Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD) Mounted Surveillance

What is Surveillance?

Surveillance is the monitoring of activities of an object. It is an old scheme used extensively in different areas since the beginning of civilization. Sun Tze covered the use of spies in the last chapter of his famous treatise “The Art of War”. The main objective is to obtain vital information via covert operations to make decisions in defeating an enemy. Government has the most powerful surveillance systems. They are empowered by law, backed by immense financial resources and access to information. Of course, government sometimes conducts illegal surveillance. Most victims of such activities are either unaware of the surveillance, its illegality or do not have the resources to fight government in court.

MCFD mounted surveillance is either covert (without the knowledge of the target) or overt (easily observable activities for the purpose of delivering the message "we are watching you") in nature. Generally speaking, some oppressed parents under MCFD surveillance are spouses still on good terms and are working together to protect their children from being removed or trying to get them back from foster homes. Of course, MCFD conducts surveillance on estranged spouse as well. Typically, usual MCFD tactic is to separate parents using supervision order, put them under heavy surveillance hoping to catch a breach of unauthorized contact to justify further actions. Be mindful that no provision in CFCSA explicitly allows such act. This is made possible by way of a court sanctioned supervision order and a huge MCFD budget that attracts the attention of some special interests.

Real or Paranoid?

Welcome to the MCFD’s amateur world of espionage. Like many MCFD tactics used against parents, it is hard to believe that some families scrutinized by MCFD could be under government surveillance in 21st century Canada. If you have no prior experience with MCFD, you may find this unbelievable. Even some parents who have received service from MCFD but have not been put under surveillance find this absurd and refuse to believe that MCFD would mount surveillance on parents.

We are not suggesting that MCFD send their agents to spy on every parents under scrutiny or to spy on the general public indiscriminately like the PRISM (a surveillance program operated by the United States National Security Agency) unveiled by Edward Snowden in 2013. Section 14 of the Child, Family and Community Service Act (CFCSA) obliges everyone to report to MCFD if there is reason to believe that a child needs protection. This creates a network of informants sufficient to keep the child protection industry in business. We will further elaborate this under the heading "MCFD Information Systems". It is not necessary to spy on the public to create more cases to support the industry.

Furthermore, MCFD does not launch surveillance in every case. They only do so when there is useful information to gain. Do heed our advice that MCFD does conduct surveillance on you and your family, especially when you are under a supervision order with a restrictive contact term or when MCFD has a weak case. Many parents who sought help from us had experienced this first hand. This is happening daily in the “best place on earth to live.”

Surveillance consciousness of the subject, namely parents, is a determining factor whether they would fall prey on MCFD's agents. If you are being scrutinized by MCFD and do not believe in the presence of surveillance, you are an easy target. By failing to realize the risk, you allow your child protection workers to gain the upper hand and put yourself and your family in a vulnerable position. There are only two choices:

1. be a sitting duck with no instinct, no training, no notion that someone might be following you;
2. be vigilant and determined to identify and/or lose your pursuers who are out there to get you.

Evidence Suggesting Surveillance

In the American news footage titled David and Christina Harrison case in Houston, Texas (embedded at the top left hand corner of this page), it aired the story of David and Christina Harrison of Houston, Texas. It contains an "accidental discovery" of a breach of supervision order. When their social worker went to their residence to check out an allegation, the parents were found alone with the baby. What allegation and who made it? Is this incidental or did the social worker went because of information reported by a CPS surveillance agent? Without surveillance, how could this possibly happen? By chance, mere luck or a result of surveillance? The greatest success of a deception is to make believe that the enemy or a threat does not exist. If you are still not convinced "child protection" agency does mount surveillance on parents under scrutiny, read on.

The British news video on the right aired the story of John Fowler who lost his daughter at the age of 4 months because of a false allegation made by his 11-year old step son. After five years of legal action, Mr. Fowler got his daughter back. He was angry that his family was torn apart.

Journalist Christoper Booker in Somerset, the U.K., stated that the motive of many foster and adoptive parents is money driven because of the financial incentives given by the British government. Mr. Booker noted that children are forcibly removed from their parents with the heavy-handed assistance of the police for minor reasons and families are needlessly destroyed.

