Thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you today.
I am an associate professor of criminology at Simon Fraser University and the associate director of the institute on violence, terrorism, and security. I've been researching extremism for so long now that when I began we called it terrorism. That's just a broad background.
Ideologically motivated terrorism, or IMVE, along with organized crime and ghost guns really are the most pressing public safety issues in Canada today. When we tie IMVE in with the transnational nature that we see, for example, in the Ottawa occupation with the anti-democratic trajectory of the extreme right, we also have a threat to national security as well.
There are numerous circumstances that are and have been implicated in the rise of IMVE, which would include, but are not limited to, anger about globalization, unease at the speed of social change, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the efforts of ideological entrepreneurs to promote IMVE, and the exacerbating and accelerating effects of the Trump presidency, which coincided with a broader international tilt towards populism and authoritarian governance.
What the occupation of Ottawa demonstrated, I think, was how quickly specific issues can become subsumed into the toxic quagmire of grievances that motivates extremists. The flexibility and breadth of these narratives allow extremists to speak to and connect with a potentially massive, receptive audience.
Within the IMVE social ecology, law enforcement, intelligence and national security agencies face a series of interrelated, hard problems. The first is the mainstreaming of extremist ideologies and the consequent normalization of hate, polarization and othering.
The second would be the weaponization of conspiracy theories and disinformation. Conspiracy theories are no longer what they once were, what we would call old-school conspiracy theories, which actually required some evidence. Now innuendo or just plain fabrication, outright lies, are sufficient.
There is a grey area of radicalization that is becoming increasingly more important. This is personified in the story that everyone knows about Aunt Margaret. She suddenly starts talking about The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and her family members are saying, “What the heck has happened to Aunt Margaret?” We need to understand the reach that these radicalization efforts are actually having.
The central role of the Internet and social media in facilitating IMVE is an essential tenet of this committee, so they are well aware of that.
Finally, there is a significant challenge potentially in the increasing nexus between the online and offline environments, again as demonstrated by what happened in Ottawa. Based on my research and the hard lessons of the past 20 years that we've learned collectively, I would like to offer some cautions about how Canada may respond to IMVE.
The first is that it is critical to recognize that IMVE is simultaneously international, national and local in nature. In referring to the terms of reference for the committee, I'm a bit concerned that IMVE may be perceived as something that is foreign to Canada. It most assuredly is not. We must pay attention to the made-in-Canada aspects of the problem and the community-specific natures of the problem.
Understand that we cannot counter emotion with facts or rationality. IMVE is fuelled by an emotional narrative. It's a mistake to think that we can counter that with corrections or with statistics or by simply rational talking.
Funding is not a major concern here. I know it's good that we're talking about funding. I know that it is a major emphasis of this, and there's an emphasis on doing something, but it should not overshadow our concerns. Funding is not driving this. GoFundMe and other platforms are not driving IMVE in Canada or anywhere else.
We cannot rely on social media platforms and tech companies to do the heavy lifting for us, nor should we want to rely on these companies. Algorithms are not magical, golden bullets. They are helpful, useful tools, but much more needs to be done from our side. I have great concerns about Facebook, or now Meta, determining what I or anybody else can or cannot have access to.
Finally, we should not be focused on predominantly negative measures. There will be a lot of discussion about deplatforming, about kicking groups off the Internet. We should be very wary of this if for no other reason than it signals to these groups—