Public Safety Committee on May 28th, 2015

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Good morning, colleagues. Welcome to meeting number 72 of the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), we are further studying two areas in the subject matter of division 2, dealing primarily with passport revocation, and in the second hour we will cover division 10, which is Hill security.

With us today, for the first hour, we have two witnesses. We have, as individuals, Mr. Thomas Quiggin, and Mr. Christian Leuprecht, associate dean and associate professor at the Faculty of Arts, Royal Military College of Canada.

For the first hour, gentlemen, you have the floor for up to 10 minutes, should you wish. At the expiration of that, we will go to a round of questions and answers.

Carry on. Mr. Quiggin, you have the floor.

[Thomas Quiggin, As an Individual]

Good morning, Mr. Chair, and honourable members. Thank you for inviting us here today.

Just by way of introduction, let me say that in Canada there are a series of deep networks that have the ideology, infrastructure, and organized financial support to develop multiple avenues of extremism here in Canada. The intent of these networks is to create a political, social, and cultural space where issues of extremism and radicalization can be advanced, while questions about their activity are silenced through manufactured claims of Islamophobia and racism. These networks, aided by overseas propaganda efforts, will provide an increasingly large stream of young Canadians who will use their Canadian passports to continue to become suicide bombers, jihadist fighters, and propagandists.

Many believe we should simply allow such individuals to travel overseas, and there is a certain logic that support that. However, exporting murderous suicide bombers and propagandists may not be the best way Canada contributes to this trans-national, long-term series of overseas conflicts.

Islam itself is in the throes of a long-term struggle for the soul of the faith. Historical analogies to similar events in the past are tenuous, but the protestant reformation in Europe lasted from roughly 1517 to 1648, in other words, 130 years. Almost 30% of the population of what we would now call Germany was destroyed in that time period. The current upheaval in Islam has been under way for about 90 years, but it's reasonable to say this will probably last for another full generation.

Hassan al-Banna's formation of the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928 can be seen symbolically as marking the start of the modern day politicized struggle for the future of Islam, much as Martin Luther is seen symbolically as having started the reformation in 1615. While the outcome of the struggle for the soul of Islam is not clear, it's reasonable to assess at this moment Islamist voices of extremism are in the lead, and they are ascendant.

The question is, how should we view this extremism in Canada? Here it is increasingly difficult to distinguish the difference between the ISIS rhetoric, which we hear over there, and the rhetoric of local Canadian efforts, which are created and distributed over here. This is not surprising, given they are inspired by the same basic ideology.

We cannot here today examine all aspects of extremism, but I believe the most recent issue of the ISIS magazine, Dabiq, issue number 9, provides a useful example and a point of entry, which we can discuss. An article in the recent Dabiq is entitled “Slave-Girls or Prostitutes” and examines the role of women in ISIS, with a focus on justifying the roles of those girls and women who have been captured and are now held as sexual slaves.

At about the same time that report was published, Zainab Bangura, the United Nations special representative on sexual violence, reported that ISIS is institutionalizing sexual violence. The brutalization of women and girls is central to their ideology. The question arises, is it possible to tell the difference between the statements made by ISIS propagandists over there and the information and material that is being generated over here?

Let me read five short statements about the extremist views of women and try to imagine which one of these statements is from ISIS and which was created and distributed here in Canada. Statement 1, beating women in Islam is a type of education; statement 2, women may enjoy being beaten at times, as it is a sign of love and concern for them; statement 3, forced sex is not rape and they should be thankful; statement 4, the husband has many rights over his wife, and first and foremost she must obey; statement 5, the wife may not deny herself to her husband.

Of those five statements, only one of them comes from Dabiq magazine, namely, statement 3 about forced sex. The other four statements are all statements being made in Canada, distributed in books, put on videos online, etc. All of this is here in Canada, all of it in the open, and all of it available through open source. These statements are so offensive, so repugnant, and so barbaric it is difficult to catalogue the various affronts.

The same comparison can be made with other extremist issues, such as the killing of innocents and suicide bombings. These statements also do not address the degree to which female genital mutilation exists in Canada. We do not have useful statistics on this because the various legislative and medical bodies refuse to address the issue here in Canada, unlike the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.

