Conspiracies all around
Or, the PQ leader gets in the game
Nothing better than a juicy conspiracy theory to bolster your political chances and play to the instincts of your base. For a leading advocate of Alberta separatism, the “Alberta Prosperity Project,” conspiracies are everywhere. The Federal government is keeping Alberta down, of course, but it gets better, the feds are actually controlled by the Chinese communist party and driven by Marxist-socialist policies (hold on, are we talking about Mark Carney???). The WHO, the UN and the World Economic Forum are all waiting to get Alberta in their clutches. These organizations, the APP proudly says, don’t match Albertan values and an independent Alberta will have nothing to do with them. (It will, however, restore Christian values). COVID-19 was some kind of hoax and a manufactured excuse for federal over-reach (hello Truckers!). And on and on. [i] But they missed one trick—that someone, preferably the federal government, was spying on them.
Now we have that card being played by the leader of the provincial separatist Parti Quebecois. The PQ’s leader, St-Pierre Plamondon, claims to have “information” related to federal spying on his party but admits he has no proof and no way of investigating. [ii] But who needs evidence when you know your history? M. Plamondon knows his history from decades ago, when the RCMP Security Service tried to penetrate the violence-prone (and vaguely Marxist -inspired) FLQ (Front de Liberation de Quebec) during the 1960s and carried on the hunt in the 1970s against the Parti Quebecois, including by engaging as a paid informant a PQ Cabinet Minister, Claude Morin. M. Morin died a little over a week ago, so his ghost has been recruited by the current PQ leader.
Sure, the feds will do it again. The only problem is that M. Plamondon doesn’t seem to know the history between the 1970s and today—a few decades of historical amnesia. This history comes with a Royal Commission into RCMP spying, the end of the RCMP Security Service, the creation of a replacement, civilian CSIS with a new legal mandate and controls embedded in the CSIS Act of 1984, a Canadian Charter of Rights, the requirement for federal court warrants to engage in intrusive surveillance, independent intelligence and security review bodies with strong powers, and new policies adding caution to any intelligence collection targeting “sensitive sectors” of society, including political parties and actors, academia, the media, religious institutions and trade unions. Lessons have been learned, much has changed. The past, in this case, is not prologue.
Plamondon’s claims got the media’s attention, which was surely the point. Among media outlets, The Globe and Mail covered the story. As part of their account, the Globe’s reporters dug out the allegations made by Mike Frost about the activities of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) including that it had a ‘division’ to monitor separatist politicians in the 1980s. [iii]
Ah, the Frost affair. Frost’s tell-all memoir, Spyworld: How C.S.E. Spies on Canadians and the World (actually a narrative recounted through journalist Michel Gratton), caused a massive stir when it was published in 1994. It was the first (and last) insider account of the CSE ever to see the light of day. The government contemplated charging him under the then- Official Secrets Act, but decided against, likely fearing additional publicity. The publication eventually led to the creation of an independent, civilian review body for the CSE.
The Globe story took me back to Spyworld, to refresh my memory of what exactly he had said. Overall, his account is a farrago of plausible operational tales, where he was directly involved (including one involving a spy installation at the Canadian embassy in Moscow), hearsay about other CSE activities, and fairy tales. My favourite in the last category is the claim that CSE spied on Princess Diana at the behest of the British.
Frost’s allegations about CSE spying on the PQ falls in the hearsay category. He “heard” that CSE had reached out to the Norwegians and other Nordic partners (they all do signals intelligence, mostly focused on Russia) to ask for any intercepted traffic they might have between France and Quebec during the Rene Levesque period in office. Frost put his heart on his sleeve on this one and told Gratton that he wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do. [iv]
Did it actually happen? Who knows, but the Nordics would have been an unlikely set of countries to reach out to for intercept on French government communications with Quebec. And hearsay isn’t quite the way things work at CSE; in fact it would get you into a lot of trouble with the security side of the shop. Siginters don’t sit around over coffee talking about their latest exploits. CSE is a highly secretive organization and deeply internally “compartmented” when it comes to its intelligence ops. Information circulates within on a strictly need to know basis. Maybe loose lips sink occasional CSE ships, but a big question mark hangs over this Frost allegation.
The same goes for a related Frost claim, that he knew of the existence of a “French Problem” section at CSE headquarters. He says he didn’t know any details, except that “that the people working there deal solely with the question of Quebec separation.” [v] I am not sure how you square the idea that he didn’t know any of the details with the fact of him claiming to know one central detail, but there you go. I don’t buy this story either. CSE is and always has been a foreign intelligence collection agency. It might well, on occasion, have sought to intercept French traffic (it’s war time predecessor worked on Vichy French communications). But the idea that what was a very small organisation at the time (its over 3-4 times the size now) would have maintained a “division” dealing with Quebec separatism strikes me as highly implausible. CSE has been governed, incidently, by a legal statute since 2001 and recently acquired stand-alone legislation (the CSE Act, 2019) which defines its mandate.
There is a separate question. Will provincial and federal governments have to deal with foreign interference in any future Quebec referendum, should it occur? Maybe. But it won’t be anything like the concerns around French meddling with the Quebec independence movement in times past. There are new players out there to mess with Canada’s democracy—Russia, the PRC, India for starters—all fingered by the Public Inquiry into Foreign Interference. And plenty of new tools, especially online. There is also the “Donmonroe” appetites of Donald Trump and his people. In any case, there are lots of bridges to cross before we get there (2030 anyone?).
It’s bad enough having to deal with the conspiracy theorists who drive the Alberta separatist movement. It might behoove Quebecers to put a lid on their version. The best response to conspiracy theories is--laughter. Evidence rarely works.
[i] You can read all about it on the Alberta Prosperity Project website, https://albertaprosperityproject.com
[ii] Eric Andrew-Gee and Maura Forrest, The Globe and Mail, “Parti Quebecois Leader alleges Ottawa is spying on separatist movement without offering proof,” May 12, 2026, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-parti-quebecois-leader-alleges-ottawa-is-spying-on-separatist-movement/
[iii] ibid
[iv] Mike Frost (as told to Michel Gratton), Spyworld: How C.S.E. Spies on Canadians and the World (Doubleday Canada, 1994; Seal books paperback edition, 1995), p. 240
[v] Ibid, p. 242
Plamondon provided zero evidence of his own for his claim. Until he does - and he likely won't, because there likely is none - we should treat it as a bizarre kind of reverse McCarthyism, explicable only by the fact that he and his party have a commitment to a third referendum that is a bit of an albatross, given the aversion at present of the Quebec public for yet another go-around of the neverendum. Why not toss some unsustantiated mud at the feds, since on the McCarthy premise, some of it might stick? One could note that the most popular politician in Quebec today is not Plamondon, but Mark Carney. That must sting!
On the bridges to cross: do you think we could realistically increase the capacity of things like the SITE Task Force and Rapid Response Mechanism and allow them to work with provincial Election Commissions? My understanding is that referendums fall under provincial authority and that these provincial oversight bodies don't have the resources or mandates to look for interference or disinformation. Should we have a public conversation about whether provincial elections across Canada should come under federal oversight? Should we talk about it before the Alberta referendum, or after? I was also wondering about foreign money funding domestic political actors or even parties, do we have good policing tools to make sure that foreign influence isn't coming in the form of financial support?