True Patriot Love - March 30, 2026


RCMP Spied on Indigenous Canadians - The Hidden Surveillance Scandal


Episode Stats


Length

11 minutes

Words per minute

166.10149

Word count

1,845

Sentence count

52


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this week's show, we're joined by journalist Mike Wickson to discuss a piece of journalism from The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on a shocking spying program carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the late 60s and early 70s.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.000 there's a number of things happening in our world we wanted to discuss today including all the things
00:00:09.040 happening in iran and everything else going on with the u.s president donald trump but one thing
00:00:13.440 we wanted to address and i'm joined by mike wickson is a fascinating bit of in-depth journalism from
00:00:19.440 the cbc on a shocking bit of spying done by our own government on indigenous canadians it's not
00:00:25.920 Well, not very often you're clicking around in the morning news and something from the late 60s and early 70s becomes a hot topic and, you know, top of the news.
00:00:35.280 But it was fascinating.
00:00:37.140 And apparently the Royal Canadian Meta Police, their security service at the time, ran a covert surveillance disruption program among the Indigenous community and activists at the time in Canada.
00:00:50.380 And this was happening in the late 60s through the 70s, basically throughout Pierre Trudeau's reign as Prime Minister of Canada.
00:00:58.100 And I think as Canadians, we have to realize that Canada is a country in the late 60s through the early mid 70s was very different.
00:01:06.220 And unfortunately, our attitude towards Indigenous Canadians was not really something to be proud of back then.
00:01:12.280 No. And in fact, I think that it was probably that era that brought into focus how much we really needed to focus on healing those relationships.
00:01:21.160 This was not a good time and a good moment in federal government, Indigenous activists, and Indigenous community relations.
00:01:33.060 It was really an egregious act of what seems to be illegal surveillance and disruption at a time where the Indigenous people really needed attention the most.
00:01:46.640 Land rights were a big issue.
00:01:48.320 Of course, I think this was an era of extreme paranoia among the federal government, but it's just wild to me that so many years later, the details of this are just finally making their ways through the cracks.
00:02:04.140 And lest you think that we're overstating this, this is from Professor Pat Pasternak, a criminology professor at Toronto Metropolitan University.
00:02:12.940 This is a massive violation of indigenous political rights, human rights and privacy.
00:02:18.880 It is morally reprehensible program that sought to criminalize legitimate political organizing.
00:02:24.560 Now, this, Mike, is something we see on Netflix series about stuff that happened in the United States during the Vietnam War with, you know, legitimate democratic protests against the war and how the Nixon government were trying to infiltrate it and spy on it.
00:02:40.940 Well, we had the same thing apparently going on in the RCMP and our own indigenous Canadians.
00:02:45.660 This happened, I think, around the Trudeau era is when it came under real investigation.
00:02:52.160 um and you know it's interesting to me because the timing on this is not great for the rcmp just
00:02:58.720 yesterday the attorney general came out and said look we haven't done any recruitment basically
00:03:03.460 which shocked all canadians like well i thought you had you you were had a drive going apparently
00:03:09.080 it was a mystery to some of our members of parliament yesterday who hit the house floor
00:03:14.180 uh saying that they were in the midst of hiring so many people uh for the rcmp not having read
00:03:20.680 the report, obviously, of the Attorney General. Having said that, it's a real moment with a focus
00:03:32.040 on the RCMP that is not positive. This arrives the very next day. First of all, let's talk about
00:03:40.740 the history of the story a little bit. And we'll see where this goes in our minds as to what this
00:03:47.180 means in the future for the RCMP. But let's kind of cover this off a little bit. Investigative
00:03:52.620 journalism was done on this. At the time it was revealed. During the 80s, some documents were
00:03:58.680 declassified that led to a wider investigative journalism attention on it. But then it seemed
00:04:06.220 to stall. We got the story. We understood that it happened. But to what degree and what was
00:04:13.540 remaining in the story hung in the balance for decades. Well, the cover-up is always worse than
00:04:18.040 the crime, Mike. And a number of the reporters who tried to access, you know, legal, democratic
00:04:24.220 freedom of information to get documents, it was over 1,300 days of being stonewalled by the
00:04:32.120 government to get their hands on these documents to really itemize everything going on. This is
00:04:37.560 a piece of Canadian history that was being denied to the reporters who were doing their job.
00:04:42.340 And by the way, if you're a journalist, four years of research on something is too much.
00:04:49.160 The story generally will die.
00:04:51.400 Whoever is behind you on the story or whatever energy you have, four years is a long time to create diversion, to stonewall, to find another way to hide this.
00:05:02.840 But it does appear that this was being hidden.
00:05:05.880 Mike, as a Canadian, I was shocked when all the truth came out about what really happened at residential schools.
00:05:12.340 a that it was that bad you shocked me a minute ago when you explained to me the last one closed
00:05:18.980 in saskatchewan in 1997 that's recent that is very recent and so as a canadian now this comes out
