[2] Higgitt directed national security operations during the October Crisis of 1970, when members of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) engaged in a series of urban bombings and also kidnapped the provincial Labour Minister Pierre Laporte and British diplomat James Cross.

[8] Interviewed in 1972 by the Winnipeg Free Press, Higgitt said that as a youth he was struck by the dedication RCMP officers seemed to display in coping with the problems and hardships brought on by the Depression: "It wasn't just a matter of enforcing the law.

"[5] After graduating from high school in 1937, at the age of nineteen, and two years before World War II began, Higgitt joined the RCMP at Regina, Saskatchewan, as a sub-constable; a rank later discontinued by the force.

A Soviet military intelligence illegal carrying a Canadian passport in the name of Ignacy Witczak, obtained in part through the assistance of Sam Carr, an important member of the Communist Party of Canada, had arrived in the US in 1938.

[16] Prior to the Allies' pivotal Normandy Landings, the internment operations led to the removal of several hundreds of German- and Italian-born Canadians, Arcand included, to detention camps in Canada's hinterlands until the surrender of the Axis powers.

On the first day of World War II, RCMP agents broke the German-financed Canadian fascist group Deutsche Arbeits Front, interning four hundred Nazis.

Subsequently, the Government, not believing the RCMP, took the responsibility for evacuating coastal Japanese Canadians to interior British Columbia out of the Mounties' hands and gave it to the BC Security Commission, and in turn, by 1943, to the Department of Labour.

[18][19] Political scientist Reg Whitaker and historian Gregory Kealey have argued that the relative effectiveness of the RCMP's Intelligence Branch in carrying out the responsibility of penetrating and monitoring pro-fascist groups, along with the nullification of the espionage, sabotage, or subversion threats believed to have been posed by these groups, ensured that the RCMP would carry out of the War an enhanced prestige within the Canadian state and some surety of a continued pre-eminent role in security intelligence in the postwar era.

By the end of World War II, it had become clear that though the Nazi presence in Canada was largely subdued, a Soviet spy ring was operating from the rear wing of the Russian Embassy in Ottawa.

Armed with the documents [Gouzenko] had taken from the Military Attaché, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police took the case directly before Prime Minister Mackenzie King, who called in high government advisors.

While officer in charge of the counterespionage section, Higgitt, along with his colleagues in allied nations, did not believe that security screening at border crossings was alone proof against the penetration into Canada of Communist Bloc spies.

[37] While in London, in January 1961, long-time Soviet illegal and key figure in the Portland spy ring and what the newspapers called "The Microdot Five," Konon Molody, using the alias 'Gordon Lonsdale' after adopting the identity of a deceased Canadian child, was arrested on Waterloo Bridge.

In 1961, while stationed in London, he established RCMP connections in The Hague, Cologne, Rome, Brussels, Malmö, at Interpol in Copenhagen with the Danish Minister of Justice, and at NATO headquarters in Paris.

[43] Community leaders in Halifax expressed concern that this worry, and the surveillance activities it induced, were discriminatory and meant to actually suppress the civil rights movement as opposed to keeping the peace.

[44] Upon his appointment, at the height of the Cold War, The New York Times described Higgitt as being "in the tradition of quiet‐spoken, approachable but tough headed men who hardly ever, by word or deed, draw attention to themselves".

[49] Following his appointment as Commissioner, Higgitt was unanimously elected a vice-president of Interpol,[50] and he received a tipstaff at the 65th annual conference of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police, London, Ontario.

In his first official press interview upon his appointment as RCMP Commissioner, Higgitt was asked whether he thought a Chinese Communist Embassy in Ottawa would pose a new security problem for the federal police.

[58] Afterward, public criticism emerged that the RCMP, under Higgitt's leadership and acting for the American FBI, was harassing US draft dodgers and deserters seeking refuge in Canada.

[60] In October of the year prior Soviet Premier Alexei Kosykin was assaulted by a political protester, and a number of groups had indicated that they would use the Nixon visit as a peg for demonstrations on Parliament Hill against the Vietnam conflict and US economic doctrines.

In January 1970, Higgitt and Starnes met with Prime Minister Trudeau, then flew to London for a week to visit the headquarters of MI5 and SIS, and meet with leaders of Britain's intelligence community.

[69] The FBI concluded that the electronic firing device was "quite similar" to that which the US Coast Guard recovered from the attempted bombing of the British deep sea freighter Lancastrian Prince three hundred miles east of Miami, Florida in 1968.

[70] Higgitt also directed RCMP operations during the FLQ Crisis in Quebec in 1970, which was the last time the War Measures Act would be invoked until Justin Trudeau declared a public order emergency in 2022.

According to an August 1981 report of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Trudeau government at the time believed that French intelligence agents in Quebec were funneling money to pro-separatist groups.

What followed in the 1970s was a much more aggressive and intrusive pattern of intelligence targeting of Quebec separatism by the Security Service, which blew up in the face of the government with a series of public scandals of RCMP "wrongdoing"—actions that went beyond lawful limits or were seriously questionable from the standpoint of liberal democratic ethics.

Higgitt warned that a broad sweep and preventative detention of suspects in Quebec was not likely to lead to the abductors of the Deputy Premier, Pierre Laporte, and the British Trade Commissioner, James Cross, and that "[these events] ought not to be allowed to over-rule calmer reaction at the federal level.

Globe and Mail journalist Jeff Sallot drew this conclusion: "A trim man even in his fifties, he [(Higgitt)] looked every inch the policeman who had risen to the top because of his intelligence, dedication, and honest hard work.

Higgit served in London as the RCMP Liaison Officer for the United Kingdom and Western Europe, and was a member of the Canadian Delegation to the General Assemblies of Interpol in 1961, in Copenhagen, and 1962, in Madrid.

[94] Likewise, Higgitt told the London Sunday Times in 1974 that if Interpol became a political body like the United Nations, debating definitions of terrorism, it would find itself increasingly unsuccessful in its intelligence-gathering operations and eventually break apart.

Higgitt testified that he was unaware that the force had burned a barn, stolen dynamite, issued a fake terrorist communique and taken Parti Quebecois membership lists—four of eleven areas of investigation by the Inquiry.

"[102] "As a lone Mountie bugler played the Last Post, a troop of scarlet-clad fellow officers and a small gathering of family and friends paid their last respects to a man known by many as a great Canadian".