Just my 2 cents, from experience...

[shockedcanadian]

Hello all,

First time posting in this forum. I can assure you I don't work for any government organization, I am not here to spread propaganda. I feel it is important to express my opinion here, to give you at least one persons experience of the "grass on the other side". I want to provide my 2 cents and to give a fresh perspective from what you may experience in the U.S, as alot of you do reside there.

I am a Canadian citizen, born and raised and I can openly say that the amount of civilian freedom that we have in Canada pales in comparison to what you have in the U.S. I have visited the U.S on numerous ocassions, in 5 different states in different areas of the country, each time greatly enjoying my intereactions with the friendly people there. I have enjoyed the fact that Americans say what they feel; they (you) are more direct, opinionated, honest and forthcoming. Furthermore, although the economy in the U.S is sputtering right now (ours isn't that much better I can assure you), you have the stronger protections to allow for economic creativity and efficiency. Canadians in general are great people, and I truly do love my country, but we do not enjoy many of the luxuries that a U.S citizen does based on the perverted interference by our own treasonous intelligence forces. In fact, we experience more interference per capita I imagine than you ever would, do some research and you may be appalled. We do not have the number of think tanks and support for varying opinions like Americans do, therefore, we are stifled as a nation, failing to grow as we should after 150 years of existence.

You are protected by strict amendments, which your country holds dear, especially the right to freedom of speech. This is a very important right, one which is not so welcome in Canada by various organizations (including our leaders for the last 40 years) snd in fact often times they will purposely assassinate your character and misrepresent your opinion to create a threat. Too many are not so open to frank, open discussions; so instead problems festor and become worse or remain stagnant as they attempt to paint anyone they care to a "concern". At least in America you attempt to address fears, worries and concerns, even if the discussions are passionate and there are disagreements, at least the ideas are tabled and addressed. You have your first Black president, this would not have been possible in my opinion without open discussion about race, just as one example. I may be wrong, but I think that this has to do with the fact that citizens in the U.S feel it is their God given right to express themselves, and to do so allows for a better, more free country. The CIA does not hamper this quality in the U.S, nor does it manufacture it as is done in Canada (by our intelligence forces), instead, the CIA assists in assuring this ability and these rights are available to it's citizens.

In American you have the CIA and FBI, we have the equals in our CSIS and RCMP. These organizations, like any intelligence agencies are not perfect, BUT, the difference is that the CIA deal with legitimate issues and there is no doubt that they protect your nation against legitimate threats and dangersthat truly exist. Kudos to their efforts, regardless of your opinion of them, they do a difficult job in a difficult enviornment. In Canada however, far too often the RCMP and CSIS (our two main intelligence agencies) are more concerned with manufacturing threats to essentially justify their existences and payrolls. You can trust me on this one as I speak from personal experience, the targetting of myself started when I was as young as 17 years old, I am now in my 30's and still a person of interest, though I am a strong supporter of capitalism and rights, nor have I been charged with a crime, nor have I raped, threatened, killed or interfered on anyone's rights. My situation has become so bad that I was forced to write a detailed book about my experiences, you can guess which nation's publishers had the most interest in this book (it wasn't Canada).

Yes, we have legitimate threats, but not enough to keep all of our "operatives" busy and to maintain such large budgets(proportionally speaking), therefore, they engage in entrapment, economic, political and civilian level interference often for thier own personal gain, at the expense of the people they publicly vow to protect. Some of the time they waste on certain illegitimate "non-threats" wouldn't even be on the radar in the U.S as your intelligence agencies are working hard to deal with legitimate concerns, not create them as is done here. Addressing of these legitimate concerns saves lives and allows you the freedoms that you hold so dear.

Thanks for your time, I would open to any discussion if any of you even care about my opinion or experiences as a Canadian. I just wanted to express this and I was hoping this forum would be somewhat therapeutic to allow this. I am a normal Canadian in an unfortunate point in time, like some of you I suppose. You are not alone in dealing with civil liberty concerns, and we each have our own situations, but at least you have some recourse and organizations to assist in righting what is wrong.

