Communist Reds, Industrial Blueprints, and the Factory Floor, 1929-1930
Canada’s extensive system of spying and federal oversight of economic espionage and labour unrest arguably began in 1864 when John A. Macdonald, then joint-premier of the Province of Canada, created the RCMP Security Service to protect Canadian borders from American incursions.[1] It was the Post-World War I era, however, that saw the Canadian government react to labour and industrial unrest with new mechanisms of surveillance and control. According to Dieter K. Buse, “The lateness of industrialization undoubtedly accounted for some of the delay by the Canadian state in transforming part of the RCMP into a secret police surveillance organization, but its system of reporting, collective, and collating reflects the systems established during the nineteenth century.”[2]
To put things into context, 1929 saw Canada slide toward an economic depression. The Great Depression, which would last until World War II, saw rapid economic disruption to global stock markets that compromised industrial output across Canada. Simultaneously, and without coincidence, the Communist Party of Canada had extended its reach into key industries, relief organizations emerged, and labour unions continued to strengthen. While Communist sympathies had reached their zenith during the Great Depression, there was still broad disapproval of Socialism in Canadian society. For instance, on August 1, 1930, Canadian newspapers reported that Communists across Canada had unsuccessfully attempted to meet and demonstrate “against imperialist wars and as a movement in support of revolutionary movements in other parts of the world” due to police and citizens quashing their protests.[3] In response, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Canadian Federal government painted a picture of Communists as part of a larger subversive movement embedded in urban and industrial organizations and associations. Indeed, the RCMP established an impressive network of informants in bodies such as the Workers Unity League, Ukrainian Labour temples, the Montréal Young Communists League (YCL), and the Montreal Trade Union Commission.
From the RCMP’s perspective, communists were not just a political nuisance, but a potential conduit for industrial intelligence to flow back to Moscow. The Victoria Daily Times reported on June 12, 1931, that the Honourable Joseph Philipe Baby Casgrain, a Liberal Senator for De Lanaudière (Montreal), had warned cabinet that “Communists in Canada acted under direct instructions from Moscow, and were taking advantage of the depression in an attempt to undermine the present social order in Canada,” in the words of the paper.[4] Surveillance reports from this era reveal an obsession with tracking radical organizers across rail shops, mining camps, naval ports, and munitions-related factories. Each offered technical data, production figures, and labour, which the government believed could be leveraged by a foreign power.
For example, The Auto Workers Life reported that the anti-union Corporations Auxiliary Co. of New York had been retained by Detroit automakers (including their Canadian subsidiaries) to plant spies within the Auto Workers Union. “Fifteen men, all members of the Border Cities Local of the Automobile Workers Industrial Union of Canada were discharged from the plant of the Ford Motor Co. of Canada,” the paper informed readers.[5] Ford Motor Co., was particularly infamous for its “Service Department,” which was made up of gangsters, thugs, and ex-convicts who patrolled and disciplined workers.[6] While unionism was at the forefront of corporate executives’ minds, there were also fears of economic espionage and the leaking of trade secrets. The Auxiliary Co., of Canada Limited reportedly offered companies spies as part of a suite of services for corporations to quash dissidence and crack down on trade secrets being revealed.[7]
Despite media scrutiny of such tactics, clearly the Canadian federal government, and by extension the RCMP, condoned such practices because they believed that there was a concerted effort on the part of a conspiratorial party to turn factories and shops into sites of direct conflict through labour unrest or, more subversively, economic sabotage when industrial capacity or patents were revealed to foreign powers through intelligence gathering. Historian Steve Hewitt notes in his book, Spying 101, “the RCMP sought evidence of covert Soviet influence on overt events—strikes, riots, etc.—much like British intelligence did…”[8] Nevertheless, Ottawa had prepared for this potential concern with the Canadian Criminal Code. Section 98 was used in 1931 to outlaw the Communist Party of Canada and jail its leader, Tim Buck. Use of the Criminal Code in this capacity codified the idea that revolutionary politics were a direct threat to national security, well before any language of “economic espionage” existed. Between 1929 and 1930, the RCMP had analysts looking at labour agitation, communist organizing, and rumours of industrial sabotage across Canada. A central problem remained, however: how does the federal government keep control over the knowledge and infrastructure that underpinned Canada’s war-fighting potential and export controls?
—Prof. Nicholas Hrynyk
[1] Gregory S. Kealey, “Spymasters, Spies, and Their Subjects: The RCMP and Canadian State Repression, 1914-1939,” 18-33. In Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies, edited by Gary Kinsman, Dieter K. Buse, and Mercedes Steedman (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000), 18.
[2] Dieter K. Buse, “Observing the Political and Informing on the Personal: State Surveillance Systems in a European Context,” 11-17. In Whose National Security? Canadian State Surveillance and the Creation of Enemies, edited by Gary Kinsman, Dieter K. Buse, and Mercedes Steedman (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2000), 15.
[3] Author unknown, “Police Forces Are In Control on Reds’ Day,” Victoria Daily Times, August 2, 1930, 3.
[4] Author unknown, “Registration Private Bill Before Senate,” Victoria Daily Times, June 12, 1931, 10.
[5] Author unknown, “Spy on Ford and Chrysler Workers,” The Auto Workers Life, March 1929.
[6] Gilbert King, “How the Ford Motor Company Won a Battle and Lost Ground,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 30, 2013. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-ford-motor-company-won-a-battle-and-lost-ground-45814533/
[7] Stephen Endicott, Raising the Workers’ Flag: The Workers’ Unity League of Canada, 1930-1936 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 190.
[8] Steve Hewitt, Spying 101: The RCMP’s Secret Activities at Canadian Universities, 1917-1997 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 49.