Strategic incapacitation,scaled up: National security influence on protest policing for the 2018 Quebec G7 summit

National-level coordination

Twenty-five federal agencies with the support of multiple provincial, municipal, and private sector actors were involved in organising security for the 2018 G7 Summit in Quebec. In this section we unpack the role of these key agencies and their roles in summit security – notably the RCMP-led Integrated Security Unit (ISU), and the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) – before focusing on the Sentinelle training exercises in the lead-up to the summit. The extent of the national-level coordination is articulated in the G7 Summit Strategic Emergency Management Contingency Plan (PSC, 2018-180: 1), which outlines the roles and ‘posture’ of multiple federal agencies. Within, the G7 Summit Security and Safety Coordination Structure includes an organisational chart indicating eight different coordination centres. Public Safety Canada (2018-180) suggested it would be useful to build on “Public Safety Emergency Management and National Security governances” for the provision of security at the summit (p. 12). The Treasury Board of Canada Secretariat prepared a Federal Inter-departmental Security Planning Guidance document (CSIS, 2017-784), governing coordination between these agencies and levels of government (PSC, 2018-180). National security agencies were in charge of the network, directing local police activities. The operations that followed are security responses (Tulumello and Falanga, 2022; Boykoff, 2007) that display “spatial reach” (Sage et al., 2015, 497) typical of scaled-up security operations.

The RCMP led an ISU for the 2018 G7 Summit. The ISU was comprised of members from the CAF and local police partners including the Sûreté du Québec (SQ) (Quebec’s provincial police force) and municipal police forces from Quebec City, Montreal, and Saguenay (PSC, 2018-180). The ISU created a Joint Intelligence Group (JIG) in July 2017 with a mandate to collect, analyse and disseminate security intelligence on possible threats and suspicious activities surrounding the G7 Summit (CSEC, 2018-18). The JIG is comprised of intelligence representatives from the RCMP, SQ, Service de Police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM), CAF, CSIS, CSEC, Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA), and Canadian Coast Guard (CCG). The number of agencies in the network and the federal coordination reflects Sage and colleague’s (2015) first element of scale: numerous connections between state (central, hierarchal) and other agencies steered by this central cluster. This high-level integration between federal, provincial, municipal, and private actors is indicative of a broad security network (Tulumello and Falanga, 2022; Boykoff, 2007) and the scaling up of the strategic incapacitation model for policing international summits.

Military personnel were embedded in the ISU, the Unified Command Centre (UCC), and in the training exercises leading up to the summit. The ISU built the UCC – referred to as the “G7 war room” (PSC 2018-88: 991) – at the Valcartier military base which was the overseeing security command centre for the theatre of operations (PSC, 2018-180). The Canadian military was “poised to help detect, deter, prevent and defeat threats and aggression during the period of the Summit” (CSIS, 2017-784: 70) and led the Joint Task Force East-Forward which provided routine updates to national partners through the Canadian Forces Integrated Command Centre in Ottawa (PSC, 2018-180). The military’s security operation in support of the RCMP for the 2018 G7 Summit was dubbed Operation Cadence. The security efforts involved 2206 military personnel who conducted 225 hours of observation and analysis between May 23 and June 13, 269 military vehicles, 15 aircraft with 125 hours flown, seven marine vessels, a radar site, and a medical care facility (DND, 2018). Documents obtained from DND through the ATIA outline the major training exercises (DND, 2019-629), the roles and responsibilities of numerous military units, and show that the military assessed demonstrations as a potential threat. With political protest identified as a primary threat to summit security, as part of a network of integrated security actors, the Canadian military mobilised resources and training in support of civil operations, including the use of less-lethal weapons, gas masks, anticipated decontamination sites (DND, 2019-625; 2019-628), as well as rules of engagement (DND, 2019-627). Military intelligence noted that left-wing groups were organising protests and that between 3000-5000 were expected in Quebec City and 100-300 protesters at the La Malbaie site (DND, 2019-626).

