In 1993 the Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) SERT (Special Emergency Response Team) was disbanded, reportedly due to problems the officers had resolving the neccesity to kill verses their desire to protect and save lives. This unit had been Canada's premier Counter-Terrorist unit. After their dissolution, the Canadian Armed Forces created a highly secretive unit (in April of 1993) reportedly called Joint Task Force Two. JTF-2 is Canada's new CT unit.
JTF-2 is so secretive that it's size, location, and training regiment aren't publically acknowledged. But details have slowly began to appear. It is guessed that their strength is around 300 operators but there are plans to double the unit's strength over the next five years. Each member is a volunteer from one of the three services in the Canadian military; creating a unit that is self-sufficient and able to deploy itself and act with a minimum of dependency on other units. They are based at the Dwyer Hill Training Centre in Ottawa's rural west end. JTF-2 is commandeered by a Lt. Colonel of one of the branches.
Reports have surfaced that JTF-2 was deployed to Bosnia in response to Canadian troops being taken hostage by Serb forces (in early 1995). The Canadian military would not comment on these reports, but the Ottowa Citizen reported that they were not used and the mission never went beyond the planning stage. JTF-2 is also known to have escorted General Maurice Baril across the Rwandan-Zaire border during Operation Assurance, the aborted Canadian plan to rescue Rwandan refugees. Later, members were deployed to Haiti and helped train that country's SWAT team.
JTF-2 is known to have contributed 40 operators to the war against Al-Qaeda as part of "Task Force K-Bar". They participated in many mountaintop surveillance missions as well as some direct action searches of cave bases. After