PROFUNC, the predecessor of Operation Checkmate By Kitty Hundal, Project Ragnarok

In the beginning, before Operation Checkmate (Canada’s COINTELPRO) there was PROFUNC. 

PROFUNC stands for PROminent FUNctionaries of the Communist Party. 

The top secret program, in operation from 1950 to 1983, was established after the Gouzenko Affair which launched the Cold War in Canada, as well as concerns relating to war with Korea and a potential WWIII. 

The full, stated purpose of this program was to identify, list and monitor known and suspected communists as well as communist sympathizers for possible internment. This was done despite the fact that the Communist Party had never been illegal in Canada. 

In reality, it targeted everyone in the left including social democrats and liberal leftists as well as their social circles. It was extensive, listing thousands of Canadians as potential internees: 16,000 “Communists” and an estimated 50,000 “sympathizers” (family, friends, neighbors, associates, workmates, etc.).  

PROFUNC was initially exposed by Dean Beeby, senior reporter, Parliamentary Bureau ( @DeanBeeby )  in a Globe and Mail article entitled RCMP had plan to intern 'subversives' and published  January 24, 2000. 

Extracts from the article: “The documents, obtained under the Access to Information Act, show that the war internment plan was drawn up in the late 1940s but was revived and expanded from 1969 to 1971.”

“The RCMP had 762 people on their to-be-interned list in 1970, including 13 children under the age of 11 and 23 between the ages of 12 and 16.”

“Those under 17 were likely the children of the target internees, and were referred to disparagingly by the Mounties as "red diaper babies."

I was 16 at the time and my father was likely on this list. My uncle would have been added in 1970. The RCMP have refused my Access to Information request on the specious grounds that it allegedly violates the privacy of others. Apparently they've never heard of redaction. I was initially targeted in 1970 with an attempt to recruit me into a cult. This information has been provided in a fictionalized form, in my book, Persecution Games, Book 1 of my From the Shadows series of my fictionalized memoirs.

In 2010, CBCs investigative documentary program, The Fifth Estate provided a more detailed insight into PROFUNC in a show called, Enemies of the State (still available for viewing online and recommended to watch).

Stuart Taylor Wood, a descendent of US President Zachary Taylor and 8th Commissioner of the Canadian RCMP (1938-1951) conceived, drew up and implemented the detailed plan that constituted PROFUNC in 1950. 

“In Canada, the head of the RCMP drew up a plan to lock up "Prominent Functionaries," including known communists and other people deemed to be subversives. The plan is breathtaking in its scale and detail. It listed those who were to be arrested, where they would be interned and how they were to be treated. Families of targeted people were not spared: many wives and children were to be locked away as well. 

Incredibly, The Profunc blueprint remained in place until the 1980s. Only today are some people learning for the first time that they and their families were deemed Enemies of the State. The names of those people will astonish most Canadians.” -CBC. Enemies of the State.

Some of the people named on the list would also have been included in Canada’s Who’s Who. People like Tommy Douglas, Premier of Saskatchewan and Father of Public Health Care as well as Canadian government civil servants like Robert Rabinovitch, Privy Council bureaucrat.

“It scares me that a Minister would sign it. It’s one thing for the state through its agencies to look into people who may be a threat to the state. It’s another thing to understand the difference between being a threat to the state and legitimate disagreement.” –Robert Rabinovitch

Robert Kaplan, Solicitor General of Canada in 1983 stated that he put an end to the PROFUNC program without being aware of exactly what it was and it’s full impact on Canadian citizens. He was simply responding to complaints from seniors with a left wing history who were being stopped from crossing the US border. As Solicitor General, the RCMP and all of their activities were under his jurisdiction.

When the Fifth Estate advised him of the details of the program he had shut down in 1983, his response was: 

“I’m just appalled to hear that. I can’t believe that had any government authorization behind it. I’m very proud that my name was on the order to shut that down.” – Robert Kaplan, ex-Solicitor-General

The RCMP didn’t limit their activity to identifying and listing people. The harassment and intimidation of people and their families is discussed by those individuals whose names appeared on the PROFUNC list and who CBC’s Fifth Estate interviewed in their program, Enemies of the State. 

When Canada, under the leadership of Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, declared martial law (the War Measures Act) in 1970, due to the FLQ crisis, 500 Quebeckers were arrested, and at least some of the names came from the PROFUNC list. The Quebecker interviewed by Enemies of the State was unaware of why he had been arrested in Quebec in 1970 since he had no affiliation with the FLQ. It wasn’t until the CBC told him he was on the PROFUNC list, that the reason for his arrest in 1970 became clear. My uncle was also one of the people being hunted for arrest, despite no connection with the FLQ, but went into hiding at the time. The War Measures Act only lasted for one month: October, 1970.

In 1968, an Advisory Committee into Internments existed and was still reviewing PROFUNC files.  

When PROFUNC was revised and expanded from 1969 to 1971, likely as a result of the FLQ crisis, more than 700 men, women and children from the PROFUNC list were approved for internment. All had C215 detention orders written out for them. 

More were to be added but they never proceeded to implement the internment plan. 

Had the Internment Plan been executed M-Day (Mobilization Day) would have involved contacting police departments across Canada and asking them to execute the C215 detention orders. Those men, women and children would have been arrested, sent to Internment Centers and then later moved to specific penitentiaries across Canada which would have been placed under the control of the military. Toronto’s Casa Loma was one of the locations designated to be an internment center. Internees were to be subjected to extreme discipline amounting to torture without due process and in perpetuity.  

It was also during this period that the RCMP began their COINTELPRO style Dirty Tricks campaigns. Conceiving, planning and executing the following operations (that we know of – there may have been more):

• Operation TentPeg 1969-1971

• Operation OddBall April, 1971-September, 1972

• Operation Bricole 1972

• Operation Checkmate September, 1972-December, 1973 (I was targeted again during this time period in what appeared to be an attempt to use me as leverage against my uncle. More information about this in my book, Persecution Games)

• Operation Ham 1973

It’s not unreasonable to believe that many of the names selected as targets for these RCMP Dirty Tricks operations likely came from the PROFUNC lists which were still being maintained until 1983. The types of activities these operations engaged in continued long after PROFUNC was discontinued in 1983.

The investigation into RCMP Dirty Tricks in 1976-1981, the  Royal Commission of Inquiry into Certain Activities of the RCMP led to the legalization of many of the illegal activities engaged in by the RCMP, the closure of the Directorate of Security and Intelligence (RCMP Security Service) and the creation of CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service). While most of the Reports by the Inquiry have been declassified, Operation Checkmate remains classified to this date.

Original PROFUNC files sampling including the main Plan.

Reference Links: 

PROFUNC Wiki

RCMP had plan to intern 'subversives'

Enemies of the State

Here is a small sampling of the original PROFUNC files including the main Plan from archive.org.

Persecution Games, Book 1 of From the Shadows, the fictionalized memoirs of Kitty Hundal