One of his wives, teacher Aloha Palmer — wearing the standard ankle-length dress, its pink puffy sleeves covering her arms — said she now warns children that "the police, the authorities, these are people to be feared."

Bountiful residents have reason to worry: Just like in Texas, polygamy is illegal in Canada.

But instead of responding to a direct complaint of sexual abuse, Oppal would be reacting to two decades of unanswered pressure that the Canadian government do something about these families who practice plural marriages with impunity.

The pressure has been growing since the Texas raid. A national poll last month found nearly two-thirds of Canadians want Bountiful residents who break the law by practicing polygamy to be prosecuted.

But two Canadian laws stand in contradiction: Polygamy is banned, and religious freedoms are firmly protected.

In repeated investigations, the more troubling questions of sexual abuse, human trafficking and forced marriages also have been investigated. As part of a three-year review launched in 2004, detectives spent three months in the community. No charges were brought, but the legal age of sexual consent in Canada increased to 16 from 14 on May 1.

"To me it is so offensive that nothing's been done," said Daphne Branham, who has published a book about Canada's polygamous renegade FLDS sect. "Everything about the community is so unbelievable, from the fact that we fund the schools, we provide their health care. Our doctors and nurses — they see the fathers in the hospital, they sign the birth certificates — everyone knows what's going on out there."

Bountiful's leaders say they are being unfairly singled out. Some say fewer than one in four Bountiful families are polygamous. No man takes more than one wife, legally; the rest are spiritual unions — no different, they say, than a married man having a fling.

"Canadian officials don't need to look very far from the windows of the capital to see people who are carrying on relationships with more than one woman at the same time, which is polygamy. For them to target us would be nothing more than religious persecution," said Winston Blackmore, the former bishop, who has said he has more than two dozen wives and more than 100 children.

The FLDS, with an estimated 10,000 members, is headquartered in Colorado City, Ariz., and Hildale, Utah. In 1947, a small group moved across the Canadian border into Lister. The newcomers dubbed the pristine spot at the base of a snowy mountain range Bountiful.

In addition to an estimated 1,000 Canadians who live here, the U.S. Embassy estimates there are about 300 Americans loyal to Blackmore and another 200 who follow Jeffs.