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

Abstract

In June 2018, the 44th Group of Seven (G7) Summit was held in La Malbaie in the Province of Quebec, Canada. Drawing from geographic and sociological literature on protest and social movement policing and applying the concept of scale, we examine techniques of summit security deployed for the event. Analysing the results of access to information requests, we investigate pre-summit planning as well as the surveillance operations undertaken by military and national security agencies in conjunction with corporate players. We demonstrate how pre-summit training, threat assessments, surveillance, and securitisation practices at the summit framed protests and social movements as the predominant threat to security. Drawing from critical geographies of security, we argue that G7 Summit planning and the security operations that followed are an example of strategic incapacitation, scaled up.