Canadian Intelligence & Security Service

An unsettling report in the media today, about the activities of the Canadian Intelligence & Security Service (CSIS) apparently regularly monitoring environmental protest groups engaged in lawful protest and demonstration activities.  The report is unsettling, because this reported activity has about it echoes of earlier similar monitoring of Canadian individuals and groups who protested such things as the Vietnam war, clear-cut forestry activities, Aboriginal rights, etc.  Much of this earlier monitoring driven by a 'Red-scare' mentality. 

Even more troubling about the current report, is the apparently close reporting relationship between CSIS and 'the oil industry'.  At the very least, this relationship between the security establishment and industry leaves an impression that social and economic interests of the oil industry are co-terminus with Canadian security interests generally. 

At the same time, there is another news report today, about the formation of a political action interest group called The Buffalo Project.  This group, characterized as "the equivalent of a US-style political action group", so far claims that it intends to stand up for "the West" (sic) within a united Canada.  According to a spokesperson for the group, “Western Canadians are beyond frustration and we are simply another group that has decided it’s time to take action.”  

Interestingly, the Canadian 'West', in the eyes of this group, actually may not include the most-western Canadian province, British Columbia.  But that aside, as someone born and raised in my formative years in Alberta, I am very familiar with what we, in the Canadian confederation, have called western alienation.  It is not exactly like Quebec separatism, but there are significant parallels.

Frankly, in my view, if CSIS is wanting to monitor lawful groups "in an ancillary manner", as informal targets, presumably they will be including groups such as The Buffalo Project. 

Indeed, CSIS already seems actually to be meeting directly with some of these 'Western" interests.  Infiltration apparently has already begun......