In the 1970s, the RCMP hired an FBI agent to infiltrate Black activist groups in Canada

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This opinion piece is by Rinaldo Walcott, a Canadian writer and political scientist who is featured in the episode 'Justice Denied.' Watch now on CBC Gem.

If you Google the name Warren Hart, the person you'll read about below won't appear on the first page of your search results. Many people named Warren Hart will appear, but not this one. You'd have to add "RCMP" or "FBI" or "informant" or "infiltrator," and only then would you learn about the Black FBI and NSA agent who joined the RCMP to infiltrate Black and Indigenous groups and spy on activists in Canada between 1971 and 1975.

A long history of surveillance

Black activists have been under surveillance for decades, and this continues to today. In 2020, documents revealed that Canadian Forces intelligence officers had monitored the Black Lives Matter movement in Ontario (the military claims it was pandemic-related). And there's evidence that Toronto police tracked BLM protestors in Toronto in 2016.

If you spend any time with Black activists, you will come to know they believe this surveillance goes beyond the RCMP and military to include other local police departments and CSIS. We know CSIS, along with the RCMP, monitored Indigenous and environmental groups opposed to Enbridge's Northern Gateway pipeline project.

In the U.S. in the '50s, the FBI set up the now infamous COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) to disrupt organizations that the state believed threatened political stability, including civil rights and Black Power groups. A Senate committee report revealed that there were more than 2,000 approved COINTELPRO actions.

Undercover operatives or "ops" infiltrated groups on behalf of the state, with deadly consequences for both leaders and foot soldiers of the movement. Many activists went into exile or have served, and continue to serve, some of the longest prison sentences in the U.S.;they contend they're being held as political prisoners.

To be an op in activist circles means, at best, you cannot be trusted and, at worst, you are putting lives at risk.

Warren Hart didn't just spy on Black activist groups he also encouraged them to commit subversive and violent acts

Warren Hart might not have been the first to infiltrate activist groups in Canada, but his work with the RCMP signaled a turning point for how authorities monitor figures in the country's Black rights groups and other political movements. And his story has roots in surveillance practices in the States from the 1950s to the '70s.

As an undercover agent for COINTELPRO, Hart founded the Baltimore chapter of the Black Panther Party. Then in 1971, when the RCMP needed someone with "expertise in infiltrating Black radical organizations," they hired the American.

One of Hart's principal targets, Roosevelt (Rosie) Douglas had helped organize a multi-day protest in 1969, after six Black students at Sir George Williams University (now Concordia University) in Montreal accused a biology professor of racism, and a committee rejected the complaint. In the aftermath of that protest, Douglas was a key figure in bringing together various Black factions in Canada. (He later served briefly as the prime minister of the island nation of Dominica, decades after his eventual deportation from Canada.)

Hart's goal was to infiltrate and align himself with Douglas. Hart became, in his own words, Douglas's "chauffeur, his bodyguard and his confidant."

But Hart didn't just report on what the RCMP considered to be subversive activities. "[He encouraged] members of Douglas's entourage to arm themselves and Indigenous groups to commit subversive or violent acts," David Austin wrote in Fear of a Black Nation: Race, Sex, and Security in Sixties Montreal.

Hart's goal was to incite criminal behaviour, which the authorities could then use to justify moving in on activists to arrest and thereby discredit them, just as they had in the U.S.

Ricky Atkinson was one of those activists.

He was 16 when he met Hart, who was posing as an organizer for the Black Panthers in Toronto. "[Hart] taught us demolition and police avoidance and surveillance," Atkinson said in a 2011 article in the National Post.

Atkinson had committed crimes before (at 10, he was caught stealing bicycles in Toronto's Kensington Market), but said it was Hart who planned a 1972 armed robbery, Atkinson's first, to fund the Black Panther movement in the States. The teen was caught and served four years in prison. In 1986, he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for another bank robbery.

Atkinson's story is just one we know of. A 1978 brief by the RCMP reads: "It was agreed that Hart should claim to have criminal associations to account for his lifestyle, but it was never intended that he should cultivate them. Hart was repeatedly told not to become involved in any criminal activity instructions he chose to ignore."

The 1981 Commission of Inquiry Concerning Certain Activities of the RCMP revealed actions by Hart that bordered on illegal, including possession of stolen property and making a covert recording but were ultimately deemed not to be.

"Insp. Worrell testified that Mr. Hart performed excellent work for the RCMP at times and that, at other times, his conduct was a matter of concern, but that generally speaking his efforts were quite good, especially in 1972 and early 1973," the commission's report reads. "Insp. Worrell testified that he formed the opinion that Mr. Hart was 'a sandlot thug,' 'an egomaniac' and a man whose ego was 'giant-sized;' this opinion was based on reports he received, as Insp. Worrell did not deal with Mr. Hart personally."

This is yet another reason why calls to abolish the police make sense to many of us

Hart's case demonstrates how different rules can apply to those acting on behalf of the state. The RCMP remains a significant barrier to justice for many oppressed groups in Canada. Numerous reports into the RCMP's practices have found the organization conducting shoddy investigations, failing to understand racialized communities, and tolerating harassment, sexual harassment and racism in the workplace.

At the heart of this story is the way in which police practices bring violence to communities. Atkinson said Hart encouraged him to commit armed robbery, radically altering the course of the teen's life. We see how some police practices provoke and shape events, rather than protect from harm. In this case, the police, via Hart, actually caused harm.

This is yet another reason why calls to abolish the police make sense to many of us.

Warren Hart's actions remind us that the Canadian state and its agencies, like the police, are never passive players in the struggles of racialized people attempting to live lives of dignity. In fact, the state has actively opposed their calls for change.

It's a myth that the Canadian state is benevolent and accommodating. With Hart, we see how the government's police force ran a covert war against Indigenous and Black activists, who essentially just wanted to live lives free of oppression.

Demands for equality, justice and peace to live lives unbothered by state repression led to the state's police using its power to thwart such demands. Think about that.

Watch "Justice Denied" Wednesday, Dec. 6, at 9 p.m. (9:30 p.m. NT) on CBC-TV and anytime onCBC Gem.

For more stories about the experiences of Black Canadians from features on anti-Black racism to success stories from within the Black community check out Being Black in Canada, a CBC project Black Canadians can be proud of.You can read more stories here.