Royal Canadian Mounted Police Surveillance Reports

Since the Russian Revolution in 1917, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had targeted communist supporters and sympathisers in Canada. According to the RCMP, communism was a security threat, and their supporters should be treated as a danger to the security of the State. RCMP informants and analysts focused on individuals, groups, and organizations such as political parties, trade unions and newspapers who were communists or were associated or affiliated to communist individuals and institutions. The Communist Party of Canada (CPC) was a legal organization until 1931. The federal state declared illegal this political party under Section 98 of the Criminal Code of Canada in 1931 and its leader Tim Buck and seven other individuals were arrested and jailed until 1936. After 1936, the CPC regained its legality, but this political decision did not change how the RCMP approached the CPC and its followers. Communism remained a security threat. 

In the weekly summary reports on revolutionary organizations and agitations in Canada they sent to RCMP headquarters, RCMP agents and informants monitored the activities of communists and their strategies to recruit individuals for the fight in Spain, and to raise awareness about the Spanish Civil War. The RCMP considered these activities to be suspicious and threatening, which justified the gathering of intelligence on individuals, groups, and organizations. The RCMP wanted to assess the strength and the overall reach of communism in the country. It was estimated that there were 15,000 communists in 1937. The RCMP informed the federal government that it should be fearful. Canadians who went to Spain would learn how to wage war and how to disseminate revolutionary thoughts when they returned to the country. 

Despite the adoption of the 1937 Foreign Enlistment Act, which prohibited Canadians from enlisting in foreign armed forces, the RCMP assumed that communist supporters and organizations would not stop their propaganda efforts in favour of Republican forces, so its informants and agents kept an eye on what they called communist agitators and propagandists. They attended public rallies in support of the Spanish Republic and sent detailed reports about them. They detailed efforts to raise funds for the Republic and to denounce the embargo that prevented the military shipment of materiel to the Spanish Republic. They described how communists were recruiting Canadians, notably in Winnipeg, Toronto, and Montreal, for the Republican forces. They kept records of who volunteered. This document reveals how the RCMP approached its surveillance operation, and it highlights why communists were labelled dangerous agitators.  

For the RCMP, the war in Spain demonstrated that communism was seeking world domination and the struggle for Canadian minds and souls was well underway in the country.