It may have been the most politically correct terrorism bust in history.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the RCMP met with members of the Canadian Muslim community every month for a year to discuss security concerns before last Friday's 17 arrests. But the outreach program took an unprecedented turn during an 8 a.m. meeting last Saturday -- two hours before authorities briefed the world about the arrests -- when Toronto-area Muslim community leaders were told the details of the most high-profile terrorism sweep in Canadian history.
"It was a form of pre-emptive outreach, for lack of a better word," said spokeswoman Barbara Campion.
Canada's secret security apparatus has been putting serious effort into softening its image for much of the past year, conscious of the fact that for many Muslim immigrants, the phrase "secret police" is synonymous with violence and coercion.
Hussein Hamdani, a lawyer and member of the government's cross-cultural roundtable on security, said he and others tried to explain to police why they had to engage the Muslim community.
"We would say, 'Look, you're doing a negative job when doing outreach because you have this wall of silence,' " he said. "I don't think they listened for a long time."
But recently, CSIS has been listening. Under the tenure of Jim Judd, who took over as director in November of 2004, the spy agency has taken specific steps to bring the Muslim community onside.
For example, the agency has dropped phrases such as "Sunni Islamic extremist threat" from its lexicon. At last Saturday's news conference, agents very deliberately avoided using the words Muslim or Islamic when describing the arrests.
Agents also made sure to mention they'd received assistance in the investigation from the Muslim community. According to Mr. Hamdani, this served two purposes: It projected a "we're in this together" message to Muslims, and it indicated to other listeners that not all members of the religion are extremist sympathizers. Authorities also quickly translated the contents of the news conference and other news releases into Arabic and Urdu.
But the timing of Saturday's news conference was also very deliberate. The RCMP were able to communicate with reporters before any court appearance, thereby avoiding the possibility of a media ban.
Authorities were stung by such a ban in the case of Canadian Momin Khawaja, who is accused of a plot to kill British citizens. Mr. Khawaja was the first person charged under Canada's new anti-terrorism laws. While the media were not able to report details of the case because of a publication ban, they were able to report Mr. Khawaja's family asserting that he was a victim of racial profiling.
The RCMP's image was also hurt by an ill-fated investigation three years ago known as Project Thread, in which 20 Pakistani men were held on suspicion of terrorism. The case was later exposed as being highly circumstantial, and the terror charges didn't stick. The operation eventually earned the mocking nickname Project Threadbare.
But even though Canada's security apparatus has become much more savvy since then, it remains unclear whether the Muslim community's response will ultimately prove different.
Muslim Canadian Congress representative Tarek Fatah, who was at Saturday's meeting, said imams brought up a number of concerns after being told what had happened. One asked why authorities hadn't told them sooner about the suspects, so the religious leaders could have put a stop to their plot, Mr. Fatah said.
According to Mr. Fatah, another imam asked whether the authorities could keep the meeting a secret.
"If bishops were meeting regularly with the RCMP, what do you think their congregations would think?" Mr. Fatah said.