After the return of his daughter, Mr. Fowler and his daughter are still under surveillance of social services (said by the news reporter at time marker 4:03 minutes, near the end of the video) for an unspecified reason, possibly fishing for excuses to remove his daughter again.

None of the foregoing happened in Canada. Some Canadians may think that our government will not engage in such activities that blatantly invade privacy. Be mindful that child protection industry worldwide share the same belief and use similar strategy and tactics. Even the child protection laws and the problems they create are very similar. Only naive people will believe that the Canadian government will not mount surveillance on parents under the scrutiny of a child protection agency. The following is in Canadian context.

Five years after we added this page on 30 July 2008, ex NSA spy Edward Snowden went public in 2013 to unveil the global monitoring of communication. His disclosure revealed that the intelligent community is not only interested in information on military and national security, but also on commercial activities and businesses. The PRISM program confirms our view that civilian communications, such as e-mails, text messages, Facebook, internet browsing, telephone calls, faxes, are all open to government secretive monitoring. Privacy no longer exists. Of course, government alleges and would like the public to believe that such invasive monitoring is imperative to ensure national security.

The Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) is a partner of the NSA. These agencies share and exchange information obtained from espionage and global communication eavesdropping. Apprehension of John Nuttall and Amanda Korody of Surrey for the 2013 Canada Day bomb plot in Victoria, British Columbia under the police operation codename "Project Souvenir" is a result of such intelligence sharing.

Once the media aired its well concealed activities, CSEC attracted public concern on privacy. On 7 October 2013, Former CSEC director John Adams, who recently retired after 7 years serving as head of the Ottawa-based agency, went public and warned Canadians that CSEC is collecting and sharing information obtained from secretive and illegal monitoring of communications with other intelligence agencies, such as the NSA and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) of England.

In his interview with CBC, John Adams confirmed that CSEC monitors all Canadian communications and has deliberately kept Canadians in the dark to protect its secretive and objectionable activities. Even The Privacy Commissioner of Canada Jennifer Stoddart, whose mandate is to protect the privacy of Canadians, said that her office does not know enough what CSEC does, wants to know more on how CSEC uses data obtained but have no authority to shine a light on CSEC. Thomas Andrew Drake a former NSA executive turned whistle blower described CSEC as the little brother of NSA.

Retired judge Robert Décary is appointed as a watchdog of CSEC. He has a total staff of about a dozen people, only about half of whom are actual investigators. Decary said he was unable in one instance to be able to determine if CSEC had broken the law, and he called for greater transparency. Since he reports to the defence minister, not Parliament, critics say Decary is not entirely independent. His reports have to be vetted by CSEC for “national security reasons.” As a result, reports from Decary and his predecessors are rarely enlightening to the public.

While the U.S. intelligence services mount global round the clock surveillance on both friends and foes, the Mickey mouse surveillance arm of the child protection service is target-oriented to catch a breach of supervision order from unsuspecting parents to justify further action or re-removal of their children. Despite their huge difference in spying sophistication and the nature of surveillance, similarities in two distinct regimes are discussed in our "Edward Snowden" page and will not be repeated here.

Government Modus Operandi

This CBC report sheds light on similar modus operandi in how government handles unwanted public concerns on agencies with absolute power and act in secrecy under the pretext of protection and safety. In short, these modus operandi are merely a decoration to portray an image of accountability and the presence of sufficient check and balance. They are useless to serve the original intent of oversight, fail to protect victims from abuse of bureaucratic power and are a waste of tax dollars.

One may argue that government only monitors communications that are of national security interest in nature. Such monitoring must be legal. Allegation of CSEC's interception on communications of Brazil's Mines and Energy Ministry and the Brazilian mining industry confirms that communication monitoring also includes commercial and business activities. Be mindful that energy and mining product export is vital to the Canadian economy. Fishing for commercial information will allow Canadian energy and mining businesses to gain an upper hand in the international market.

Further, sharing of information with other agencies is a common practice. If you think that MCFD has no legal power to access communications of parents obtained through surveillance, read Section 96 of CFCSA. It permits a MCFD director right to any information that is in the custody or control of a public body. Is CSEC a public body? If yes, MCFD has the statutory power to access information obtained from secretive monitoring of communications.

