Spying on Canadians

"Gregory S. Kealey is one of the recognized authorities in security studies. He does an excellent job in these essays of analyzing how the needs and opinions of their political masters and the nature of the perceived economic, political, and ethnic threats influenced the ideology of those who directed and implemented political policing." -- Lorne Brown, Professor Emeritus, University of Regina "Gregory S. Kealey's work on the history of security and, especially, the archival legwork involved in 'digging' for this restricted material is exceptional." -- Patrizia Gentile, Institute of Interdisciplinary Studies, Carleton University

Award winning author Gregory S. Kealey’s study of Canada’s security and intelligence community before the end of World War II depicts a nation caught up in the Red Scare in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and tangled up with the imperial interests of first the United Kingdom and then the United States.

Award winning author Gregory S. Kealey’s study of Canada’s security and intelligence community before the end of World War II depicts a nation caught up in the Red Scare in the aftermath of the Bolshevik Revolution and tangled up with the imperial interests of first the United Kingdom and then the United States.

Spying on Canadians brings together over twenty five years of research and writing about political policing in Canada. Through itse use of the Dominion Police and later the RCMP, Canada repressed the labour movement and the political left in defense of capital. The collection focuses on three themes; the nineteenth-century roots of political policing in Canada, the development of a national security system in the twentieth-century, and the ongoing challenges associated with research in this area owing to state secrecy and the inadequacies of access to information legislation. This timely collection alerts all Canadians to the need for the vigilant defence of civil liberties and human rights in the face of the ever increasing intrusion of the state into our private lives in the name of countersubversion and counterterrorism.