Public Safety Committee on March 31st, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Good morning, everyone. I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting number 16 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security. Today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format pursuant to the House order of November 25, 2021. Members are attending in person in the room and remotely, using the Zoom application. Per the directive of the Board of Internal Economy on March 10, 2022, all those attending the meeting in person must wear a mask, except for members who are at their place during proceedings.

Members and witnesses participating virtually may speak in the official language of their choice. You have the choice at the bottom of your screen of the floor, English or French. With regard to a speaking list, the committee clerk will advise the chair on whose hands are up to the best of his ability, and we will do the best that we can to maintain a consolidated order of speaking for all members, whether they are participating virtually or in person.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motions adopted by the committee on Thursday, February 17, 2022, the committee is resuming its study of the rise of ideologically motivated violent extremism in Canada.

With us today by video conference we have, as an individual, Aurélie Campana, full professor; Mubin Shaikh, counter extremism specialist; and from Insight Threat Intelligence, Jessica Davis, president and principal consultant.

We allow up to five minutes for each of our witnesses to proceed with opening remarks and then rounds of questions. Given the technologies at the moment, I'm going to start with Mr. Shaikh.

You have five minutes for an opening comment, sir. The floor is yours. Please proceed.

[Mubin Shaikh, Counter Extremism Specialist, As an Individual]

Thank you. Good afternoon, honourable Chair and members of the committee. It is in gratitude and service that I respectfully accepted the invite to appear before you today.

My name is Mubin Shaikh. I'm a former undercover human source for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service and later with RCMP INSET, responsible for the Toronto 18 terrorism case of 2006. I had worked several other investigations prior to that, which cannot be made public, but today I conduct direct interventions with radicalized individuals from across the ideological spectrum under the U.S.-based organization Parents For Peace, and I'm currently a professor of public safety at Seneca College in Toronto.

Just to go off-script for a moment, in an incredible moment of coincidence or kismet, fellow members of Parents For Peace are currently, right now as we speak, giving testimony in the U.S. House Committee on Veterans' Affairs to discuss the topic of radicalization in the military, so I submit that today's discussion is very timely.

Back to my script: I have had the unique experience of having viewed threats to Canadian public safety and national security from direct participation in covert activities, and also from four years of public prosecution of such offences in our courts between 2006 and 2010 inclusive. Afterwards, between 2014 and 2018, we went through the khawarij of the ISIS crisis. We saw social media platforms become force multipliers for violent actors, and conversations around preventing and countering radicalization, extremism and terrorism grew into important areas of study and practice for good reason.

Today I appear before you to address the issue of IMVE, or ideologically motivated violent extremism, and what can be done about it.

I submit to you that we have come somewhat full circle in Canada regarding a threat that some may erroneously take to be “new”, which it is most certainly not. The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, only five years after its formation, was already working to infiltrate the neo-Nazi group called the Heritage Front, established in 1989. Using tried, tested and true TTPs—tactics, techniques and procedures—CSIS was able to foil the ability of the front to become what it had envisioned for itself, and the organization ultimately collapsed.

It is thus unsurprising to me today that security agencies have once again turned their sights onto such organizations and associations, loosely knit or otherwise, while also keeping a watchful eye on the usual suspects, state-based or not. One of the biggest lessons learned from this is not just how much is being supported and agitated by outside actors, but worse, how much is being generated organically right here at home with Canadians highly active in online hate networks.

I have read the submission of various representatives of Canadian security agencies on how they see the threat and their response to it. I am more than confident that they are up to the task and support fully strengthening their staffing and operational ability to do what works in this context. I respectfully submit that it is for government agencies and departments to do their part in conducting covert investigations and public prosecutions and for civil society to do its part as well.