We have established the following:

1. MCFD has the statutory authority to obtain information in the custody or control of a public body (per Section 96 of CFCSA).
2. Mass electronic surveillance on all forms of civilian communications (such as phone conversation, e-mails, text messages, faxes, internet browsing history) is technological feasible and fully operational since the implementation of the PRISM program in 2007, or even before this on a smaller scale.
3. International and intra-government sharing of information obtained through intelligence activities among intelligence agencies is a common practice (supported by the "Project Souvenir" operation in 2013).
4. Former members (Edward Snowden, John Adams, William Edward Binney, Thomas Andrew Drake) in the intelligence community
   
   CSEC´s former head states that the
   government has a responsibility to
   make Canadians more knowledgeable on
   what the intelligence agencies are doing.
   But for now, CSEC remains secretive,
   unaccountable and out of control.
   testified that governments conduct secretive and illegal monitoring on civilian communications up to a disturbing extent that it is worthy of taking the risk of going public to raise awareness.
5. Empirical evidence of the news footages below confirms surveillance from child protection service (CPS):
   1. the Fowler case in the U.K.;
      
      A news footage that confirms
      surveillance of social services
   2. David and Christina Harrison case in Houston, Texas.
      
      David and Christina Harrison of Houston,
      Texas found alone with their baby when
      CPS worker conveniently showed up
      on another matter.

Above all, some parents who approached us for assistance testified that they had been followed by MCFD agents and confirmed that their residence had been under MCFD surveillance.

MCFD's Hired Guns

MCFD child protection workers in action with escorting cops

Although it is theoretically possible to use Canada's most powerful espionage organization to collect intelligence on parents under investigation of child abuse, it is unlikely that MCFD will kill a mouse with an elephant gun. Local police has a smaller and less sophisticated spying capability. Cops are obliged by law (CFCSA in British Columbia) to provide assistance to child protection workers and are fully capable to wiretap communications of unsuspecting parents. They have access to information stored in Canadian Police Information Centre (CPIC) and could obtain information from various sources because of their police status. Police has little discretion when carrying out escort duty to assist child protection workers. Despite how unreasonable a child removal decision may be, no cops will risk their career to challenge such decision. We have witnessed cases in which escorting cops were not convinced that removal was justified. When they phoned their supervisor, they were told to do whatever child protection workers demanded.

In a 2013 court case, the Chatham-Kent Children's Services (CAS) paid a private investigator to spy on parents to see if they were breaking a supervision order. CAS never used the results of the investigation. It is safe to presume that the investigation found no fault on the parents. An Ontario Court judge ruled evidence allegedly gathered by private investigators hired by the CAS to watch the parents does not need to be shared with the couple unless they can show they are somehow prejudiced by the information being withheld. CAS won another precedent to enhance their power by not legally obliged to share information obtained from surveillance, hence avoiding embarrassing issues such as disclosure of surveillance costs and invasive tactics used that could raise political and charter right issues. Details of this case can be found in "Parents hampered in efforts to hold onto their children" by Vicki Gough, Chatham Daily News (27 October 2013).

This insightful case confirms the following:

1. Child protection agencies could hire external private investigators to conduct surveillance on parents without warrant, including taking photographs through the windows of the mother's residence, following the father to make sure he was not breaching any court orders involving his children.
2. If findings from private investigators, assessors and supervisors of access do not support the CAS's theory of a case, CAS may now claim litigation privilege and hide the evidence. Be mindful that such evidence could result in the return of children to their parents. This ruling, like many lopsided oppressive child protection rulings across the nation, brings the administration of justice in disrepute.
3. Child protection agencies are not obliged to disclose or share information with parents on their fishing expeditions and are allowed to cherry pick whatever incriminating information they could find or fabricate against parents in child protection hearings.
4. The Family Law Act in Ontario prohibits identification of families under child protection investigation, hence increasing difficulties for any interested parties to obtain more information and minimizing unwanted public attention.

Contrary to its benevolent public appearance, MCFD does have a de facto investigative and law enforcement mandate backed up absolute power and the deep pocket of taxpayers. At its sole discretion, it could hire private investigators, enlist unemployed or underemployed foster parents, caregivers, babysitters and anyone they could pay under a public account other than surveillance to follow parents and to stake out at their homes. Incriminating information, if discovered in such fishing expeditions, will be presented to court as an anonymous report from the community or neighbor. This serves to keep the identity of the spying agent secret.

