Introduction:
PROFUNC is the acronym for “Prominent Functionaries of the Communist Party”, a Top Secret Canadian Government plan to identify and intern Canadian communists and communist sympathisers during the height of the Cold War (1950-1983).
Background:
Following the revelations of the Gouzenko Affair1 and with the threat of the Korean War expanding into a third world conflict, the Canadian Government determined the need for a blacklist of Canadian communists and communist sympathisers.
The RCMP created a list of approximately 16,000 suspected Canadian communists and a further 50,000 suspected sympathisers who were to be observed and possibly interned in the event of a national security state of emergency being declared.
Detailed information about each suspected name on the list was compiled, including a special arrest warrant that was completed for each suspect and updated annually.
It is claimed that the PROFUNC list was used during the October 1970 Crisis2 to detain a number of persons with no affiliation to the Front Liberation de Quebec (FLQ).
Implementation:
Mobilization Day (M-Day) was to be the day, in the event of a perceived national security crisis, that police services would arrest and transport people noted on the PROFUNC list and temporarily detain them in reception centres across Canada including: Casa Loma; a country club in Port Arthur, Ontario; and, Regina Exhibition Park. They would be transferred to penitentiaries.
1 See Diefenbunker Fact Sheet #9
2 See Diefenbunker Fact Sheet #11
The Canadian Penitentiary Service received an updated PROFUNC list to make them aware of the number of potential internees.
The men would be interned across Canada, the women would be interned in one of two facilities in the Niagara Peninsula or Kelowna and the children would be sent to relatives or interned with their parents.
Termination of the Plan:
PROFUNC was exposed inadvertently and terminated in 1983 when Robert Kaplan, the Solicitor General of Canada, introduced administrative changes to eliminate problems being experienced by elderly Canadians trying to cross the Canada-United States border.
Kaplan claimed to have had no knowledge of the plan and expressed shock and dismay that it existed.
Aftermath:
The Canadian public did not become aware of PROFUNC until 24 January 2000, when its existence was announced by Dean Beeby of the Canadian Press.
In October 2010, the Plan was discussed at length and in detail on the CBC documentary program The Fifth Estate.
It was not until 2010 that some Canadians learned that they and their families had been judged to be enemies of the state and threats to public safety.
PROFUNC is believed to be one of the most draconian national security programs in Canada’s peacetime history.
References:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PROFUNC
- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/story/2010/10/13/profunc- canadian-communist-blacklist.html?ref=rss
- http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2010/10/15/internment-casa- loma-secret-canada-profunc.html
- http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2010-2011/enemiesofthestate/profunc.html
Captain (N) (Ret’d) M. Braham, CD – Mike Braham is a graduate of the Royal Military College (1965) and a former naval officer and senior official with DND. He has an abiding interest in military history.