The Canadian Army Simulation Centre (CASC) (part of Defence Research and Development Canada’s Centre for Security Science), along with its private sector partner Calian Group Ltd., oversaw the key training exercises for the 2018 G7 Summit. The CASC itself has around 30 military staff but is supported by over 600 full- and part-time Calian staff. Over 90% of Calian personnel with the CASC are former CAF members (Fritz-Millett, 2017). Calian has designed training exercises for the Canadian military for over two decades, ¹ including for the Vancouver Olympics, the 2010 G8/G20 Summit, and the most recent 2018 G7 Summit in Quebec. Calian incorporated media and social media training with a new simulation platform (Canadian Army Today, 2018). The pivotal role played by Calian in coordinating 2018 G7 Summit training exercises provides a noteworthy example of private sector integration into the scaled-up strategic incapacitation model. The scale of the event planning was international and inter-governmental, local, public, and private.

Integrated summit training

The unique CASC-Calian military-industry partnership along with the federal networks described above were brought together in the form of an integrated training exercise program preceding the Summit. Trudel’s Safety and Security Exercise Program Report compiled after the G7 Summit lists the entirety of the 24 federal, eight provincial, and seven regional organisations comprising the Integrated Exercise Program (PSC, 2018-88). The Program consisted of various ISU exercises, Sentinelle I (a table-top exercise), and Sentinelle II (a functional exercise) (PSC, 2018-180). Occurring on October 24-25, 2017, at the Domaine Forget de Charlevoix in Saint-lrénée southwest of La Malbaie, the purpose of Sentinelle I was to inform partners of their mandates, jurisdictional responsibilities, and operational posture, and to examine linkages and synergies among security agencies toward developing operational plans for the summit. Sentinelle I involved 186 participants representing 31 agencies, with the objectives to share situational awareness and intelligence across multiple jurisdictions and provide an integrated response to summit-related threats (PSC, 2018-88).

The Sentinelle II exercise occurred April 17-19 at the Valcartier military base, though participants were encouraged to work from their own operation centres or command posts (Fritz-Millett, 2018). While Sentinelle I sought to create awareness, Sentinelle II practiced procedures for security integration and intelligence sharing as well as tested these forms of coordination spanning multiple jurisdictions and levels of government and involved 860 participants (PSC, 2018-88). With a focus on simulation, Sentinelle II involved the participants running through 161 scenarios in 50 training events, including a terror-style attack, incursions into restricted areas, water contamination, and severe weather (Fritz-Millett, 2018). Sentinelle II involved 20 hours of exercise simulation that occurred over three days at five exercise locations in two provinces (PSC, 2018-88). The training exercise also included 800 social media injects and approximately 50 traditional media injects. While the more than 35 agencies operated from their own headquarters, the Calian team was in charge of the operations, providing the exercise design, development and delivery. This is considerable for event securitisation of this scale with a national security mandate coordinated by a private sector entity.

Sentinelle II involved the creation of a number of training simulation exercises designed by the Calian team within the CASC. The overarching scenario themes included summit security, health, emergency management, and terrorism, which range from mundane items such as the European Union Council losing their luggage, to weather events, to RCMP food poisoning, to terror attacks and explosions with fatalities. Of importance here are the scenarios dedicated to protests and demonstrations, which include an airport employee strike, numerous summit-related protests, highway blockades, and marine incidents in various locations. While the scenarios include strikes and demonstrations by workers, there are several disruptive scenarios attributed to imagined activist groups, including ‘Homes not Banks’, ‘Students Against Greed’, the ‘Green Environment Action Centre’, and anarchist group ‘Carpe Diem’ which is known for using black block tactics.

Assessing the activist threat

Though the Sentinelle simulation exercises involve imagined activist groups, these scenarios are derived from real-world experience of policing social movements. For example, the Green Environment Action Centre is clearly meant to represent Greenpeace, a group that has engaged in acts of civil disobedience and come under intense state surveillance. In an imagined training scenario, the anarchist-inspired SS William Godwin, a chartered ship under the flag of the Green Environment Action Centre, was bound for La Malbaie carrying 150 protesters, including 30 affiliated with the Carpe Diem anarchist group (PSC, 2018-88). Social media monitoring indicates the ship’s departure from Rimouski carrying banners, with intelligence indicating that the ship belonged to Carpe Diem. The event simulation description reveals the intense surveillance mechanisms to identify and track activists. The Sentinelle training exercises are part of the scaled-up strategic incapacitation model coordinated by a private sector actor and the Canadian military, and supplement the risk assessment mechanisms assessing potential sources of threat. The scale at which these security operations occur (Glück and Low, 2017; Campbell, 2016) is imagined to be all-encompassing, providing total information awareness.