We emphasize that information in our web site is not fictional. Information herein is derived from the real experience of oppressed parents. The purpose of adding this page in our web site is to raise public knowledge on what some oppressed parents have to face and to give early warning to parents to minimize the damage of MCFD’s activities on their families and children.

An Anecdote on Comments from Browsers and A Debate With A Service Provider in the Cyberspace

Incidentally, John Adams's confirmation of government surveillance on telecommunications on 7 October 2013 refuted allegations from a browser who sent his comment below on 14 December 2009:

In retrospect, disclosures from Edward Snowden and former CSEC director John Adams in 2013 confirm our views made public on 30 July 2008. The government is not only technologically capable of getting information from all Canadian communications, but was doing it in the past, is doing it now and will continue to do it in the future until enough Canadians rise to stop it. Specifically, Mr. John Adams said the following in the CBC interview on 7 October 2013:

This renders the ignorant mocking of this hostile browser laughable and foolish. His comments in full are as follows:

Received via our survey form on Mon, 14 Dec 2009 02:47:55

Received via e-mail on Tue, 15 Dec 2009 05:35:03

This photo, taken in June 2008, is one of MCFD's offices in Victoria. The label on the front door bears the provincial slogan "British Columbia The Best Place on Earth". British Columbia is a blessed land with fine people, bountiful natural resources and beautiful scenery. However, the "child protection" activities tarnish the highest quality of the province. We are far from being the best place of Earth. It is noteworthy to mention that most MCFD offices are highly secured. Public access is severely restricted. If the Ministry is truly protecting children, helping and developing families in need, the security risk should be low as parents and children would love to receive its services. The exceptionally high security measures of MCFD offices reflect the Ministry's popularity among the people it serves. sex: male age: 29 citizenship: Canadian occupation: Philosophy ethnic origin: Caucasian children: 0 language: English religion: Christian (Protestant) hear from: search engine search engine: Google character right: yes ease of use: very easy focus: somewhat focused overall rating: poor comment: Simply put - the "facts" link has exactly zero facts on it. The "surveillance" link has given me the greatest amount of laughter in years! I love coming to this site - especially reading "they monitor your emails...." and (forgive me, this is a paraphrase) "how else could they get information from private conversations?" .... the answer is simple. People who hear about child abuse, report that abuse because they do not wish to confront the parent directly about it. surname: X name: Y address: (not provided) city: (not provided) province: BC phone: (not provided) email: (not provided)

Hello, I was looking at just about everything on your website and was amazed yet not surprised at alot of what I read. Amazed that I finally found people who look relatively normal who have nightmare stories like mine to tell about MCFD. Not surprised because sadly I can relate to just about everything I read. I was amazed to see that MCFD is involved in surveillance because I believed this was happening to me yet when I tried to do something about it I was rebuked by family and friends as being crazy and the law did nothing to protect me from this surveillance. Pictures were being taken, I believed I was being audio taped but this all fed into their reasons for apprehending my children. I was diagnosed (after their involvement) with a delusional disorder. Prior to this diagnosis, I did not think or feel I was being watched or surveilled. I always thought being poor and on welfare, I was too unremarkable and unimportant for anyone to consider doing this to me. My children and I were both drugged as I was making quite a fuss about human rights issues and childrens rights and come to think of it, it was after these activities that I had these surveillance suspicions. I never thought of that until now. M is my youngest son. He is 18 years old now and is special needs. Now that I am not on psychotropic drugs anymore, I hve been doing alot of thinking. M is on Risperadol now since he was 9 years old, maybe 10 years old. When he was 9 or 10 he was given Ritalin or something like it because it was believed he had ADHD. He didn't, he has a mental delay and I think he may have mild autism. Giving him Ritalin at the age of 9 caused a psychotic episode so M was rushed to the hospital. This happened while he was in their care. I didn't want him on Ritalin but had no choice. The hospital said it was the wrong medication for him and M was diagnosed with Schizophrenia at the ripe old age of 10. People don't usually get diagnosed with Schizophrenia until 17-30 years old. I remember thinking this at the time but I was just a welfare mum and they were doctors so what did I know. He is not doing so well mentally these days. I sent a complaint to the complaints department, the Deputy minister, the Minister and the NDP critic for MCFD. And now I'm writing you.

