Canada

27 profiled groups with documented operations in Canada — 5 Extreme-band, 13 High-band, 9 Moderate or below. Presence here describes documented operations, not a judgement about Canada or its communities; many listed groups also operate elsewhere.

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Christian

Ant Hill Kids (Roch Thériault community)

Defunct Canadian apocalyptic Christian-derived communal-living movement led by Roch Thériault from around 1977 until his 1989 arrest in Ontario. Thériault was convicted of second-degree murder of community member Solange Boilard in 1993 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He died in custody in 2011. The case is one of the most extensively documented Canadian high-control-community cases on the public record.

Christian

FLDS (Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints)

Polygamist sect that broke from the LDS Church after the 1890 Manifesto. Under Warren Jeffs (Prophet 2002–present, imprisoned 2011) the FLDS practised forced underage marriages, expulsion of teen 'lost boys', and total community control. Heavily documented in court records and federal raids.

Judaism

Lev Tahor

Extreme isolationist Haredi-fringe sect founded by Shlomo Helbrans (1980s, d. 2017). Practises full-body covering for women, child marriages, and total community control. Leadership convicted in multiple jurisdictions; community has fled across borders to evade child-welfare investigations.

Christian

Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) / Warren Jeffs

Polygamist Mormon-fundamentalist breakaway centred in the twin towns of Hildale UT and Colorado City AZ (formerly Short Creek) plus the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado TX. Founded 1929–1935 as a polygamy-continuing breakaway from mainstream LDS Church (which had formally ended plural marriage in 1890). Warren Jeffs assumed leadership 2002 after his father Rulon Jeffs's death; convicted 2011 in Texas of two counts of child sexual assault (life+20). FLDS continues under Jeffs's smuggled-from-prison directives; estimated 6,000–10,000 members remain.

New Religious Movement

NXIVM-style Wellness Cults

NXIVM (1998–2018) and its imitators dressed coercive control as 'executive success programmes' or 'women's empowerment'. Founder Keith Raniere was convicted in 2019 of racketeering, sex trafficking, and forced labour.

Christian

University Bible Fellowship (UBF)

Korean-origin campus-focused Christian missionary organisation founded in 1961 in Gwangju, South Korea, by Samuel Lee (Chang-woo Lee) and Sarah Barry. The organisation built an international campus-targeted missionary apparatus and operates as a closed-discipleship structure under appointed shepherds. Documented internal patterns include intensive one-to-one 'shepherding' relationships, leadership-directed marriage practices, financial expectations on students, and family-displacement reports across the long-running ex-member testimony archive.

Christian

Elder Ephraim of Arizona — Athonite monastery network (USA)

Network of ~20 monasteries founded across North America by Elder Ephraim of Philotheou (Mount Athos), centred on St Anthony's Monastery in Florence, Arizona. Ex-members and several Greek Orthodox bishops have flagged coercive-elder, family-severance and forced-confession patterns.

Christian

Amish (Old Order)

Old Order Amish communities maintain high behavioural conformity through the Ordnung (community rules), Meidung (shunning) of baptised members who leave, and minimal engagement with outside media and education.

Wellness / Multi-Level

Access Consciousness (Gary Douglas / Dain Heer)

Active US-headquartered commercial seminar and body-work network founded around 1990 by Gary Douglas and later co-developed with Dain Heer. Markets the 'Access Bars' (32 'bars' of the head touched by a trained facilitator), 'Access Body Processes', and a sequence of intensive seminars (Foundation, Levels) at substantial per-participant cost. Documented in ABC Australia 4 Corners sustained investigative coverage (notably the 2019 'The Cost of Consciousness' investigation), in ex-participant testimony archives, and in Australian regulator attention to consumer-protection concerns. Confidence published as Low — primary source base is journalism + ex-member testimony with limited academic coverage.

Political / Ideological

Active Club Network (white nationalist combat sports)

Decentralised white-nationalist combat-sports network founded by Robert Rundo (Rise Above Movement). Combines MMA training with explicit white-nationalist ideology. SPLC hate-group designation.

Christian

Old Order Mennonites

Conservative Anabaptist Christian tradition descended from the late-19th-century 'Old Order' split from mainstream Mennonite Church (USA). Approximately 80,000+ members across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Canadian Ontario. Similar to Old Order Amish but typically permits some technology — electricity, telephones, and (in some groups) automobiles. Distinctive plain dress, 8th-grade education limit, voluntary adult baptism with lifelong commitment, and shunning (Meidung) of post-baptismal exiters.

Christian

Hutterites (communal Anabaptists)

Communal Anabaptist Christian tradition founded 1528 in Moravia by Jakob Hutter (1500-1536). Approximately 50,000+ members across approximately 500 colonies (Bruderhofs) in the North American prairies (USA: South Dakota, Montana, North Dakota; Canada: Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba). Distinctive total community of property, colonies of 60-150 members, Hutterisch German dialect maintenance, plain dress, 8th-grade education limit, voluntary adult baptism with lifelong vows, severance of those who leave.

Buddhist

Shambhala International (post-Sakyong scandal)

Western Tibetan Buddhist organisation founded by Chögyam Trungpa (1973). Sakyong Mipham (Trungpa's son) stepped back in 2018 after Project Sunshine reports documenting sexual misconduct.

Political / Ideological

Proud Boys (Western chauvinist far-right)

American 'Western chauvinist' far-right group founded by Gavin McInnes (2016). SPLC hate-group designation 2018. Multiple senior leaders convicted for January 6 2021 Capitol attack including seditious conspiracy.

