(OTTAWA) Newly released documents shed new light on the police surveillance black rights activist and future Prime Minister of Dominica Roosevelt Douglas was subjected to on Canadian soil in the late 1960s and early of the 1970s.
That the RCMP Security Service took a long interest in Mr. Roosevelt’s doings is a known fact of history. What we did not know was how far she was willing to act to put a spoke in his wheels.
Roosevelt Douglas, the son of a wealthy coconut farmer from Dominica, had first come to Ontario to study agriculture before attending Sir George Williams University, later Concordia University, in Montreal.
First a supporter of the federal conservatives, the young man then became an ardent defender of the rights of blacks. He forged links with leaders of various international movements.
A master’s student at McGill University in early 1969, Mr. Douglas was one of the organizers of an occupation of the offices of Sir George Williams aimed at protesting against racism. During the police operation to dislodge the protesters from the establishment’s computer center, a fire broke out, causing chaos.
Several dozen people had been arrested and charged in court. Mr. Douglas had been sentenced to imprisonment. He was released after 18 months and deported to Dominica. Many years later, he became Prime Minister of his country, shortly before his death in 2000, at the age of 58.
In one of its reports, the McDonald Commission mandated to investigate certain activities of the RCMP, mentioned that the federal police had placed an informant with Mr. Douglas. This informant would even have recorded a conversation between Mr. Douglas and the Solicitor General at the time, Warren Allmand, without the latter being aware.
Recently obtained documents show how far the RCMP was willing to go to get its informant in contact with Mr. Douglas. Thus, the RCMP tried in vain to sabotage his automobile to ensure that he traveled to Toronto to meet an important contact visiting Canada with his informant.
The RCMP also carried out an operation aimed at discrediting the future politician within the black community and creating a split within his group.
Operation “Checkmate”
In the early 1970s, the RCMP Security Service implemented Operation Checkmate, a national program of disruptive countermeasures, to contain threats of political violence.
At the time, the RCMP felt that the legal mechanisms were sometimes too ineffective in obtaining information or dealing with threats to national security.
The McDonald commission had uncovered some of the RCMP’s targets. Other questionable tactics by the RCMP Security Service include stealing the list of Parti Québécois members, distributing a fake FLQ press release and burning down a barn in Estrie to prevent the ‘a meeting.
The RCMP Security Service was abolished and replaced in 1984 by a civilian agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.
By consulting the archives, we note that the RCMP often expressed its concern at the emergence of the more radical groups of the New Left and the far right. In particular, it reported on the arrival of new blood among the communist, Trotskyist, Maoist organizations, without forgetting the FLQ.
The police were also concerned about rapprochements between Canadian extremists and radical movements abroad such as the Irish Republican Army, the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Black Panthers or the American Weathermen.
In the early 1970s, the RCMP indicated that it could deal with individuals, but “the prospect of a common front could have alarming consequences for civil society.”
According to author Steve Hewitt, whose book Spying 101 was about police surveillance on college campuses, it’s one thing for the authorities to want to take action against individuals who advocate violence, it’s another thing to want to silence people who hold radical views because ‘they fear that they will take up arms in the more or less near future.
“It seems rather dangerous to me for a free society,” he says.
Researcher Andrea Conte, who also studies police operations against activism during this period, believes that we do not yet have a complete picture of RCMP activities in relation to Mr. Douglas. He points out that the future Prime Minister of Dominica had failed to be heard as a witness during the McDonald commission.
In a letter listing the reasons why he should testify, Roosevelt Douglas said he was only one part of an open and democratic fight against racial injustice, a cause that received the support of parliamentarians, d churches and other major organizations.
“What were the RCMP’s fears about me? The fact that I was a nonviolent libertarian? »