Intelligence Gathering for the G8 and G20 Summits included Event Monitors who infiltrated crowds, Surveillance teams who followed buses or other vehicles travelling to Toronto for protests and a Covert Operations Team, that conducted undercover operations, according to a document released by the RCMP under Access to Information legislation.
The document consists of eight pages that are from four different records, including the Operational Plan for the Joint Intelligence Group (JIG), a multi-agency organisation that conducted intelligence gathering. The documents deal with the investigative arm of the JIG, the Primary Intelligence Investigative Team (PIIT). The Agencies involved in PIIT included the Ontario Provincial Police, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Toronto Police and the Peel Police.
One component of the PIIT was an RCMP led Covert Operation Team (COT) which conducted "undercover operations". The document was used as a source in two recent articles on the long term infiltration of activist groups that began over a year ahead of the G20 protests. The articles appeared in
Briarpatch Magazine and on CBC.ca, just before the one year anniversary of the G20.
In Addition to COT there were 13 other PIIT investigative teams. Some of these teams also conducted covert operations, beyond those carried out by COT, while others were surveillance teams and Event Monitors.
Surveillance Teams were staged in cities outside of Toronto and Huntsville, and followed groups of protesters travelling to the protests to "report on the movements, positions, and numbers of demonstrators heading into the Summit theatre of operations
Event Monitors were plain clothed officers who worked in teams of at least four to monitor or infiltrate crowds at large demonstrations or gatherings and report on the "Tempo and Temperament" of the crowd in real time. They were also charged with "identifying subjects committing criminal offences,." However they were not to become involved in enforcement of the law, except in instances where it would prevent "grievous bodily harm" from taking place.
The document includes an email from Rod McCann, the Commander of the JIG, which was sent on Monday June 21st, 2010, less than a week before the summit took place. He told other members of the JIG, that Toronto Police Chief, William Blair wanted to thank them for their work.
The email also indicated that Blair was quite pleased by the training provided to the event monitoring unit by the Calgary Police Department. It is likely that Calgary Police provided their training based on their experiences during protests against the 2002 G8 Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta.
Another element in the document revealed that if PIIT uncovered any terrorists threat or other threat to national security, they were to report it to the O Division Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. (O INSET).
You can read the document here:
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