TORONTO – Organized crime groups are attempting to “infiltrate” government agencies and departments and, in some cases, are succeeding, according to reports obtained by Global News, like the one from the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada (CISC), which highlights that 29 organized crime groups have “influence and access” within the public sector, while another 369 groups are trying to achieve the same result. 

The CISC report finds that criminal “infiltration” can increase the cost of government projects by up to 50%, while damaging public trust in institutions. “Infiltration” occurs primarily within local and “regional” governments and these groups “could exploit the benefits of this access for inter-provincial or international criminal activity”.

The report offers a glimpse into the scale of organized crime groups operating in Canada: they are believed to number more than 3,000 as of 2022, according to the CISC.

But there’s more: the National Committee of Parliamentarians for Security and Intelligence (NSICOP) has even observed that criminal and extremist groups have attempted to join Canadian law enforcement and security agencies: some have succeeded . The RCMP considers 14 organized crime groups operating in Canada to be a serious threat, NSICOP says, capable of infiltrating police and security agencies. These 14 “high-level threats” operate in four provinces: Ontario (6), Quebec (3), British Columbia (4), Alberta (1).

While the CISC report focuses on organized crime, there have been warnings for years that extremist and nationalist white supremacist groups are attempting to join both law enforcement and the Canadian Armed Forces, and where the motivation of organized criminal groups is in profit is definitive, extremist infiltration has more sinister intentions: access to training, tactics, equipment, weapons.

The National Security and Intelligence Review Agency (NSIRA), an independent federal body, reported in 2022 that nationalism was an “active” issue for the CAF and one that the military’s counterintelligence branch was ill-equipped to address. “The CAF remains attractive to elements of the right-wing, with a series of internal reports having warned of white supremacist membership among the ranks” the report reads, but is partially censored.

Photo by Vlad Vasnetsov from Pixabay