I have been studying far-right extremism in the Canadian context since about 2012-13. I had done a little work previously in this space in the U.S. in the mid mid-nineties or so, but I have been working more broadly in the area of hate studies for about 30 years now.
In 2015, we published a report coming from a study that was funded by Public Safety Canada, which was really the first comprehensive academic approach to understanding right-wing extremism in Canada. We have just finished another three-year study, which is an update of that.
What we have found in that report in 2015—and I can share it or the subsequent book that came out of that—was a very conservative estimate of about 100 active groups across Canada. We could document through open-source data that there were over 100 incidents of violence of some sort associated with the far-right in Canada. Just to put that in context, during the same period of time there were about eight incidents of Islamist-inspired extremism, which is what the focus was at the time.
What else did we find there? In the update, we have found in the last couple of years in particular over 300 active groups associated with the far-right and, of course, just in the last seven years or so we have seen now 26 murders, 24 of those mass murders, motivated by some variant of right-wing extremism.
What else are we finding? One of the things that was alluded to earlier was the idea of the shifting demographics within the movement as well. I think that as we saw with the convoy, it is a much older demographic than what we were seeing previously, where it was not wholly but predominantly a youth movement—Skinheads, neo-Nazis,those traditional sorts of groups—but we're now seeing an older, better educated demographic being brought to the movement as well. Certainly, it is a movement that is much more facile and ready to use social media in very ironic, as well as very open, ways to share their narratives.