Greenpeace and other environmental groups were the focus of security planning and threat assessments in the lead-up to the summit surrounding concerns around activism on the Saint Lawrence River, as detailed in the Maritime Operations Strategic Support Plan. The Plan’s guiding principles indicated that security measures would be “intelligence lead and threat driven” amidst a medium threat level with measures considered for a high threat level (PSC, 2018-88: 1346). The Maritime Security Operations Centre’s Maritime Threat Risk Assessment in January 2018 focused on the potential threat posed by environmental activists, identifying Greenpeace specifically (CSEC, 2018-18). The assessment reports Greenpeace as previously engaging in disruptive protests on the St. Lawrence seaway, but highlights the strategic significance of the summit site situated 30 metres above the shoreline. The section of the report addressing potential risks/threats focuses on activism, documenting incidents of Greenpeace protests in Quebec since 2007. The section also notes that 40 environmental organisations recently signed a pact uniting them against fossil fuel policy in that Canada was not doing enough to lower greenhouse gas emissions. The report identifies the key groups as the David Suzuki Foundation, Équiterre, Clean Energy Canada, the Council of Canadians, and the Sierra Club. The section on activism concludes by noting, “Although there have been no indications of planned illegal maritime protest activity at this time, the G7 meetings could provide a venue for trespassing and violent behaviour in order to amplify environmental concerns to a global audience” (CSEC, 2018-18: 247). The file notes that social justice activists and extremist groups could access ports, ferries, and navigable waters outside the exclusion zone through “peaceful protest tactics, or waterside activities such as floating message board displays or propaganda” (p. 248). This 2018 G7 Summit threat assessment is an example of the blurring of activism with extremism and terrorism, where peaceful water-based environmental protest is considered as akin to land-based terror attacks. It also serves the purpose of expanding spatial control beyond land-based demonstrations as part of the scaled-up strategic incapacitation model.

A host of other agencies produced threat assessments targeting social movements and left-wing protest in the lead-up to the Summit, including the Government Operations Centre (GOC) Major Risk Factor Analysis and Initial Impact Assessment for G7 Related Civil Disturbance (PSC, 2018-180). These reports produce the classifications that feed into strategic incapacitation operations. The Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre (ITAC), which is staffed primarily by workers from CSIS, produced threat assessments for the event focusing on trends from international terrorism to social movements. Many threat assessments focus on past occurrences at G8/G20 summits. In such units, suspicion is assembled (Regan et al., 2015) through the production, conveyance, and interpretation of threat assessments that encode movement participants using categories of threat and risk, despite an exclusive mandate to assess ‘the intent and capability of terrorists to carry out attacks’ (CSIS, 2017-784: 64-65).

The agencies involved were not only federal but extended outside of entities typically associated with policing. Assessments were produced by different agencies outlining potential threats to critical infrastructure deemed essential to the success of the summit. The G7 SSSO Strategic Plan annex addressing measures in place for critical infrastructure notes a high-level of coordination between national security agencies and the private sector in securitising the summit. The report notes that the ISU and its JIG held a series of meetings with critical infrastructure owners to familiarise them with the most likely threats to affect their operations and to encourage adjusted security measures to deal with anticipated threats. Moreover, “they helped promote the importance of sharing their intelligence, particularly via the Suspicious Incident Reporting System, to take detection and investigative action proactively” (PSC, 2018-180: 990). These meetings, along with the sharing of assessments with critical infrastructure partners and the emergency management community, suggest a corporate-state symbiosis (O’Reilly, 2010) between national security agencies and corporations, where private sector actors are prompted to participate in surveillance activities. The Virtual Risk Analysis Cell (VRAC), a part of Public Safety Canada’s Critical Infrastructure and Strategic Coordination Directorate, conducted critical infrastructure impact assessments that were shared within the network. The Cell supports the GOC with critical infrastructure analysis during significant events and these assessments provide a geospatial overview and a sector-by-sector analysis for Charlevoix, La Malbaie, Bagotville-Saguenay and Quebec City. The detailed security intelligence and the ability to act on this reflects Sage and colleague’s (2015) second element of scale: action at a distance or spatial reach.