Keep up the good work, many more Canadians hope you succeed than those who hope you fail. Come visit us anytime and share that passion for freedom and justice with us. :)

[Glassunion]

1. Welcome!

That was quite an interesting piece.

If I may ask, as I don't want to assume. What made you be concidered a person of interest?

Also, we do have our problems, as you said. But I think we are slowly slipping into the same black hole that you see yourself in. But we the people do have our rights, and that pisses off some of our politicians. And when thier pissed, usually somthing good for the people just happened.

I do love Canada, I have been here a couple of times. My wife and I are considering a trip to BC in the near future. She has never seen the pacific ocean, and I cannot think of a more beautiful place on the west coast to view it from.

[shockedcanadian]

2. A very very long and complicated story...

First of all thanks for your interest, hopefully it is genuine as it is obviously difficult to know in cyberspace. Secondly, feel free to visit Canada anytime, we have a great country. The people here are great, some of the nicest in the world, unfortunately not too many people experience the dark side of the establishment like I have. Average person here (like most people in the U.S from my experiences) would give you the shirt off of their backs, in particular out East in Nova Scotia and also in Newfoundland I am told.

This will seem like a very long posting, but actually this is in a compressed nutshell, I have over 200 pages of a book which I finished which goes into a lot more details, but this is not the place to advertise further than that, there is ALOT more to this story (in fairness, from both sides). Essentially...

I was 17 years old, hanging around with the wrong crowd. Didn't kill, rape, kidnap or sell guns or drugs. Basically, we got into alot of fights and other youth trouble and BS, which I now regret, but it was part of the environment I was living in. I was not dirt poor, but I was not on the right side of the tracks either. We were definitely not career criminals or some organized mob (as we have freely operating in Canada).

So...in my final year of high school I became focused in my schooling, this is because I was living on my own now, trying to make ends meet with a parttime job abd full time high school. A 21 year old adult tried numerous times to get me to get involved in more serious crimes, I refused, I knew there was a big difference between youthful misdirection and legitimate crime. I was not interested, and i focused on my school, received great marks and was accepted into University (I graduated from University near top of my class, but I digress...). There is a reason to believe now, that he was a covert op, this is not the place to go into full details on this.

During this period, is what I will call the "manufacturing stage". As bad luck would have it, I was jumped on back to back weekends in the city I lived in, bith times I was coming back home from work. Two different groups of youth "minority" youth jumped me, beat me and robbed me. Keep in mind this happened within a 7 day span. I had my front tooth broken (now capped) and my nose broken (twice, ouch). I was angry and I lost alot of my self esteem after these attacks. At this time, I was "befriended" by a couple of people, they perpetrated this anger in me by telling me that there was a group to help people like me, this group was called the Heritage Front based out of Toronto. They were basically a "white Rights" group. I was given a number to call, this is now notoriously known as the Heritage Front Hotline. I will state right now, I was never raised to be a racist, my mother abhors that type of attitude, but I was young, defeated, alone (hadnt seen my parents in over a year since I left home), and I was vulnerable...CSIS knew this.


I called the number twice in a 3 minute period, both times I received a voice message and I laughed at the womans voice, I didn't have an interest in this group and it sounded like a support group. I NEVER joined this group, nor did I ever push any further interest in this group. As it turns out; and I STRONGLY encourage you to do some research on this subject as it runs very deep (even into federal politics), this group was funded by CSIS, through a covert operative named Grant Bistrow (CSIS denied his involvement for years, only a few years ago did he comes out and say he was in fact CSIS). By most court documents, he was the one encouraging violent racist acts, AND he helped create the Heritage Fund hotline (hence the interest in me). The hotline was to catch young radical and dangerous boogeymen like myself, of course, how you obtain the phone number would be a mystery (unless offered to you, by guess whom?). It seems once CSIS knew I was not interested in becoming a criminal, they felt I was an ideal candidate to target as a potential racist/anti-semite. For the record, after I was jumped on those two ocassions I did have racist "views" (though many of my friends were not Caucasian), however, I could never be deemed an anti-semite as I didn't even know what a Jewish person was at the time, I was that sheltered from world, theology and religious issues. Of course, as time went on and I became better educated, my anger subsided, and my views became far more liberal. I can openly say I am not a racist, and I never was in the truest, prejudicial sense.

