Canada's top spy agency targets parental rights activists

In 2019, Shelly Bruce, then-chief of the Communications Security Establishment (CSE), and David Vigneault, current director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), led a contingent of Canadian security and intelligence officials in the Ottawa Pride Parade, hoisting an LGBT rainbow banner. For those unaware, CSIS is Canada’s rough equivalent to the CIA; the contingent was made up of those tasked with keeping Canada safe from threats, both foreign and domestic.

Thus, the recent revelation that CSIS and Canada’s Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC) believe that the growing parental rights movement is a “violent threat” to Canada and that the supporters of “parental rights” and the “anti-gender movement” are likely connected to neo-Nazi and white nationalist groups is unsurprising. CSIS did not explain how this is compatible with the fact that the largest parental rights protests have been spearheaded by Muslim Canadians, who have been demanding that their children be exempted from LGBT ideology. Nobody will ask them to, either.

According to a document compiled by the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre, obtained by the CBC via an access to information request, CSIS noted that “trans and drag communities in Canada have been the target of several online threats and real-world intimidation tactics in recent months” and that “ITAC, made up of intelligence authorities, is set up to keep tabs on threat actors.” In conclusion, “Anti-2SLGBTQl+ narratives remain a common theme in violent rhetoric espoused by white nationalists, neo-Nazis, the Freedom Movement, and networks such as Diagolon and QAnon.”

Indeed. Once you start hunting for people who believe that there are only two genders and that children should not be taught that sex changes are possible, it’s crazy how large and diverse a group you will discover—Nazis, Muslims, and presumably even Nazi Muslims (the establishment demand for white supremacist boogeymen has long outstripped the meager supply). Canada’s top spies, however, are on the job. Presumably, the premiers of New Brunswick, Saskatchewan, and Alberta are now under surveillance, too. “Diversity is our strength,” Trudeau likes to say—but not like this.

According to the ITAC report, those who support violent extremism due to their religious beliefs are especially prone to “view members of 2SLGBTQI community as desirable targets,” but it did not say if this refers to an overlap between supporters of Hamas and opponents of gender ideology (the parental rights movement in Canada was divided and temporarily derailed after the October 7 attacks on Israel). Responding to the CBC report, CSIS spokesperson Eric Balsam stated that CSIS “assesses that exposure to groups and individuals espousing anti-gender extremist rhetoric could inspire and encourage serious violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community, or against those who are viewed as supporters of pro-gender ideology policies and events.”

Balsam added: “CSIS assesses that the violent threat posed by the anti-gender movement is almost certain to continue over the coming year and that violent actors may be inspired by the University of Waterloo attack to carry out their own extreme violence against the 2SLGBTQI+ community or against other targets they view as representing the gender ideology ‘agenda.’” Note that a foundational assumption of the CSIS report is that there is no “gender ideology agenda”—that what is currently happening across the Western world has always been happening, and that those who meekly point out that perhaps it hasn’t always been happening and that we should ask why it’s happening now are a potential terrorist threat.

In fact, it is opponents of the transgender agenda who face near-constant threats of violence. “Billboard Chris” Elston, who has become famous for protesting gender ideology across Canada, has been violently attacked from Vancouver to Montreal (where pro-trans protestors actually broke his arm). Josh Alexander, the teen activist who got expelled from his Canadian high school for saying there are only two genders (no, seriously), has been punched at protests. Feminist activist Meghan Murphy, a prominent opponent of gender ideology, penned a potent essay in response to the CSIS report detailing the threats of violence against her and the growing trend of trans terrorism that women face across the Western world—she needs bodyguards just to speak at a Canadian university. If this happened to trans activists, you can be assured that we would already have been treated to a speech by the prime minister, but Murphy is the wrong kind of woman.

None of this should surprise us, of course. Gender ideology is, at least for the moment, a state dogma. Politicians of every stripe genuflect to the LGBT movement; law enforcement obediently refers to brawny, snaggle-toothed rapists as ‘she’; the judiciary solemnly presides over the trials of a wave of violent men wearing dresses, identified by the courts as ‘women’; the press covers these stories by noting what the offender did with ‘her penis.’ Our intelligence establishment has been similarly infected, meaning that dissidents—those who believe what everybody believed a decade ago—are subject to intense scrutiny by those exhibiting the zeal of new converts. Canada’s ‘top spy’ is a middle-aged man—do you think he believed children could switch genders twenty years ago? Give me a break.

The fluidity of elite ideological commitments aside, those who oppose current state dogmas are, for the moment, dissidents. Don’t take it from me—take it from Canada’s intelligence agencies.

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As always, I’ve got plenty of other short, regular culture updates on The Bridgehead, and you can get a copy of Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield here and here, and my other books here.