Okay.
We've done research, including a Canada-wide survey on belief in conspiracy theories. The survey will soon be presented to the Quebec government. The data are rather worrisome, showing that up to 25 % of Canadians believe more or less strongly in conspiracy theories. Needless to say, this 25% rate does not mean that all these people are diehard conspiracy theorists, but there is a hard core of 9% or 10%, and some of the remaining 15% could swing either way.
I'm telling you this because there's nothing new about conspiracy theories. I recall that in the early 2020s, CSIS, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, was still reluctant to treat them as an extremist threat. Now, I don't think there is any doubt about it. Our data also show that some conspiracy theorists are in favour of violence. We have psychometric scales to measure things like that. Now I'm not saying it applies to all of them, but only to some of them. It's an anti-democratic approach that is being used by other extremist movements, on the left and the right.
That was just a partial answer to your question, Ms. Damoff. As I was saying earlier in my opening remarks, we often tend to separate what is called radical thinking from violent extremism, and that's understandable. The police often say that they don't investigate ideologies, but crimes, and focus on the violence component.
Nevertheless, comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon has shown that there are connections. When a radical statement is made by a particular fringe of any political party, it contributes to some extent to the normalization of a form of extremist language. As my colleague Mr. Rigato was explaining just now, it may include xenophobic and anti-feminist comments. It also goes some way towards justifying the most extremist among them to make similar comments. Conversely, it can allow the generally pro-democracy radical fringes to say that they are not as bad as the extremists who promote violence.