Canada probably has the highest rate of forced suicides, meaning murder or honour killings, amongst young south Asian women. This is for a series of reasons due to extremism and culture, but again at best we have second order statistics, as feminist groups and others are either afraid to tackle the issue or they do not find the killing of brown women in Canada to be significant.

I am aware that front-line police forces are aware of the issue at hand. They're trying to deal with it. They're trying to educate themselves, but they lack official statistics. They lack community support and they lack political backing.

Much of Canadian civil society, including feminists, academics, social justice advocates and NGOs, is either frightened into submission and fears speaking out or believes that it is correct to approve of such abuse because one must be tolerant of other cultures. Silence, in my view, implies consent.

Hence, we see York University Muslim Students' Association handing out books advising that it's correct to beat your wife because she'll see it as a sign of love and concern, yet there is no overall societal reaction to this or other such statements.

The question arises, of course, who are the networks that are advancing this extremism in Canada? As noted above, the wellspring of much of this ideology comes from the Muslim Brotherhood. Dr. Lorenzo Vidino, who is perhaps the world's leading expert on the Muslim Brotherhood outside of the Middle East itself, recently testified at the Senate of Canada on May 11 of this year. His view, as he expressed it to the Senate, is that the Muslim Brotherhood has some eight to ten front groups in Canada, but the four best known ones are the Muslim Association of Canada, CAIR-CAN, otherwise known as NCCM, and Islamic Relief Canada. He identified IRFAN as the fourth, although of course they have been put out of business as of this year when they were declared a terrorist entity.

In conclusion, let me say that I believe the discussion about passport seizures and revocation is timely, appropriate, and necessary. Unfortunately, as the recent seizure of some 10 passports at the Montreal airport suggests, this is an ongoing problem. It's going to increase in magnitude as a series of overseas conflicts continue.

By way of my own background, I've been involved with and testified in an international hostage-taking criminal case. I've testified and been declared a court expert in terrorism in a criminal trial. I've testified multiple times and been declared a court expert in national security certificates. I've testified and been declared a court expert in the IRB and I testified at the Air India inquiry. I've also testified to the Senate and the House on multiple occasions in the past and I actually helped train the special advocates, lawyers, and judges who work within the national security certificate cases and others.

It should be noted as well that I've testified on both sides of the aisle, defence and prosecution, including testifying for the defence when questions of innocence and due process have arisen concerning Muslim Canadians caught up in national security issues. As such, my view based on experience in the court system is that the ultimate arbitrator of the human rights of Canadians remains the court system. While a bit slow and on occasion ponderous, innovations such as the special advocate system have worked and have ensured that the intelligence community and the judicial system have remained functional even under the most trying of circumstances over a period of years.

Based on my experience, the bill provides judges with considerable latitude to accept, deny, or discard any and all evidence put in front of them. This is made particularly clear under the “Appeals” section of the bill, subclause 4(4) and in particular paragraphs (a), (b), (c) and (e), which offer judges and by extension defence lawyers, the widest possible latitude to discredit misleading or weak evidence put before them. Thus I believe a balance can be achieved when a passport revocation occurs.

I believe that an independent judiciary, a system that we have here in Canada, remains a trustworthy and credible force. It is capable of dealing with the issue of whether or not the privilege of having a Canadian passport—and it's a privilege not a right.... If that privilege has been revoked and the passport is removed, I believe that the judges are capable of assessing the information at hand and whether that person would have used it to travel abroad to commit acts of terrorism or otherwise.

Mr. Chairman and honourable members, thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much, Mr. Quiggin.

We will now go to our second witness, Mr. Christian Leuprecht.

You have the floor, sir.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht, Associate Dean and Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Royal Military College of Canada, As an Individual]

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.

Here's why this is going to be a persistent problem. I think there have been two fundamental changes that have brought this whole phenomenon much closer to home. Those are two revolutions.

