The RCMP Security Service (french: Service de sécurité de la GRC) was a branch of the

Royal Canadian Mounted Police The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...

(RCMP) that had responsibility for domestic

intelligence Intelligence has been defined in many ways: the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. It can be described as the ...

and

security" \n\n\nsecurity.txt is a proposed standard for websites' security information that is meant to allow security researchers to easily report security vulnerabilities. The standard prescribes a text file called \"security.txt\" in the well known locat ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tota ...

. It was replaced by the

Canadian Security Intelligence Service The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS, ; french: Service canadien du renseignement de sécurité, ''SCRS'') is Canada's primary national intelligence agency. It is responsible for collecting, analysing, reporting and disseminating i ...

(CSIS) in 1984 on the recommendation of the

McDonald Commission The Royal Commission of Inquiry into Certain Activities of the RCMP, better known as the McDonald Commission, was a Royal Commission called by the Canadian government of Pierre Trudeau to investigate the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after a num ...

, which was called in the wake of major scandals during the 1970s.

History

In 1950, the RCMP's

Special Branch Special Branch is a label customarily used to identify units responsible for matters of national security and intelligence in British, Commonwealth, Irish, and other police forces. A Special Branch unit acquires and develops intelligence, us ...

was formally established to conduct its

counterintelligence Counterintelligence is an activity aimed at protecting an agency's intelligence program from an opposition's intelligence service. It includes gathering information and conducting activities to prevent espionage, sabotage, assassinations or o ...

operations. Prior to that, the branch was a component of the RCMP's Criminal Investigation Branch, where political security operations and criminal investigations were not distinct before 1936. The RCMP carried out extensive security service work since the force was reconstituted in 1920, when it merged with the Dominion Police and became the federal police agency solely responsible for national security. Between the wars, this work was overwhelmingly directed at the

Communist Party A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of '' The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. ...

, as well as labour and the left more generally. In 1962, the branch was renamed the Directorate of Security and Intelligence, and in 1970, it became the RCMP Security Service. During the 1960s, it targeted

Quebec Quebec ( ; )According to the Government of Canada, Canadian government, ''Québec'' (with the acute accent) is the official name in Canadian French and ''Quebec'' (without the accent) is the province's official name in Canadian English is ...

nationalists, particularly the militant

Front de libération du Québec The (FLQ) was a Marxist–Leninist and Quebec separatist guerrilla group. Founded in the early 1960s with the aim of establishing an independent and socialist Quebec through violent means, the FLQ was considered a terrorist group by the Cana ...

(FLQ). As a result of illegal tactics used by the RCMP Security Service and consequent scandals surrounding the RCMP, intelligence work was transferred to a new agency, CSIS in 1984 through the implementation of Bill C-9. However, the RCMP has again become involved in intelligence work, particularly related to

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

, following the bombing of Air India Flight 182 in 1985 and the

9/11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...

.https://web.archive.org/web/20070519015136/http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=21e0deb9-3801-4979-973b-cafa24cae47c

References

Defunct Canadian intelligence agencies Defunct divisions and units of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police {{Canada-gov-stub