These two responses, received only one day apart, represent two very opposite views on the information discussed herein. The response received from Mr. X on December 14, 2009 mocked us for presenting laughable and false information. It is noteworthy to remark that this after-hour browser from Chilliwack (British Columbia) sent his response at 2:47 a.m. when most people are sleeping. Furthermore, he remarked that:

1. information contained in our "Empirical Data & Stats" page is completely false, including statistics published by various levels of government;
2. "People who hear about child abuse, report that abuse because they do not wish to confront the parent directly about it."

   He was referring to Section 14 of Child, Family and Community Service Act (CFCSA) which requires everyone to report to authority if he or she has a reason to believe that a child needs protection. No where in our older version "MCFD Surveillance" page at that time mentions anything on the mandatory reporting of children believed to be in need of protection. To prove our point, we linked this older version herein as a reference.

Inspired by Mr. X's mock, unsubstantiated criticism and his allegation that we disagreed with the merit of Section 14, we added a new section called "MCFD Information Systems" to complete MCFD's surveillance activities.

The second response received on 15 December 2009 is from a mother who had been scrutinized by MCFD. She provided a first hand testimony of her experience. If this is a contest of believability, which testimony is more reliable?

Debate With A Service Provider in the Cyberspace

It is noteworthy to remark that CW had revealed his/her intent of writing in the blog. In his/her entry at 6:14 p.m. on 4 August 2010, he/she wrote:

In another words, CW's contribution to this blog is to defend and preserve public trust in MCFD. He/she further proclaimed that he/she will no longer be "contributing" to the conversations held on this blog, as a result. Like many service providers in the child protection industry, they seldom honor their words. To further his/her mission of defending MCFD, he/she wrote later again in the same blog after proclaiming excommunication.

Why Denying Surveillance?

The "Browser Responses" and the "Blog Debate with A Community Worker (CW)" sections above demonstrate how special interests vigorously deny the presence of MCFD mounted surveillance. Why are they doing this?

At the tactical level, denial of surveillance is to avoid alerting the targets (hence maintaining the element of surprise), the public, the media and the court that they are conducting such intrusive activity. "Child protection" agencies around the globe make extra effort to deny, discredit or to downplay surveillance, characterizing it as paranoid or delusional disorder, hence further undermining the credibility of those who claim that there is surveillance. Discussions under the headings "Debate With A Service Provider in the Cyberspace" and "Browser Responses" above prove the foregoing.

At the strategic level, secrecy, fear, public ignorance and blind faith on government are their keys to success. Incriminatory information obtained from surveillance against parents is often portrayed as from:

• anonymous informants;
• an unspecified neighbor, foster parent, day care worker or school teacher;
• accidental/incidental discoveries when "child protection" social workers or their accomplice conveniently show up in the target's residence.

This approach carries the added benefit of reducing the risk of privacy lawsuit. Spying, especially spying in one's home without a court order, is a significant privacy violation. This will inevitably attract unwanted media and public attention. The school authority of Lower Merion School District in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has agreed to pay out $610,000 after admitting it spied on pupils in their homes through the cameras on their laptop computers.

Information obtained from illegal surveillance amounts to unreasonable search, a violation of Section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Such secretive systematic attack on privacy is equivalent to sending secret agents to break into your house while nobody is home to search for and seize any information that could be used against you. It will be interesting to see oppressed parents suing MCFD of such violation in a country that ardently speaks of human rights and civil liberty.

The Objective of Surveillance

The objective of MCFD mounted surveillance is simple: to justify continuous state intervention, often by way of child removal or re-removal.

Many parents are soft targets. They are not involved in clandestine activity and have no reason to suspect surveillance being launched by their own government. They have no training in countermeasure and lacks the financial resources to buy counter surveillance equipment. Unlike players in the espionage community, most MCFD surveillance members are amateurs. Many of them are excessive government personnel creating a job for themselves under the pretext of "child protection". They are not difficult to detect if parents are vigilant.

Materials in this topic are discussed under the following headings (please click headings to view the contents).

Remarks

The financial reward for service providers in the child protection industry is immense. Some estimate suggests that a child's value to MCFD is approximately $1 million dollars for every 10 years in care. Of course, part of this blood money from taxpayers supports the lifestyle of spying agents.