The latter will require educational institutions and places of employment, places of businesses and others to invest the energy to try to prevent trajectories of violent extremism where possible. When it comes to ideas, however, no amount of government legislation or criminal designation is going to suffice. It is here that we will require a collective effort by professionals and practitioners in all areas to bring to bear their concern and attention in pushing back against absolutist, superficial, supremacist thinking as unwelcome, unsustainable, and, frankly, impractical for life in this cosmopolitan future we live in here in Canada and the world at large.

I thank the honourable Chair and members of the committee for allowing me this time, and my co-panellists as well, and I look forward to any questions, concerns and/or comments you may have. Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to call on Aurélie Campana, full professor, for five minutes of opening remarks.

The floor is yours.

[Aurélie Campana, Full Professor, As an Individual]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Chair, members of the committee, I want to sincerely thank you for inviting me to appear before you. My name is Aurélie Campana. I am a political science professor at Université Laval, and for the past 20 years, my research focus has been violent extremism. First, I studied jihadism, specifically in Russia and the Sahel, and then, I examined Canada's network of far-right small groups. My field investigation, which I conducted with two colleagues, Samuel Tanner from the Université de Montréal and Stéphane Leman‑Langlois from Université Laval, began when Canada's far right hadn't really attracted much publicity. We were able to follow how the movement evolved as groups gained more and more public exposure.

I would like to share some of our findings from our scientific research in relation to two overlapping factors: the international dimension and the role of social media. Before I do that, though, I want to make two points.

First, it's important to distinguish between two trends in what is commonly referred to as Canada's far right: one, the groups and individuals that belong to the radical right; and two, the groups and individuals that make up the far right.

The radical right seeks the extensive reform of the government and society rooted in political ideologies. Highly heterogeneous, the groups and individuals that make up the radical right tend to adhere to the rules of the political process, motivated by a desire to change them from the inside. Most of them defend democracy as an organizing principle but reject liberal democracy and its values, including pluralism and egalitarianism.

Extremist parties reject the democratic system, clearly challenging its legitimacy and that of the government. They call for the, sometimes violent, overthrow of existing institutions. These fringe groups occupy the public space in ways that can be unscrupulous.

My understanding is that the committee is mainly interested in extremist groups and individuals. Those I would categorize as radical are nevertheless worthy of attention, because they help normalize Islamophobic, anti-establishment or other such views, while providing an indirect vehicle for recruitment.

Second, the far-right ecosystem has fluid boundaries. The movement is made up of groups, academics, alternative media of varying sizes, as well as individuals who in some cases emerge as influencers. I refer to the boundaries as fluid because the groups and individuals in the movement can expand their discursive repertoire by absorbing fringe movements whose theories align with their own ideological motives—masculinism in the case of the incel community.

Issues that may have been prominent at one point can become less important periodically or permanently. In the 2010s, numerous groups and individuals in the radical right and far right emerged around identity issues. Although the racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views they promote have far from disappeared, they have taken a backseat to anti-public health measure discourse and, especially, anti-elite and anti-establishment messages.

Both radical right and far-right groups and individuals have joined networks with international reach. Social media has led to a convergence of discourse and views, one that does not necessarily require formal contact but that is shared through certain ideological references. Although the current discourses of Canada's radical right and far right take diverse forms, they converge around four central themes found in the U.S., French and British movements and expressed in very similar language at times. Those four themes are nativism, victimization of the “silent white majority”, white supremacy and conspiracy theories.

A convergence like this can have a significant impact. One or more transnational belief communities tend to emerge, leading to more formal connections and helping individuals, expertise, discourse, theories and money to circulate. Social media are the arena in which much of the movement's transnational dimension takes shape.

Digital platforms make it easier for supporters to coordinate, organize, recruit and fund-raise, not just share theories. Basically, digital platforms make it easier for organizational convergence and political activism to take place. Canadian society is nowhere near as polarized as American society. However, the groups and individuals who belong to Canada's radical right and far right help accentuate certain divides and perpetuate a growing distrust of elites.

In these uncertain times, our trust mechanisms have been seriously shaken, and digital platforms are becoming tools of mass disruption, skilfully manipulated by more or less visible groups, polarizing political figures and some governments.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds.

