Public Safety committee  The model that is being attempted in both Toronto and Calgary is an adaptation of the hub model that was originally developed in Glasgow on the criminalization side to keep youth out of the criminal justice system. Dale McFee brought it to Prince Albert. There is a variant of it in 14 communities throughout Ontario.

Public Safety committee  I just spent the last 10 days having discussions about exactly this in Spain and Portugal with some of our allied agencies and partners. Like John Horgan, who is probably the premier expert on de-radicalization programs, I am skeptical about many of these programs. They tend to have three components: a prison intervention component, a sort of counter-narrative component, and a sort of targeted intervention component for individuals who are particularly high risk.

Public Safety committee  Sure. The provision in Germany, for instance, is a long-established provision. I think Germany is a particularly interesting comparison. We often talk about France and the U.K., but I think in terms of a societal predisposition with regard to security, we don't look at Germany and countries like Spain enough.

Public Safety committee  We have some measure of that. I think we have relatively crude tool kits at present and I think some of the measures that have been introduced provide us with a much finer, more precise ability to intervene pre-emptively and proactively. There are different grounds for why different entities need to be more proactive in the pre-emptive realm, if you want.

Public Safety committee  Can I have a 30-second follow-up on this? We need to be careful not to confound categories. Terrorists, radicals, and extremist travellers, as the government likes to call them, are not necessarily one and the same thing. They're sociologically distinct categories. The reason I say this is that in this discussion we shouldn't conflate the problem of mass radicalization with the problem of the very small group of individuals who engage in unlawful conduct or travel abroad.

Public Safety committee  It's a preventative measure and it has a strong deterrent effect, I think.

Public Safety committee  I guess, ultimately, for me, the purpose is getting Canada up to speed with provisions that many of our allies already have, which they have used successfully for years, or in some cases, for decades, especially in Europe. My persistent argument is that I think we've just had our heads in the sand for too long because we've been very lucky geostrategically to be so far from all this instability.

Public Safety committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Distinguished committee members, thank you for having me. I will be pleased to answer questions in both official languages, but if I may, I will speak in English. My presentation will have three parts. The first is laying out why I think this particular issue we're dealing with today will continue to persist for years to come; why I sympathize with the measure; and why I think there are good ways of rationalizing this particular measure, both within the Canadian context and the comparative context.

Finance committee  Inherently, this is a controversial question because it hearkens at the ability to pull and to share data, both within government and between government and the private sector. I would suggest that better arms'-length work with...we have some very talented academics, both in this country and internationally, and there are mechanisms....

Finance committee  The Bank of Canada and the Department of National Defence are entities of the government where failure is not an option, and I think this is what drives these institutions, so they have to be ahead of the game. I think this is the sort of mindset we need to instill in the rest of the security sector.

Finance committee  I think there are some very dedicated individuals, but I think overall this is perhaps not the priority of what drives the overall security bureaucracy. With entities such as the private sector, where the bottom line ultimately matters and where their business model relies on the legitimacy of being able to provide a consistent and secure product and convey that to Canadians, I think there's a sense that perhaps government, especially in this country, has been behind the ball, and that they have had to move forward by themselves, because government has not been...and this is not this government; I think this is, I would say, a general perception of government.

Finance committee  Arguably, the most effective financial intelligence agency we have in Canada is the Bank of Canada, because the central banks actually have a very good intelligence-sharing network among themselves, in part because in many cases they don't actually trust their own national governments to provide them with necessary and timely intelligence.

Finance committee  I think there's inherently a challenge of being able to track all the funding, but we do know that both organizations and governments are active within Canada in trying to build certain types of sympathizing organizations. Inherently, university campuses are an attractive place to build that sort of sympathizing and recruitment source.

Finance committee  I'll be happy to share some documentation with you on that, without having to comment in public on it.

Finance committee  If I may, I will answer in English to be more specific. From a data mining perspective, it's inherently important that we base what we do on adequate risk-based assessments that are firmly grounded in evidence. There is too much investigation that happens on someone's best experience or best hunch, and there's too little in terms of the actual risk models.