One is the communications revolution, which has made it so much easier for people to get their twisted messages out. Everybody has a mobile phone. Aside from the ability to spread one's message in a way that would have been much more difficult a couple of decades ago, we also have what sociologists call the “filter bubble”. This phenomenon says that even though we have a very pluralistic social media universe, individuals are increasingly reading only the types of information that reinforces the biases and stereotypes they already hold. As people start to buy into this type of extremist narrative type of messaging—which that might cause them to engage in violence and travel abroad for either the purpose of committing violence, or joining an organization that the Government of Canada has decided is an organization we'd rather not have them join—I think that media communication is a major part of it.

The other is transportation. It's so much easier and cheaper today to get anywhere. For a couple of thousand bucks, you get on a plane in Edmonton and you fly to Istanbul and find your way to the border. If you think about a hundred years ago, if somebody immigrated to Canada they left everything behind. They maybe sent a letter or so back, but they wouldn't be thinking about going back. Staying in touch would be very difficult. I think these two fundamental revolutions have very much changed the game.

There's another element that I think is going to be a challenge for years to come with this phenomenon of extremist travellers, or “foreign terrorist fighters” as the UN calls them. It is the immense structural imbalances that afflict the countries that span from North Africa through to Pakistan, this arc of countries. It is the very high fertility rates that lead to severe demographic imbalances and very large youth bulges. If you look at a country such as Pakistan, you're going to have a 50% increase in their population over the next 40 years. These are recurring or replicable phenomena in most of the countries throughout the region, and yet we have social structures, economic structures, and political structures that are ill-adapted to this demographic growth.

In part, for instance, if you're smart and an ambitious young person, even if you try, it's very difficult for you to get a job because many of the economic structures and the state structures are so ossified you can't get a job unless you have all sorts of connections with senior elites, and whatnot. It's no wonder we have a large bulk of individuals in the region who are frustrated and who buy into extreme solutions and narratives not necessarily because they might be entirely convinced by the ideology being peddled, but because they're the one organization that gives them some hope of changing the circumstances in which they live.

What we've seen over the last 30 or so years, as a result, is what you might call the phenomenon of the globalization of terrorism. Previously we had domestic terrorism and we had international terrorism, both state terrorism and state-sponsored terrorism. What we've seen is this proliferation of this phenomenon of transnational terrorism and the narratives that go along with it, and now also the opportunity of ISIS, which has essentially turned the al Qaeda strategy on its head and deliberately tries to hold and control urban centres and lines of communication among these urban centres. If you wanted to join al Qaeda it was really hard. You had to get to Pakistan, and you had to find your way over to Waziristan. That was a dangerous trip and many people didn't make it. Now it's so easy to join these organizations.

While I think we can manage the ISIS phenomenon, it becomes a bit of a whack-a-mole game. As a result of these imbalances that I've laid out for you, I think instability and extremist-type narratives in these types of organizations are going to be a persistent problem for years and decades to come.

The challenge we have with people travelling abroad is going to be a persistent challenge. Sure, it dates back to the Spanish revolution and, as some of you might know, we still have the Foreign Enlistment Act on the books that was implemented at the time to dissuade individuals from going. We had this problem with German Canadians and Japanese Canadians during the Second World War. We had this challenge with some members of the Sikh community joining Babbar Khalsa, and with some members of the Tamil community joining the LTTE. As a result of these revolutions that I've laid out, this is a whole new world. It's no longer limited to particular ethnic or religious communities, because these narratives can speak to just about anybody.

As a result, what do we need? We need a much more nuanced tool kit for our security services. We've done a good job of focusing on what you might call “criminal pre-emption”, but we need to have a more nuanced tool kit in what my colleague Craig Forcese calls “administrative pre-emption”. Passport revocation is a very important component with regard to precision kinetic counterterrorist intervention, not for some mass community radicalization, whatever, talk, but rather targeting that small portion of individuals looking to travel abroad to engage with these organizations.

I might remind the committee that, of course, it's not just about adults travelling abroad. It's also about youth travelling abroad. I think the state has an obligation toward minors, toward people under 18, to intervene in ways that it might not with adults.

We also need to remember that these people will return. We know that about one-third of foreign fighters have returned. We know nine out of ten of them return deeply disillusioned and with serious mental health issues. And we know that about one out of ten—from is Thomas Hegghammer's study out of Norway, based on a sample of over 1,000—returns as a hardened ideologue.

