Government agents provocateurs try to incite violence.

Video footage of demonstrations at the North American Leaders' Summit in Montebello, Canada, on August 21 captured an incident in which three police officers masquerading as demonstrators attempted to incite a violent confrontation with the heavily armed police units guarding the summit attended by President George W. Bush, Mexico's President Felipe Calderon, and Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The video clips, which appeared on Canadian websites and on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=St1-WTc1kow), show clear close-ups of three husky men clad in military-style camouflage pants and dark shirts, their faces masked with bandannas, similar to the attire of some of the protesters they are mixing with. They are holding large, fist-sized rocks and appear to be trying to egg the protesters on to violent action against the line of riot police only a few feet away. Union leader David Coles confronts the men, shouting repeatedly at them: "Put the rocks down. This is our line. This is a peaceful demonstration. Put the rocks down!" He is joined by other demonstrators, who surround the three and say, "Take off your masks, let us see your face."

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Trapped, the three provocateurs squeezed behind the police fines where they were arrested and led away in cuffs. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Surete du Quebec (SQ), which shared responsibility for summit security, both initially denied that the three men were police officers. However, on August 24, the SQ admitted that the men were members of the force. "Their mandate was to seek out and identify non-peaceful demonstrators to avoid having things boil over," a statement issued by the SQ read. "At no point did Surete du Quebec policemen act as agents provocateurs or criminals." The video footage of the incident appears to offer strong contradictory evidence to that denial.

This would not be the first time that Canadian police agencies had used agents provocateurs. Over the past decade, there have been several high-profile public disclosures that Canada's most notorious neo-Nazis, such as Grant Bristow and Carney Nerland, were actually agents of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. Their violent and viciously racist activities provided the justification for Canada's oppressive hate-crime laws that now infringe on the rights of all Canadians.