Manufacturing Threats

Canadian police provocateurs are as old as Canada itself... Manufacturing Threats tells the story of police provocateurs going back to the time of Canadian Confederation. Whether against communism or the FLQ, the Black Liberation Movement or the Muslim community, Alexandre Popovic documents the role Canada's secret services have played in repressing marginalized communities and movements for social change. From bombings and harassment campaigns, to setting up fake urban guerrilla cells and leading invasions from the US, there seem to be no limits to what the operatives of the Canadian state will do to stoke fear and justify their own ever-growing budgets. Beyond just documenting these nefarious and shocking misdeeds, Manufacturing Threats shows the perennial failures of attempts to rein in or reform these agencies. Popovic argues that the entire concept of repressive apparatuses whose actions must be hidden from the public and even elected politicians-which has remained the untouchable assumption of these reform efforts-is itself the problem, and that these sorts of outrages will continue unless real transparency and accountability can be achieved. Different chapters detail the 19th-century origins of Canada's secret police in countering the Irish nationalist Fenians, many of whom were based in the United States, and the Métis Red River Rebellion led by Louis Riel. Popovic goes on to show the role of entrapment and provocation in countering the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and Communist Party in the 1920s and '30s, and then in attempting to entrap Black and Indigenous activists and in successfully infiltrating and manipulating the nationalist Front de Libération du Québec (FLQ) in the 1960s and '70s. Examining the work of the provincial and federal governments' Keable and McDonald Commissions, which came about following disclosures of RCMP dirty tricks (arson, break-ins, kidnappings...), and which led to the establishment of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Popovic then details three major examples of CSIS informants (Marc-André Boivin, Grant Bristow, and Joseph Gilles Breault) who were allowed to carry out acts of violence and intimidation in the service of their government paymasters. This book is an important introduction to the subject of Canada's repressive agencies and the legislation and lack of oversight that have structured their use of agents provocateurs and informants over the years. First published in French as Produire le menace (Sabotart, 2017), this first English-language edition includes updated information as of 2022.