One way or another, there are significant implications for Canadian society and for the Canadian taxpayer, if we don't engage in more effective administrative pre-emption.

Why do we need to do this? In itself, this will have a deterrent effect, if people understand that their passport may end up being revoked or they may not have one issued.

I think we also need to protect the integrity of the Canadian passport. As a result of incidents in central Asia and in north Africa, the Canadian passport in these regions is not treated now with the recognition and respect it had previously. So I think we need to be at the forefront of making sure we protect the Canadian passport as one of the most respected travel documents in the world.

I would like to finish on the premise that a passport is not an entitlement but more like a driver's licence. If you engage in conduct that clearly contravenes the collective interest, as Canadian society has outlined it, then you simply don't have the right to that particular document.

However, I might perhaps have one suggestion in closing that the committee might want to entertain. When we take people's drivers' licences, we don't take them forever, in most cases. We take them for a limited period of time. I wonder if the committee might want to consider some sort of a sunset clause built into the provisions here, whereby there is some obligation on the government to renew the provision of either not issuing a passport or renewing the revocation of that particular passport. Moreover, if we do have a permanent revocation of somebody's document, we need to make sure that we have an administrative procedure that independently confirms the assessment by the minister and by our law enforcement and security agencies that this individual's actions are so severe that they need to have that document essentially revoked for a lifetime. That would be the caveat that I might introduce.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you to both of our witnesses for your input here today.

We will now go to our rounds of questioning. We will start off with the first round of seven minutes.

Mr. Falk, please.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you to our witnesses, Mr. Quiggin and Mr. Leuprecht, for coming to the committee this morning.

Thank you very much for your expert testimony. You're obviously both very well versed in this area and I appreciate listening to your perspectives on the issue.

I think you rightly said, Mr. Leuprecht, that having a Canadian passport is a privilege, and with privileges come responsibilities and accountability. Certainly we want to protect the integrity of all passports that are issued in Canada, and also make sure that we maintain its recognizability and the special privilege it is to hold a passport like that.

We've heard many stories in the media over the last few weeks of people, especially young folks, who have tried to travel to Istanbul, Turkey, and then further on to Syria, often against the wishes of family members or without their knowledge. Law enforcement officials have been working hard to make sure that these incidents of unauthorized travel by minors are minimized, but it seems to me that it's quite obvious why we need these provisions strengthening our laws to give us the ability to cancel, to refuse, or to revoke passports.

Could you talk a little bit more about what the purpose really is, the way you see it? What would be the purpose of strengthening the ability to revoke a passport or to cancel a passport?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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. We need to learn from our allies and like-minded countries. In particular, the U.K., Germany, France and Spain have dealt with the phenomenon of terrorism and had to confront this for a longer period of time, and we can see that freedom and security are not a zero-sum game, but rather, that free societies are also secure societies. There are ways of reconciling these competing priorities to serve societal interest as a whole.

I think the ultimate purpose here is to make sure we have provisions that are commensurate with the phenomenon of the globalization of transnational terrorism, on the one hand, but that on the other hand, are sufficiently nuanced to respond to our constitutional and charter environment while effectively providing a more nuanced tool kit, especially for our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies.

If we simply rely upon criminal pre-emption as the main tool, which is sometimes what the critics will say—that criminal pre-emption is essentially a national security investigation with the objective of ultimately laying a charge—it is very expensive. It is cumbersome.

We've had the commissioner of the RCMP come before Parliament and say that it's breaking his organization to run the investigations he's currently running. The standard of evidence to obtain a conviction is very high. It's not just about laying a charge. It's about making sure we collect the evidence, with the crown having sufficient confidence that they'll actually be able to obtain a conviction.

In the case of youth, do we necessarily want these individuals to end up with a criminal record as a result of what they did, or do we just want to make sure that we take the necessary pre-emptive measures so that they are not able to follow through, and so that, hopefully, with some appropriate intervention—and I think there's a lot more that we can do on the intervention and the prevention side—they will come to their senses and understand that this was perhaps not the best decision to make?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you.