00:05:26.900 through some incredible in-depth research and and you can go to the cbc website and check out you
00:05:34.180 know video and audio clips from a lot of the different people involved these are educated
00:05:41.940 patriotic canadians who happen to be indigenous canadians who the government quite frankly was
00:05:46.820 spying on uh now in uh i really around 1975 the activism among the indigenous community was at a
00:05:56.980 height yeah and that's when they began to look at this and say hold on a second have we been
00:06:01.940 infiltrated because too too much is happening around us too many uh uh fences are coming up
00:06:07.860 around us that normally wouldn't be there in a democratic activist process. And so it became
00:06:14.060 noted at that time. And as I say, throughout all these years, very little came out. Declassification
00:06:19.520 in the 80s. And then now, as you say, four years of waiting for freedom of information,
00:06:25.900 four years of waiting for freedom of information. We now just now have a better picture of it.
00:06:31.680 this also should be noted in the 80s 70s mid 70s this is where cesis came from but yeah and cesis
00:06:41.800 as we know it really um laid the foundation of the early 80s yeah it became to be and mike think
00:06:47.720 about this is where they separated policing and surveillance and and spying really think about
00:06:52.940 you're talking about the mid-1970s it's a very innocent time in canada canadian history you know
00:06:58.600 we didn't even have that that was a year before the montreal olympics yeah you know canada was a
00:07:03.120 much smaller country um and what we knew and what we read and what we saw we knew none of this this
00:07:10.620 was all being hidden from canadians and you're right this is an era we had basically uh three
00:07:16.340 channels three channels all of all of them you know similar news you see them at everything
00:07:20.880 together right um and uh thank goodness that's where our careers were were founded but having
00:07:26.880 said that it's a really different era now where if this information is going to be out there it's
00:07:33.020 now going to be highly scrutinized yeah it's going to be leveraged by the indigenous community for
00:07:37.940 certain and with good reason and it also shines a light on the rcmp now in the 80s cesis came out
00:07:44.640 of this yeah they were like okay the rcmp can't do policing and it can't do spy work at the same time
00:07:49.400 much like the fbi and the cia in the united states now it's two separate things it does
00:07:54.640 leave in question what happens with policing in all of the areas where the rcmp is the primary
00:08:00.800 police if this creates a tarnish on policing uh for the rcmp what do they have left mike it's a
00:08:09.260 great question let's face it in the last decade the rcmp have had to do some tough explaining about
00:08:16.140 the mass shooting in nova scotia different incidents in bc up throughout with the prairies
00:08:22.540 you know it's you know new brunswick so every province where they're policing there have been
00:08:28.100 questions and issues and people needing explanations and not getting them and i understand it you know
00:08:35.400 it's a very very tough job obviously they're understaffed they're in a lot of remote communities
00:08:41.260 with not a lot of resources and that's fine so maybe this is where it's a non-partisan government
00:08:48.020 thing let's get provincial people people from the indigenous community the first nations
00:08:53.800 assembly of first nations um the chiefs of the reservation police let's get it all together
00:08:59.240 let's try to find a better way to police everything and everyone to protect all canadians i don't
00:09:04.580 disagree with that it does seem like uh we're at the precipice of something new yeah this is a new
00:09:08.940 way yeah not finger pointing no because this happened 50 some years ago okay yeah so let's
00:09:14.400 be better how come we can't hire more who why don't the young people i mean rcp pay well
00:09:20.400 so like your poverty you're going to do very well financially look can't we get the numbers up and
00:09:25.500 get the policing better uh it's amazing how much effort they did put into it by the way uh at the
00:09:31.340 time there this was not a small operation for the rcmp this was a major operation this was like
00:09:36.200 something you see in a movie wiretapping physical surveillance covert cameras and all that so it was
00:09:43.400 a it was something that they really did do um and it it just makes me wonder so many years later
00:09:51.140 what have we missed along the way that was significant as well mike we we have indigenous
00:09:56.140 canadians indigenous communities in this country that still don't have access to clean drinking
00:10:00.600 water i don't care what party you support i don't care a premier a prime minister that can't happen
00:10:08.800 in canada in 2026 no i think we do have a distance to go with our indigenous community i think we
00:10:14.560 know that i mean reparations and the way that we handle it with respect has changed dramatically
00:10:20.160 but i think there's a distance to go this is a reminder of where we came from not so
00:10:25.280 long ago with our indigenous community here in canada
00:10:27.600 patriotic means looking up for each other and fixing things together true patriotism is being
00:10:41.740 in the country you love surrounded by people you love and great weather being a patriot is being
00:10:46.500 a part of your community and caring for it it doesn't matter who you are or where you're from
00:10:50.640 patriotism is the one thing we all share it's okay to be critical of government and still be
00:10:57.040 a patriot. It's gratitude to your country. Of course I'm a patriot. I'm Canadian. It's my home.
00:11:02.740 Well, actually, true patriot love is the mission.