Despite that MCFD surveillance agents are not professional and at times sloppy, they are very effective to the extent of providing what child protection workers need. Do not take it lightly when under MCFD surveillance and never underestimate how harmful information obtained from surveillance could be. If surveillance is present, it indicates child protection workers do not trust you (they seldom do anyway) and are looking for information to further their involvement.

Information obtained from surveillance is often accepted as "evidence" in court without much questioning on:

• the motive and the reliability of the informant;
• the authenticity, completeness and accuracy of the "evidence"; and above all,
• the legality of how the information was obtained.

They create substantial disturbance in civilian life, destroy parent’s peaceful living environment, and put families in constant duress, fear and worry. Most supervision orders contain a term that allow MCFD to entry your residence at will without notice. They do come at inconvenient hours. This makes their surveillance incredibly easy. Do not bother calling the police or filing a complaint to their superior or court for the intrusion. Police will not arrest MCFD agents for stalking you or your children or invading your privacy. They will probably assist them in whatever way they can as obliged by CFCSA and their team spirit.

Critics of the surveillance theory often challenge the presence of surveillance on the basis that there is no such item in MCFD's budget and therefore it is impossible for the Ministry to conduct such activity. MCFD's budget has no legal expense. Does it mean that lawyers representing the Ministry are doing pro bono work? Of course not. Legal expenses incurred by the Ministry are allocated in the budget of the Ministry of Attorney General. To minimize attracting unwanted public attention, controversial government activities are seldom reflected in a budget. For example, damages paid to settle the lawsuit of the wrongful death of Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in an altercation with RCMP officers at Vancouver's airport on 14 October 2007 is never made public. It is unlikely that this damages can be found in any single public account. Misleading, if not improper, allocation of expenses is common. Recent statistics released by MCFD confirm that expenses incurred in this so-called “after hour support service” constituents over 44% of total child removal costs since 2003. Surveillance costs are probably allocated to this account. This suggests that child protection workers use surveillance extensively. Like other child removal activities, surveillance is another job creation scheme designed to benefit service providers under the pretext of child protection.

Our seemingly unbelievable assertion of MCFD mounted surveillance withstands the rigours of attacks, criticisms, skepticism and malicious falsehood. As new events unfold, our belief is confirmed. History will prove that our cause is correct and serves the best interests of a free and democratic society, and above all, children and families.

Popular Culture

The 1998 movie “Enemy of the State” (written by David Marconi, produced by Jerry Bruckheimer, directed by Tony Scott, starring Will Smith, Gene Hackman, Jon Voight, Lisa Bonet and Regina King) is a spy film about a group of rogue National Security agents who murder a Congressman, and try to cover up the murder by destroying evidence and intimidating witnesses.

This movie contains some practical counter surveillance measures and demonstrates how abuse of authority can seriously disturb civilian life. Modern military technologies used in surveillance and espionage against civilians are effective, heavy handed and oppressive.

Although MCFD’s surveillance capability is nowhere close to what you will see in this movie, their secret agents are still a credible threat to parents. Element of surprise and unexpectedness are their edge. Judiciary seldom questions the admissibility and the credibility of information obtained from MCFD's surveillance. Privacy and civil liberty are the last thing they will respect.

References

• “Secrets of Surveillance: A Professional's Guide to Tailing Subjects by Vehicle, Foot, Airplane and Public Transportation” published by Paladin Press (1993)
  ISBN 139780873647229
• “Surveillance Countermeasures: A Serious Guide to Detecting, Evading, and Eluding Threats to Personal Privacy” published by Paladin Press (2005)
  ISBN 0873647637
• "How to Conduct a Surveillance" from howtoinvestigate.com
• "How to Conduct a Surveillance" from ABC Investigators Inc.
• "Spy agency CSEC needs MPs' oversight, ex-director says" from CBC News 7 October 2013
• "Brazil summons Canadian ambassador over spying allegations" from CBC News 7 October 2013
• "Surveillance and Countersurveillance" by Barry Eisler
• "Parents hampered in efforts to hold onto their children" by Vicki Gough, Chatham Daily News (27 October 2013)

[This page was added on 30 July 2008, last revised on 20 October 2016.]