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Toronto's senior spy has told a group of Muslims he is frightened of potential terrorist attacks on Canadians and wants their help to "de-demonize" Canada's national-security agencies.

"I want you to help. . . . Us doing it alone is like one hand clapping," Andy Ellis implored a group of Muslims he had invited to the Meadowvale Community Centre in Mississauga. The regional director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service said he is increasingly worried about young extremists.

Federal agents appear frightened by what they are learning about radicalization and even more frightened by what they don't know. While more dialogue with ordinary Muslims could help pinpoint problems, it can be hard get the discussion going - especially when what the agents regard as their success stories are often shielded by court-ordered publication bans, and the details of their mistakes are publicly picked apart by federal judges.

"The RCMP, CSIS and other agencies have lost credibility," one of more than 20 Muslims who came out for the meeting stood up to tell Mr. Ellis. Citing the charges dropped against several suspects rounded up in Toronto two years ago, and raising the 2002 case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen sent to a brutal Syrian interrogation prison aboard a U.S. Central Intelligence Agency jet, he asked a pointed question: "Is there a campaign to pick on Muslims?"

"We do not target the Muslim community; we are trying to work with you," Mr. Ellis replied. He stressed that CSIS and the RCMP lawfully zero in on the tiny percentage of Muslims who are drawn toward violent extremism, and urged the audience to get past "urban legend" and read up on what judges are actually finding.

That was relatively easy for Mr. Ellis to say - CSIS emerged relatively unscathed in the commission that probed Canadian complicity in the Arar affair. The same judge found the Mounties much more blameworthy. RCMP Superintendent Jamie Jagoe, who led the Mississauga meeting with Mr. Ellis, said the RCMP had enacted most of the Arar recommendations "before the ink was dry" on the findings - and added that Canada's auditor-general is visiting him to make sure that's indeed the case in Toronto.

Other recommendations are coming. A public inquiry is poised to report on the Air India bomb blast from nearly a quarter century ago. Mr. Ellis said no judge needs to tell him CSIS failed.

He told the Muslims he was attending a memorial service last year for more than 300 Canadians killed aboard the plane, when a grieving relative approached him. "He said 'You were responsible for the death of my father,' " Mr. Ellis told the meeting. "I came back to my staff and said I never never, want to go to the consecration of another memorial for victims of terrorism."

Federal agencies say they have thwarted attacks in Canada, but the prosecutions that might produce solid evidence of this have proved to be legal marathons where key details remain shielded by pretrial publication bans. Still, it's clear why CSIS chose to reach out to Muslims in Meadowvale - the community was home to many of the so-called "Toronto 18" suspects arrested in 2006 - including a faction whose notion for a dialogue with CSIS is alleged to have included a plan to explode a massive truck bomb outside the agency's headquarters in Toronto.

The security agencies weren't the most hawkish voices at the Aug. 16 meeting in Meadowvale. Members of a left-liberal Muslim group stood up to say the threat was way beyond what federal agencies realized. "Our security is threatened by jihadists," said Tarek Fateh, an outspoken anti-Islamist who then railed against certain mosques, students associations and Islamic interest groups in Toronto.

Mr. Ellis said he found it unfortunate that attendance was small. Prior to the meeting, certain opinion-makers in the Muslim community had circulated e-mails suggesting it was best to give the meeting a pass, since no high-level political officials from Ottawa were there.

Mr. Ellis's message was that, in his experience, Islam is a religion of peace and that terrorists tend to be simply "lost souls" drawn to adventures - and so difficult to spot that even their parents don't see it coming. Recalling the 2005 suicide subway bombers in the U.K., he said that long before more than 50 commuters were killed, London imams had banned the suspects from certain mosques - but never went the important extra step of flagging them to authorities.

"That sort of thing has happened in this city," Mr. Ellis said. "That sort of thing has happened in this country."