Enacting multi-jurisdictional spatial control

The planning used a security pillar model, integrating federal and local partners. The RCMP was in charge of what is called the controlled access zone. Quebec’s provincial police force, the SQ, patrolled the interdiction zone. At the provincial level, the Quebec Federal Coordination Group managed the efforts of provincial agencies. All other space was referred to as the surveillance zone with all agencies providing surveillance support (PSC, 2018-180; CSIS, 2017-784). A security fence was set up to cordon off the area around the Manoir Richelieu (the main summit site) designated as a red zone which was only accessible with security accreditation by the Summit Management Office, even for residents and business owners. The ISU website informed the public of the right to peaceful assembly and the establishment of a ‘free speech area’ on a vacant lot in a protected area in La Malbaie, noting further that “People will be able to freely access the free speech zone. No accreditation is required”. The La Malbaie free speech area was the subject of a Sentinelle II “critical incident”, an imagined scenario where protestors breached the zone (PSC, 2018-88). The ISU website also included ‘an appeal to the public’ to report suspicious incidents or to contact the JIG email or toll-free phone number.

At the tactical level, a number of RCMP command centres were set up, including five advance command centres built in La Malbaie, Bagotville, Ste-Irénée airport, Jean-Lesage International airport and Quebec City, and a public Communications Command Centre established at the Manège Militaire des Voltigeurs in Quebec City. Four mobile command centres were set up at summit sites with the capability to be deployed at demonstration sites or other incidents if required. The SQ also established two advance command centres at the Manoir Richelieu and at the Clermont Curling Club (PSC, 2018-180). The multiple command centres show the depth and reach of the scaled-up security response and the total control of space surrounding the summit site, the wider geographical region, and inter-governmental information sharing and communication; this was reflected in protest policing tactics on the ground.

The SQ were responsible for policing demonstrations. We received a number of documents related to the SQ role in policing the G7 Summit through freedom of information requests (SQ, 1806-235). Operation Saphir was the largest ever undertaken by the SQ involving 2500 officers and 300 civilians in charge of 28 sites across three sectors (La Malbaie, Bagotville, and Quebec City). The disclosure includes directives given to crowd control and tactical units and brochures distributed to officers outlining the rights and limits of demonstrators. The disclosure includes training schedules and materials with sessions on tactical strategy, arrest team training, and equipment use (less-lethal munitions, gas masks), ² as well as crowd control intervention scenarios. Separate trainings were held at the Valcartier military base the week before the summit and included information sessions based on previous demonstrations in different countries. They also included tactical trainings involving mock protesters and presentations that included photos and video of protester tactics; another presentation was given on the use of Long Range Acoustic Devices. In both trainings the SQ prepared for a hostile shooter (tireur hostile) in the crowd. The disclosure includes plans for arresting, processing, and detaining protesters. An SQ/ISU presentation outlines the establishment of three detention centers in the three sectors.

The scale of training and preparation undertaken by police and security agencies was matched by the securitisation of space on the ground. According to ISU reporting, 1000 Canadian Armed Forces, 2200 SQ, and 3400 RCMP had been deployed (PSC, 2018-89). The physical securitisation of summit-associated space was bolstered by surveillance technology. Geomatics personnel from Public Safety produced itineraries and routes of protests and advised local authorities on positioning and the spatial dimensions of the security operation. This included mapping out 500 meter and 100 meter buffer zones around key sites in Quebec and creating barriers for preventing protestor access. These maps with addresses were supplied to security personnel to create the barriers as well as to police on the ground. These maps were used during the event to update authorities or provide security guidance. The intense securitising of space, as a key feature of strategic incapacitation (Gillham, 2011), itself operated as a form of pre-emption in this case.

Pre-emptive social movement policing

In the lead up to the and during the summit, social movements and activist groups organized a number of events and demonstrations, all of which were meticulously documented and monitored, according to internal documents we obtained as part of this research. The ISU’s Joint Information Group’s Liaison Management Team created regular bulletins that were distributed throughout summit security networks in the lead-up to the summit and every two hours during the summit (CSEC, 2018-18). During the event, all counter-summit activity was documented, including protests led by the Vietnamese, Bangladeshi, Rwandan communities, a protest against Donald Trump, a community forum in Saguenay, a worker’s march, and an anti-G7 comedy and music night in Quebec City. One report notes an evening discussion group organised by the Assemblée Alternative Socialiste at a library in Quebec City scheduled for June 8 and notes that an ÉERP team (équipes d’enquêtes sur le renseignement primaire) will assess the event. The SPVQ also fed intelligence reports into the larger summit surveillance and reporting network, including a World Vision Canada march featuring 75 people (PSC, 2018-88).