[Aurélie Campana]

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to ask Jessica Davis, president and principal consultant of the Insight Threat Intelligence group for a five-minute introduction.

Please, the floor is yours.

[Jessica Davis, President and Principal Consultant, Insight Threat Intelligence]

Thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. I'm glad the committee is undertaking this important study.

I'd like to take a few minutes to outline how I see the IMVE threat in Canada, with a focus on the financial component.

Terrorist and extremist financing use similar methods and mechanisms across ideologies.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

I'm sorry. On a point of order, there's no interpretation.

Ms. Davis, you can continue.

[Jessica Davis]

Thank you.

Over the last 20 years, we’ve seen a shift away from large-scale financing in the west for terrorist activity. Instead, attacks are primarily self-financed and for very small sums of money. Despite these small sums, money remains a key enabler of terrorist activity. Efforts to constrain terrorist and extremist access to funds constrain their capabilities.

We see evidence of this in the adoption of low-complexity, lone-actor attacks, from the October 2014 attacks to the Quebec mosque attack and to the more recent incel-motivated van and stabbing attacks that took place in Toronto. All of these were self-financed attacks that involved no international transfer of funds and likely raised little in the way of suspicion with banks and other financial institutions charged with efforts to detect terrorist financing. However, they all required some financial resources, small though they might have been.

The one aspect of financing that is different in the IMVE space from other forms of terrorism and extremism is the issue of propaganda. IMVE actors produce propaganda, including in Canada, that serves to recruit people into their movements. Propaganda also inspires lone actors and creates a sense of community for those who would go on to commit ideologically inspired attacks.

The propaganda produced by these actors has an important financial component. Extremist influencers can generate significant revenue from this activity. This is important because many of them, particularly those who are successful at generating audiences and particularly hateful propaganda, are often financially excluded from society. They tend to lose their jobs when their views become public knowledge. That propaganda production sustains them economically.

At the moment, we have few tools at our disposal to prevent people from profiting from hate. Deplatforming, whether it’s from a social media platform or a financial tool, usually leads to the propagandist or influencer finding another platform.

Many financial service providers, including payment processors and financial technology companies, rarely restrict the use of their services for hateful content. Most only take action when faced with significant public backlash—if at all. In some cases, Canadian companies appear to provide financial services to sites selling propaganda and goods for listed terrorist entities, like the Proud Boys.

Compounding this problem is the fact that we have no laws against extremist financing and few laws that can be used to prevent individuals from profiting from that hateful content. An influencer activity rarely rises to the level of terrorism as defined in our Criminal Code.

Between the self-financing of most IMVE attacks and the financing of IMVE propaganda, we have some challenges ahead of us. Our terrorist financing tools were adopted following 9/11 with an eye to combatting structured terrorist organizations involved in international financing, not lone actors drawing inspiration from extremist influencers.

That’s not to say that those tools are powerless. Financial intelligence, for example, remains an important tool for law enforcement and security services. We also need new tools, regulatory flexibility and investigative expertise to fully tackle the threat of ideologically motivated violent extremism. We’ll need to work with our partners in other countries and with the private sector to do that, since both the threat and its financing—as we saw recently with the convoy—are international in scope.

Thank you very much. I look forward to answering your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much. You won't have long to wait for that.

We'll go right into our first round of questions. It's a six-minute round and I'll start with Ms. Dancho.

The floor is yours, Madam.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I thank the witnesses for giving us their time today. I'm very much looking forward to hearing their expertise. I thank them for their hard work on this important issue.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the demographics we're seeing in some of the extremist movements. Often on the news it seems to me to be mostly young men. I rarely seem to see women.

I would like to have your comments on why that might be. Is my assessment accurate? Is it mostly young men or is that just sort of what we hear most about for whatever reason?

I would like to get individual feedback on that from each of our witnesses. Perhaps Ms. Davis can go first.