Fast forward to University graduation, I obtained a very good paying job at a major U.S corporation. In my time there I was nominated for awards and essentially built my career. However, after the first month and a half there, a new person was hired for our team who tried to make my development difficult, he was, as I found out later, a CSIS operative.

It's funny because from the start one of my good friends (of course not one of the bad apples I hung out with when I was younger, they were long out of my life at this point) who met him told me how fake he thought he was. I just thought he was a bit "out there". He had alot in common with me from music, to sport interests etc. However, one area we differed greatly was his views on the world. I had never really become involved in politics, he did. He constantly tried to bring up discussions of race, and in particular Jewish issues. I did not know much about the Middle East, but I told him I supported Israel's stance against terrorists who strap themselves with bombs, this bothered him, and we often argued about this. I was arguing from a personal opinion, not specifically as a positiobe on the region (if you are a suicide bomber and want to terrorize innocent people, that nation has a right to prevent you from killing their population etc.), because I didn't know much about this area, I could not comment on it. He pushed ALOT of propaganda, for someone who was 10 years my elder, at a major corporation I should have seen that there was something wrong with this, but I conidered him a friend, I just thought he was a cospiracy theorist; he had his right to his opinion, though I disagreed (the idealist in me). He sent me probably 50 emails, all with radical cospiracies against Jewish people in particular. I never responded, I did look at some links; I told him to stop sending them, and I would sometime laugh at him, as I really did think he was just an unusual character (I think it was his overdramatic strategy he tried on me, meant to create an emotional response). He didn't comply with my request (I just never read them anymore), sometimes I would send an email back to him totally disagreeing with him and essentially playing devils advocate.

Now, 9/11 occurs, at this point, like so many other, I am very angry and sickened by what I see on TV. He says he is angry, but almost from the start he rejects what he sees through the media and he blames the attacks on Israel. He then goes on to state with strong certainty that the U.S government is involved in this as well (only one small example of his anti-American tirade that he engaged in, he really tried to push an anti-American view, which I always rejected). At this point, especially with it being so fresh an event, I argue vehemently against his view, and we almost came to blows a couple of times because he was so offensive, even with some of the people who had perished in the attacks (though he probably doesnt know how close I was to actually hitting him). I was in particular a very passionate as a supporter of the U.S, especially in their desire to protect themselves and their citizens from terrorists (I have always hated bullies). I told him that it would be suicide for Israel to attack the U.S and I rejected this claim as well. Keep in mind this happened very soon after the 9/11 attacks. My father was in the military, as was his father; I have never agreed with terrorist attacks and I agreed with a strong response if one is attacked. I even went so far as an unofficial request from my manager that I move to another area, as I could not stand his political views and his constant attempts to push them on me.

His role was simple, throw hundreds of darts at me, and try to hit the board with one or two. He was hoping some of his views would resonate with me and he could justify his existence and CSIS could justify targetting me, both past and present. Nothing could be further from the truth as they had no legitimate reason to target me. Other details about this agent:

- He pushed for me to create a union at a large non-union company (career suicide to try)
- He talked behind my back in typical character assassinations (I was made aware of this by my manager of all people, who at the time I didnt believe as I thought she was just trying to divide us)
- When I left the city and I confronted him about my suspicions about him, he said, and I quote "Are you going to go public with this? Think about your family" An obvious and not so subtle threat.