The critical infrastructure intelligence community also followed events with the NCIT creating daily situation reports throughout the summit (PSC, 2018-89). The GOC produced Operational Briefs to Critical Infrastructure Stakeholders and the Emergency Management Community (PSC, 2018-180). Reporting mechanisms at the federal level included operational briefs and event reports distributed to all federal operations centres and liaison officers every four hours during the summit (PSC, 2018-88: 1634). Senior leader briefing documents were produced three times daily and distributed to governing partners. The reports provide an executive summary of the current situation, federal activities, and risk assessment outlining JIG surveillance updates, ITAC threat assessment levels, risk levels determined through the GOC’s ‘major event risk factor analysis’ and the GOC’s “initial impact assessment for G7-related Civil Disturbance” (PSC, 2018-88: 1122). In a number of ITAC reports, it is repeated that anti-globalist and left-wing groups present threats to the G7 meetings. The only examples of threats given are protests. The ITAC reports point to the Hamburg G7 in 2017 at which authorities discovered what they reported as incendiary materials along a protest route as evidence to increase threat levels for the Quebec G7 (CSIS, 2019-339). A risk chart indicates anticipated threat levels for property, critical infrastructure, environment, economy, and emergency management capabilities. The JIG also collected the reports of local officials and translated them into active intelligence. Much intelligence gathering and security work still relies on mundane memos to assemble categories and profiles of threat (Bonelli and Ragazzi, 2014). These profiles of threat are used to launch security operations.

Under these categorisations all people and things become sources of risk. In one ISU threat report, it is noted that “construction debris left around the Quebec ACC site are a source of concern to authorities on location, as there is a potential risk that they be used as weapons. The SPVQ was notified and will take appropriate actions” (PSC, 2018-89: 173). The security intelligence was up to the minute and detailed. For example, on June 3, 2018 at 10:08, a message is sent from the GOC about “three buses seen on Highway 138 approaching La Malbaie, one allegedly bore signage similar to Greenpeace; buses not located” (PSC, 2018-89: 93). This alert activated the UCC. The next report states “the mobilization and searches by members of the security forces began on the outside perimeter of Manoir Richelieu” (p. 97) suggesting coordination across time and space in urban and rural locations. On June 6, “the school bus transporting demonstrators and the cube truck that came from Montreal on Highway 20 have been confirmed in Quebec City” (PSC, 2018-89: 523). The RCMP tracked many buses from Montreal though it is not indicated how this was done (PSC, 2018-89). Other buses and cars carrying people for protests against leaders of Rwanda and Vietnam are tracked and reported on. When the People’s Union Walk on June 9 decided to change their itinerary this was reported by the JIG (PSC, 2018-89), indicating a high level of infiltration and surveillance. From the JIG, threat assessments are redacted using sections 16(1)(c) and (2) of the ATIA for a 250-person march on June 9, as well as a 600-person rally against Trump, indicating infiltration or framing as crime (PSC, 2019-288: 29, 100). These forms of detailed surveillance are a key feature of strategic incapacitation (Gillham, 2011). The shutdown of collective mobilization and demonstrations also reflects Sage and colleague’s (2015) third element of scale: the shaping or constraining of political action.

The national security framework for managing summit security and the framing of protests as the primary threat translated into an on-the-ground strategic incapacitation policing operation. Our ATI disclosure documents do not include detailed notes from incident commanders on the ground. Reports from the observers on the ground during the summit, however, detail the militarized policing efforts on the streets as producing a “climate of fear and hostility” (Filion et al., 2018: 12) that included spatial crowd-control tactics including the use of police cordons, kettling, and targeted arrests. Observers documented the use of police kettles or cordons at least three times during the summit, describing the tactic as unjustified and abusive (Filion et al., 2018: 32). Neal et al. (2019) track the transformation of protest policing strategies of dispersal to those of containment, of which “kettling combines the spatial calculus of containment with a temporal calculus of decelerating movements which are both corporeal and political” (p. 1053). Kettling is both a territorial strategy and re-territorializing tactic aimed at exhausting the political energies of public dissent (Neocleous, 2021). During the summit, kettling was one localized spatial control tactic that worked in tandem with a broader strategic incapacitation policing model that networked dozens of public and private actors, planned for social movement mobilizations with security responses designed to limit political dissent, and the attempted control of space over multiple municipal and regional jurisdictions. The 2018 G7 Summit has offered a striking case study in which to witness how strategic incapacitation policing is enacted and expanded when analyzing through a scalar lens.