[Jessica Davis]

That's great. Thank you very much.

On the issue of gender distribution in ideologically motivated violent extremism, I would say that women's roles are under-represented in the media. We tend to see them less in reporting, but I would estimate that their participation is on par with that in other forms of terrorism and extremism, so somewhere in the 15% to 30% range.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Would the other two witnesses agree with that assessment? I'm seeing some nodding.

Madame Campana, okay. Thank you.

Okay, that's news. Is there any reason in particular that you think we don't hear more about that? Why is that not more common knowledge or portrayed in the media?

[Jessica Davis]

I think there are a couple of reasons. I think primarily it's because women do tend to take on a lot of the non-kinetic roles, so the things like attacks tend to be perpetrated more by men, although that is not exclusively the case. We see plenty of examples in many different contexts. Their roles in things like being financiers or in logistics do not tend to get the splashy media coverage.

I also think there is still some bias in media reporting and perhaps in law enforcement and security services with respect to seeing women as a threat.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Do you see a socio-economic influence in terms of background, perhaps in childhood, or otherwise? Is there anything demographically in the background of folks who are drawn to extremism or pulled in or whatever word we'd like to use? Are there any commonalities you are seeing?

I'll stay with you. Go ahead, and if others have something to add, they can.

[Jessica Davis]

That sounds good.

I would say that in all terrorism and extremism, there is a wide variety of demographic backgrounds, large variation in terms of socio-economic backgrounds. In the IMVE space, I think it is correct to point a little bit of this towards younger men, but that's not exclusive and I don't think that it's a good place from which to make policy or to direct investigation. We really need to be open to the wide variety of backgrounds we see in this space.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Thank you very much.

I think we're seeing quite a bit of extremism. I think Mr. Shaikh made the point that extremism in this form has been around for quite some time, but perhaps due to the advent of social media, we're becoming much more aware of it.

Would you say that's accurate, Mr. Shaikh?

[Mubin Shaikh]

Yes, I would definitely agree with that. Certainly, as I mentioned in my comments, social media has become a force multiplier for these extremist groups.

I remember back in the mid-1990s when the war in Chechnya had kicked off and there were the first real Wahhabi-Salafi jihadist manifestations there. Beheading videos were available on CDs. Then in the early 2000s those video clips were uploaded onto the just-emerging social media and Internet. Then there were password-protected chat forums, and then just open public forums. Certainly social media has given things a very different spin.

Very quickly on the last question on commonalities in backgrounds, really the two most common things are ideology and grievances. Ideology without grievances doesn't resonate, and grievances without ideology are not acted upon. Those do tend to be common elements when we talk about this space.

Thank you.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Can you elaborate a little bit on that?

[Mubin Shaikh]

You mean on the ideology and grievances?

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Yes, I mean on that last piece you mentioned.

[Mubin Shaikh]

I'm going to cite quote from Peter Neumann. He is the former director for the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation. He said that “without grievance, ideology does not resonate”—it doesn't appeal to the mind; it doesn't make sense—“while without ideology, grievances are not acted upon” because here ideology means action-enabling ideas.

One can look at both of those somewhat equally or at least not favouring one over the other. There's a limit to ideology sometimes. For example, when we hear about jihadist groups in the Middle East, if the U.S. were to suddenly pack up and leave, I don't believe, especially for those who believe the U.S. military occupation is a grievance in this regard, that the jihadists would suddenly start playing nicely with everybody, so there's a limit to the grievances.

When it comes to the ideology, again, sometimes ideology is a driver of violent extremism, but at other times, it's just a passenger with other psychosocial factors at the wheel.

It's important for us to look at the multiplicity of factors and not to just try to do that one-size-fits-all attribution.

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

I appreciate that. I think it was mentioned, I'm not sure by which witness, that we're seeing in Canada sometimes lone actors who are driven perhaps by the influence of social media. You mentioned jihadis in the Middle East.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds.