Intelligence services in Canada
In response to a number of raid and attacks connected with Irish nationalism, Prime Minister John A. Macdonald merged the two forces to form the Dominion Police (DP).
Stipendiary Magistrates were encouraged to form informal intelligence services to intercept mails, police taverns, and suppress political discussions.
[1] In September 1864, John A. Macdonald, the premier of the United Provinces (and eventually the first prime minister of Canada), formed two secret police forces to guard the Canada–United States border, and to prevent U.S. infringement on Canadian neutrality during the U.S. Civil War.
[1] The formative period in the institutional development of Canadian intelligence agencies is unique in the sense that the birth of the fledgling services predated confederation in 1867 by several years.
The Fenians, an Irish nationalist movement that operated in North America, whose goal was to liberate Ireland from British rule, got these two intelligence services preoccupied.
A "lone wolf" believed to be,[clarification needed][3] who was a sympathizer for Irish nationalism, assassinated Canadian politician Thomas D'Arcy McGee.
The network, which had depended so much upon Hopkinson's mercenary style, fell apart shortly thereafter under his successors Robert Nathan, Malcolm J. Reid, and A. F. Jolliffe.
World War I and the 1917–1920 Labor revolt were the main reasons for the reform of the institutional framework of the Canadian security and intelligence service.
[4] With the fear of the consequences of increased labor and industrial unrest in early 1918, the Criminal Investigations Branch (CIB) was formed in the RNWMP in Regina.
An overheated and reactionary federal government felt Canada was headed toward a Bolshevik-style revolution after the number of strikes dramatically increased.
[4] At the Ottawa RCMP headquarters, Facilitation of this newly centralized security and intelligence apparatus called for a number of new sections and positions to be established.
A Central Registry (CR) was also established for filing and indexing intelligence materials sent directly to Ottawa from the outlying divisions.
The Canadian left-wing became a major priority for intelligence services in the RCMP during the period between the two world wars, particularity focusing on the Communist Party of Canada (CPC).
[6] During World War II, while the government cracked down on suspected subversives in Canada, links strengthened with Allied intelligence agencies.
[7] One example of joint intelligence activity was establishing Camp X, a secret allied training facility in Ontario involved in the eventual creation of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), through Bill Stephenson's U.S.-based British Security Coordination (BSC), and through scientific cooperation in the Manhattan Project, and also the creation of the first biological germ warfare stations.
However, through a number of agencies and through its Foreign Affairs postings, it[clarification needed] has provided considerable political and economic intelligence to Ottawa decision makers.
has been that, due to the lack of clear and present danger to Canada, the high cost and political risk involved, such an agency is not a necessity.
However, supporters of a dedicated Canadian agency noted that Canada could not rely on its interests coinciding with those of the UK and USA which supplied its intelligence, in contrast to the Cold War period when they shared a common enemy.
Limited intelligence was collected between the 1884-85 Red River Rebellion, and anarchists also caught the attention of the Canadian service a decade later.
Then, after a lock at the Welland Canal was dynamited in 1900 by Irish nationalists prompting renewed state interest in the organization, and between 1901 and 1903 another group, the Order of the Midnight Sun, a U.S. annexation movement, was the target of Canadian intelligence.
[2] During the Yukon Gold Rush, the NWMP provided the federal government with considerable intelligence, and for the next two decades RNWMP and DP attention turned to other immigrants, political organizations, and unions, such as the Socialist Party of Canada (SPC), the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), and the One Big Union (OBU).
[14] The CSE was established as the Examinations Unit of the National Research Council in June 1941 and was headquartered at the Laurier Avenue residence of the prime minister.