Here are some more tidbits; though certainly not the meat of the persecution I have and continue to experience:

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Intrerestingly enough, and again you would really need to do alot of intelligence research to understand how they operate (especialy in regards to the Heritage Front, it is a huge source of embarassment for csis), things became WORSE for me when I called him out about my suspicions. In particular when I placed a complaint to the lapdog oversight agency SIRC, things definitely got worse and more overt (when I spoke to the person handling my complaint he candidly told me that he goes to lunch with some of the CSIS agents on a regular basis, I don't see any conflict of interest there...).

-The VERY NEXT DAY after I complained to the SIRC a man followed very closely behind me at the local library, I mean 1 step right behind me for a full 2 minutes (2 witnesses to this). I was angry, and I asked him if I knew him, asked why he was following me. He replied that he did know me, when I called him out on this lie he came clean and said, and I quote: "I may not know you but I know where you live". After he said that he abruptly left the library. This is standard practice, in an attempt to intimidate me as they knew I was "blowing the whistle" and I had figured out what had happened against me.

-The straw that really broke my back was this past summer, when I drove over to the U.S I was held for 45 minutes at the border, the guards took my passport and told me to wait on the side, no reason given. 45 minutes later another guard comes back and returns my passport, I ask him if there is a problem, he replied, and I quote "Nope, not with us, you are free go. You might want to contact your government (Canadian) though. Have a nice day". Obviously they had flagged me, leave it to the U.S to be honest with me...as my government obviously hasn't been. Keep in mind I do not have a record, I have not committed a crime, hell I haven;t even been ACCUSED of a crime, though with their desire to character assinate and their ongoing defamation of character anything is possible.

-Employment interference (although I am currently working), has been ruthless and ongoing. In my current role, the same day I am hired, a new executive overseeing my team is hired, replacing the old executive. He moved from Calgary to my city (a much smaller and economically insignifact city). I am being managed out of the business, and his personal interference has been overt and dramatic (even other employees have noticed it and commented on it with confusion).

So, the morrow of this is simple. CSIS created a hate group, paid handsomely for Grant to infiltrate and "light the spark" as court documents suggest; they funded their illegal activities with taxpayers money, they pushed this group on anyone and everyone to jusitfy their actions. |Furthermore, they commited crimes against certain communities in Toronto (in particular anti-racist and Jewish groups). In return, they need to create the "fall guys", of which I am one of them. They need ot justify what they did in the name of "the greater good". It may have been reasonable in a few cases, but in my case it is absolute horseshit. They are only worried that I becamse aware of so much of the truth and they are being outed for it.

Put it this way. If CSIS had never actively been involved in targetting me, I would have lived a happy, peacelife life. I would not have had an interest in the Heritage Front, I would have contributed positively to the economy etc. What do they have now? A pending lawsuit, a published book discuing in mich grater detail what happened (including the ops names).

In my opinion, these activities do nothing for Canada. They do not prevent legitimate threats from crossing our borders in the U.S, they do not prevent terrorist attacks, they do nothing to prevent industrial espionage in Canada. What it DOES accomplish, is justification for the work they do (regardless of how perverted it is to manfucture threats) and, it continues to allow the Canadian economy, already some of the least efficient in the world to remain this way, as obviously there are many innocent people who might be able to contribute to this country in a positive manner but are not given the chance. Finally their actions do alot to incite hatred for other countries, some which Canada suggests are their good friends (such as the USA), meanwhile they are busy spreading hate propaganda behind their backs.

If you were able to read and absorb all of this, I appreciate you taking the time to do so. Do yourself a favour and research the Heritage Front fiasco, in particular the court documents, and you tell me if CSIS is justified in their actions. They have a massiv eincrease in their budget, how else to keep people busy but to target a manufactured threat 18 years later? Only so much work to go around I guess...I will keep you updated on the outcome of the lawsuit.