Mr. Quiggin, when we discussed Bill C-51 at the committee here, we heard from many witnesses, including from the Muslim community. A lot of those witnesses talked about taking preventative measures before their youth become radicalized, and they expressed some concern that Bill C-51 didn't really address the preventative aspect of becoming radicalized.

Do you think that this measure is a good measure in terms of perhaps preventing radicalization? Is it a preventative tool to revoke someone's passport? How do you see that?

[Thomas Quiggin]

Mr. Chairman, sir, I think that if you're going to tackle the issue of people travelling overseas to become extremists and terrorists, or whatever, and if you're going to tackle the issue here in Canada itself, which is a somewhat different thing, there needs to be a strategic, operational, and tactical approach.

At the strategic level we should be looking, as I mentioned earlier, at crippling the networks we have here in Canada, which create these social, political, and cultural spaces where it's okay to talk about this kind of stuff, where it's okay to do that. That means going after their charities, going after their organizations.

At the tactical level, which is where I believe the passport issue is, we need, as my colleague says, a better tool kit. I think the passport issue is a tactical one. It is a way of catching people as they are leaving Canada and going overseas to commit themselves to this kind of activity.

Is it preventative? Yes, it is, in the sense that it prevents them from going overseas. Is it preventative in the sense it will stop radicalization in Canada? That I'm not quite so sure about, but I do think it will provide a useful means of bringing this issue up onto the public radar.

The Canadian government and Canadian civil society are reluctant to challenge the narrative of extremism in Canada, for a series of cultural, political correctness reasons, etc.

We just saw 10 people pulled over at Montréal-Trudeau airport a week ago Saturday as they were on their way to travel to ISIS. Hopefully, those kinds of things will bring out a larger discussion. Parents sitting around the family dinner table can say, “This is what's going to happen to these people,” and folks like us can use this, as well, as a means of discussion.

Is it a good preventative measure? I think yes, in the sense that it's tactical and will stop people at the point of exit. Also, it's one more means of challenging the extremist narrative in Canada, something that I don't think we're doing a good job of anywhere.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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. We have people who travel abroad who have not been radicalized and who have not necessarily bought into radical narratives. We know, based on my own survey work, that we have no lack of sympathy in this country with radical narratives, but very few people who actually act on that sympathy.

We can't use one policy tool to address two very distinct problems. We need to have different types of policy tools. This, for me, is a kinetic, tactical, precision-type of intervention for that very small community of people who are looking to engage in unlawful conduct by leaving the country to join an organization or engage in activity that we have deemed unlawful. It is not, in my view, going to do anything or much about the problem of mass radicalization. That's a different issue and we need different types of tool kits.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

You have 45 seconds, Mr. Falk.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

I would agree with your comments. Where I would see it as a preventative thing is if we can stop people from getting on the plane, revoke passports before they go to Syria, before they become further radicalized, before they become further disillusioned, or harm themselves or others, or train to harm themselves or others. In that sense I think it's also a preventative measure for people who have already been somewhat radicalized here in Canada. Would you agree with that? It's a tool. It's one more tool.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Fine. Thank you very much, Mr. Falk.

Now Mr. Garrison, please.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for appearing today.

It's necessary to come back to the question at hand. I appreciate Mr. Leuprecht's last remarks because I think it helps us do that.

We do have, of course, a mobility right in Canada, and it is subject to reasonable limits. The court decisions have been quite clear about that, so I don't think you'll find anybody around the table here arguing that people ought to be able to go abroad to join terrorist groups. That's not the question before us, really.

With respect to Mr. Quiggin's testimony, he was here for Bill C-51 and has repeated some of the same things he said then, including his attack on the National Council of Canadian Muslims, which he always does under the protection of parliamentary privilege. I'm disappointed to see he's done the same thing again today.

I'd also raise some interesting questions with Bill C-51, which is about to pass Parliament, as to whether repeating the arguments of those who are the extremist radicals is in fact reckless promotion of terrorism. It would be very interesting to see what happens with that later on, in terms of Bill C-51. I think we have to be careful not to glorify and give too much credibility to what is a very small group of extremists, obviously.