New Religious Movement

Various Falun Gong-adjacent qigong sects (umbrella)

Umbrella entry for the dozens of Chinese qigong sects of the 1990s 'qigong fever' (氣功熱) period beyond Falun Gong (separately documented). Notable cases include Zhong Gong (Zhang Hongbao, founded 1987, suppressed 1999+), Xiang Gong (Tian Ruisheng), Yan Xin Qigong (Yan Xin, US-based since 1990s), Wan Fa Gui Yi (Hongzhi-Tian Daoism), and many smaller groups. Chinese state suppression from 1999 onward drove most underground or into international diaspora operation.

Wellness / Multi-Level

Plexus Worldwide

Scottsdale-based weight-loss MLM (founded 2008, current corporate structure 2011) selling 'Plexus Slim' (the 'Pink Drink') and supplement bundles. ~500k 'Ambassadors' at peak; FDA 2014 warning letter on disease-treatment claims; FTC inquiries into income claims. Documented 'Pink Drink' parasocial influencer culture across Mormon-network and Southern Baptist communities.

Wellness / Multi-Level

Isagenix International

Arizona-based cleanse-and-weight-loss MLM founded by John Anderson and Jim Coover (2002). Distinctive '30-day cleanse' protocol bundling shake meal-replacements, fasting, and supplement schedules at $400+/month. ~300k associates at 2018 peak; Chapter 11 bankruptcy filed June 2024. High-control internal sales culture documented across multiple ex-member podcasts and r/antiMLM coverage.

Wellness / Multi-Level

Vector Marketing / Cutco Cutlery

Olean, NY-based subsidiary of Cutco Corporation operating the door-to-door knife-sales recruitment programme that has been a fixture on US college campuses since 1985. Recruits high-school and undergraduate students to sell Cutco knives door-to-door (and later via Zoom) on commission. Multiple class-action settlements (2010s, 2024) over wage-and-hour violations and recruitment misrepresentation; documented cult-of-personality 'rank up' culture; the canonical 'student MLM' case study.

Christian

Latter Rain movement (New Order of the Latter Rain)

The New Order of the Latter Rain erupted in 1948 at Sharon Orphanage and Schools in North Battleford, Saskatchewan, and spread rapidly through healing-revival Pentecostalism. Its signature teachings — the restoration of living apostles and prophets, the impartation of spiritual gifts through the laying on of hands, and the 'manifest sons of God' expectation of an end-times overcomer company — were formally rejected by the Assemblies of God in 1949. The movement itself remained decentralised and largely non-coercive, but its doctrinal toolkit became the foundation on which later, higher-control streams (shepherding-style discipleship and the modern apostolic-prophetic networks) were built.

Christian

Millerism (historical)

Millerism was the mass Adventist expectation movement built on William Miller's calculation that Christ would return around 1843–44, culminating in the fixed date of October 22, 1844 and the 'Great Disappointment' when the day passed. At its peak it drew hundreds of thousands of adherents and sympathisers across the northeastern United States. It was not a high-control organisation — it had no central membership machinery and adherents remained in their own churches until late in the movement — but it is the canonical historical case of prophetic date-setting at scale: followers abandoned occupations and unharvested crops, and the disconfirmation produced lasting psychological and social fallout alongside several enduring successor denominations.

Wellness / Multi-Level

World Financial Group (mainstream-adjacent comparator)

World Financial Group (WFG) is a multi-level distributor of insurance and financial products — centrally indexed universal life insurance — owned since 2001 by Transamerica (Aegon): the corporate descendant, through Hubert Humphrey's World Marketing Alliance, of the A.L. Williams 'buy term and invest the difference' recruiting machine of the 1980s. Its model recruits heavily through family and community networks — with notable penetration in immigrant communities in the US and Canada — licensing recruits to sell to their own circles while recruiting them in turn. The documented record is the sector's compliance-friction band: periodic regulatory fines and supervisory actions in several jurisdictions over unlicensed activity, suitability, and oversight; sustained criticism from financial-planning professionals over recruitment-first culture and product suitability; and no adjudicated pyramid finding — the combination that places WFG as the catalogue's regulated-MLM comparator alongside Primerica.

Wellness / Multi-Level

Rodan + Fields (skincare MLM)

Skincare MLM founded by Proactiv creators Katie Rodan and Kathy Fields (2008). Multiple US class actions over Lash Boost vision-loss claims.

Christian

Toronto Blessing (Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship)

The Toronto Blessing is the name given to the charismatic renewal phenomenon that began in January 1994 at the Toronto Airport Vineyard church — marked by 'holy laughter', falling, shaking, and other ecstatic manifestations — which drew hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world and was exported to congregations globally. The Vineyard movement expelled the congregation in 1995 amid disputes over the manifestations' promotion, and it continued as Toronto Airport Christian Fellowship (later Catch The Fire). The phenomenon sits low on the CLCI spectrum: attendance was voluntary, exit costless, and finances conventional — but it remains a well-documented case study in engineered expectation, suggestibility, and the pastoral debates around experiential validation.

Other

Vodou diaspora communities (NYC, Miami, Montreal)

Haitian Vodou diaspora communities in NYC, Miami, Montreal. Mainstream low-control extension of Haitian Vodou tradition.

Other

Zoroastrian Parsis (India)

Indian Zoroastrian community descended from 8th–10th century Persian refugees. ~50,000 in India today; endogamy disputes are a major intra-community fault line.

Judaism

Reform Judaism

Reform Judaism is the most theologically liberal major Jewish denomination, with full egalitarian leadership, no enforcement of halakhic detail, and openness to interfaith families. Serves as a low-CLCI reference point.

Judaism

Conservative Judaism (Masorti)

Conservative Judaism (Masorti outside North America) sits between Orthodox and Reform — observing Jewish law as binding while permitting evolving interpretation. Egalitarian, low-control, and democratically governed.

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Complete list of 27 group profiles