unit who wants to move up the ranks at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service).

"This series is uniquely Canadian in that way, that the concept would occur to (creator) Chris Haddock and he would write this part," Scott said. "In the States it would be like, 'Oh my God, we have to make a big deal about this because she's a black woman.'

"There still are racial politics at play in Canada. It's not perfect. But it's different from the United States, that's for sure."

Scott was born in Panama and raised in Ottawa, but she has lived most of her adult life in the United States. She has Canadian-U.S. dual citizenship, but she's thrilled that Intelligence isn't afraid to make the Americans look less than heroic when it comes to international espionage.

"The Americans are raising their uniquely strong arm this season, and toward the end of last season you saw the American mole up here as a villain," Scott said. "That's one of my favourite things, because I can't think of another show on this continent where the Americans are the bad guys.

"That's really interesting to me. I love it, actually, because I've voted in the United States and I have a lot of problems with the U.S. presence in the world. So it's really nice to get a Canadian perspective."

Scott, 38, began her TV career on a Canadian kids show called You Can't Do That On Television back in the early 1980s. Since then, though, she has played policewoman after policewoman, to the point that she chuckles about it.

"I happen to believe -- and this is just me hypothesizing -- that there is something about my jaw line that somehow looks authoritative," Scott said. "I had a tough pop, my dad is a tough man, it's in me somewhere, and somebody saw it.

"And then everyone was like, coppity-cop-cop. Cop in the future. Cop in L.A. Cop in a uniform. Cop in a suit. And now I'm head of the cops. But that's TV. The only other thing I could have done to equally prepare me is go to law school. There are lots of cops and lawyers on TV.

"It's funny, my aunt on my husband's side said to me one time, 'You're no Halle Berry, but you're attractive, so you can play bitches and lawyers.' And I was like, 'Uh, thanks ... I think.'"

ELSEWHERE ON TV TONIGHT:

Also returning

- Dragons' Den (CBC)

- Everybody Hates Chris (CW, as previously seen on City)

Debuting

Aliens in America (Sun-TV, CW)

Advice

We're big fans of Intelligence, which deserves a bigger audience than it has been attracting. Aliens in America, which is about a Wisconsin family that takes in a Muslim foreign-exchange student from Pakistan, will raise more eyebrows in the U.S. than within the Little Mosque-ified borders of Canada.