I want to turn to what Mr. Leuprecht said, because I think there's something very important in making the distinction between those who are being radicalized and those who seek to use violence. You talked about having a nuanced tool kit and referred to what some of our allies are doing. You say this provision will make us a bit more in line with our allies. Can you say a bit more about that?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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. They have diverse societies and social structures, and perhaps the way the population thinks there is a bit more the way we do.

In Germany, of course, it comes out of Germany's history and its very robust regime to protect the integrity of the German constitution. As a result, they have much more robust measures against anybody who would call the German constitutional order into question, either within the country or by attempting to leave the country to engage in activities that might either call the integrity of the German constitutional regime into question, or call the integrity of governments elsewhere in the world into question.

I don't see these provisions that are available to countries as an aberration. I think there are many other administrative pre-emptive provisions that we might want to consider, but I think this is one of the more prominent ones. In part, I also say this because because criminal prosecution is difficult and expensive, and is not always in the interests of perhaps...especially when we talk about minors. I think this is something where we need to have a wider array of options, not simply for the sake of security but within broader context in which this phenomenon is occurring.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Thank you very much.

I know that we've heard reference this morning to the 10 youth in Montreal who were prevented from leaving the country. It raises the question, for me, of whether this provision is actually needed or whether the existing provisions, which obviously stopped them from leaving the country, are adequate. Does this example illustrate that there's a gap, or does it illustrate that what we have is actually effective? We have some concern about creating two different entities within government that can both cancel passports. Who would be responsible for what in terms of cancellation?

Going back to the example in Montreal, wouldn't this illustrate that we already have this power in Canada and has been very effectively used? I put that to Mr. Leuprecht, please.

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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.

I see this provision as complementary, not as a duplication, and I see it as a necessary complement. I believe that the judicial remedies that are built in are sufficient to reassure me that somebody who believes they have been treated inappropriately—because this provision represents a significant degree of state intervention in people's lives—will have appropriate judicial recourse against that intervention. To me, this is absolutely integral, but it's also why I would suggest that such interventions come in the way that they're proposed here, with a time limit, after which the minister or the appropriate institution needs to rearticulate that particular ban. I say this because inherently we all change over our lifetime and we shouldn't just.... In some ways we can use the examples of people who change their views on these particular issues, hopefully demonstrating that people do come to their senses and see that this is not a prudent course of action.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

I think, Dr. Leuprecht, you also raised a very important question here of the sociological categories and not mixing together the two. I wonder whether you've seen among our allies more recognition of that in what they are doing, especially with programs to prevent radicalization that might prevent people moving into that second category. Could you say something about what you've maybe seen from some of our allies to prevent radicalization?

[Dr. Christian Leuprecht]

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. This is what the prevent strategy in the U.K. is based on.

We have challenges with regard to being able to measure the effectiveness of many of these programs. We basically have to take people's word for it. There's lots of evidence that these programs are being subverted, that they're being undermined, so ISIS has very successfully positioned the prevent program as a brainwashing and neo-colonial type program.

There's some challenge with regards to human rights, because many intelligence services, I think, make the assumptions that as you watch too many jihadi videos, you're bound to do something violent. The causal path here doesn't work because there is no one model or process of radicalization, but we do know that there are certain triangulations of factors that make individuals far more susceptible to violence.

There's one thing that we haven't done particularly well in research, and as a result in public policies, and that is that we don't have a good understanding of the triangulation of variables of individuals who are more likely to fall into either the spell of these types of narratives or engage in some sort of action.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Thank you very much. We're over time here substantially.

We will now go to Ms. Ablonczy, please.

[Diane Ablonczy, Conservative, Calgary Nose Hill, AB]

Yes, thank you.

I have a number of questions. I hope the answers will be brief.

I was struck by the difference in viewpoints that I heard from the most senior member of the opposition on this committee, who basically said that all we're talking about is a small group, if I understood correctly. Then he shook his finger in the face of one of our expert witnesses with deep knowledge and experience in this area saying, you know, “It wasn't very nice of you to say bad things about a Muslim group.”

It really harks back to—

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Point of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Daryl Kramp]

Point of order.

[Randall Garrison, NDP, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

You know, Mr. Chair, that I refrain from using points of order, but—