Episode 286: Manufacturing The Threat exposes entrapment and agent provocateurs in Canada

The YVR Screen Scene Podcast

In July of 2013, Canadian law enforcement authorities announced that they’d thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up the British Columbia Legislature. A couple from Surrey – John Omar Nuttall and Amanda Ana Korody, who were recent converts to Islam – had been arrested for planting pressure cooker bombs at the Legislature in Victoria on Canada Day. It was a chilling story – but Canadians would soon learn that the story was chilling for entirely different reasons other than “terrorists in our midst.”

That story is laid out in Manufacturing The Threat, filmmaker Amy Miller’s critically acclaimed documentary that dives into the unsettling world of agent provocateurs and entrapment within Canada's national security apparatus. Manufacturing The Threat is a thrilling and emotional film, which examines that deeply disturbing episode in Canadian history when an impoverished couple was coerced by undercover law enforcement agents into carrying out a terrorist bombing. Shining a light into the murky world of police infiltration, incitement, and agent provocateurs, the film shows how Canada’s policing and national security agencies, granted additional powers after 9/11, routinely break laws with little to no accountability or oversight. And there’s nothing to suggest it’s not still happening today.

Manufacturing The Threat had its world premiere at the 2023 DOXA Documentary Film Festival, and is screening at VIFF Centre in Vancouver until October 20. Amy Miller dropped by the YVR Screen Scene Podcast to talk about the threat posed by agent provocateurs to marginalized communities in Canada, and why she had a challenging time bringing this story to the screen. Episode sponsors: Biz Books and The Drama Class