Evidence of meeting #22 for Public Safety and National Security in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was content.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
It's Life After Hate, not me personally. It's the whole team.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Seven hundred is still a tremendous number. It's great work.
What would you say the government could do more to incentivize people? You've obviously had great success in doing it with your group. What could government be doing more to try to help this cause?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
Going back to what I'd said earlier, there are people who have the skill sets to engage people who are radicalized—like social workers, psychologists and stuff. They are already in society and might be better placed.
Again, the example I'll use is a school counsellor who has counselling training. They might be better placed to pick up where a kid is going wrong long before it gets to the level where law enforcement is noticing that the kid is going wrong. It's a very cost-effective way, too, to utilize those existing resources.
There are people in the community who know about this stuff and about what's happening with people who are becoming radicalized, long before government in general and law enforcement knows.
Conservative
Doug Shipley Conservative Barrie—Springwater—Oro-Medonte, ON
Thank you for that.
I have a quick question for Mr. Davies now.
Mr. Davies, a portion of your research focuses on the links between the dark web and extremist organizations. Do you mind explaining how the dark web differs from the regular web? What makes it more effective for extremists to organize on?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
The dark web essentially refers to that portion of the web that is not easily publicly accessible. The dark web actually constitutes about 90% of the Internet. As much as we all see it as large, the vast majority of the Internet—the dark web—is everything from personalized systems to encoded or encrypted channels that are used.
In terms of how it helps in organization, our researchers found that at this point, terrorists have not been making extensive use of the dark web. That seems to be partly because the encryption software we have available, even commercially right now, is becoming increasingly difficult to crack and much of their communication is actually meant to be public. They're trying to recruit. They're trying to get their cause out there.
In terms of how they're communicating privately, that's a different issue. In terms of wanting to organize, our researchers found that, in fact, the dark web is not a significant element of that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
Thank you very much.
Mr. Chiang, sir, it's over to you for five minutes of questioning whenever you're ready.
Liberal
Paul Chiang Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for taking the time to be with us today and sharing your expert advice.
Mr. McAleer, based on your opening remarks, you're someone with first-hand experience in extremism. Why is it so easy for white extremist racism to be so easily ignored? Also, how easy is it for white supremacists to get away with what they do?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
The short answer to that is nobody likes to look at their own flaws and their own stuff. It's difficult for people to acknowledge that this is happening within their group. It's always happening somewhere else. I think there's that blindness to seeing what's clearly there and open in public. That blindness is exploited by these groups, because they can operate and do things that often do not attract the scrutiny that they should.
Liberal
Paul Chiang Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Earlier, you mentioned in your answer to another question school counsellors helping young minds—the young students—to get them to not join extremist groups.
What do you think about school resource officers—police officers—who work at high schools? Is that a good program to stop young minds from joining extremist groups?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
It shouldn't be the primary focus, but they should be equipped to handle it when it shows up. Like I said, it's a matter of cultural competency training. I think that school threat assessment teams, as opposed to just counsellors, are the more accurate place where that should happen.
Liberal
Paul Chiang Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
I understand that oftentimes a person's hateful ideology can become closely related to their identity. What are some of the ways your organization has been successfully changing peoples' perspectives and steering them away from hateful ideologies?
Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual
This is going to sound counterintuitive, and I think Professor Davies said this earlier, but these are emotional things. We're not going to be able to necessarily go and tell a person facts and figures to sway them. The answer is to go in through the heart. At the core of Life After Hate's philosophy is the use of compassion.
I believe that the level to which we dehumanize other human beings is a mirror reflection of our own internal disconnection and dehumanization, and that the answer when we work with these people is to rehumanize them. How do we rehumanize them? We rehumanize them through compassion. When we're compassionate with someone, we hold a mirror up and allow them to see their own humanity reflected back at them when they can't see it on their own.
Liberal
Paul Chiang Liberal Markham—Unionville, ON
Thank you so much, Mr. McAleer.
Dr. Davies, what are some of the things that people often misunderstand about hate and extremism-motivated violence? What are some of the root causes of hate and extremism in your research?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
It's been said earlier, and I think Mr. McAleer talked about it. The roots of hate often don't start with hate. It starts with a sense of feeling disconnected or a lack of belonging. It's these issues of identity and belonging. Through a series of happenstances, one of the areas that you can end up in is these ecologies or the social milieus where hate is the focus.
One of the things that we misunderstand sometimes is missing the dynamic. For a lot of people, they could have ended up in a variety of other social ecologies. This is where they end up. Addressing that is as much a function of how we do more positive identity-building work and not assuming necessarily that this is about ideology, per se, or that hate was the beginning foundation.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
The question will have to linger. I'm sorry, Mr. Chiang.
Ms. Larouche, we'll go to you for two and a half minutes. The floor is yours.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Dr. Davies, what do you think about the new legislation that was put in place in Europe regarding illegal content online?
Could Canada learn from it?
Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual
There are comparable circumstances. I'm concerned that Europe is going a bit far in what it's proposing to do, but they also have a very different context and a different history.
I guess my short answer to you would be that we can pick and choose things that are relevant to us, but I would caution against the blanket adoption of those approaches. I think they are overly inclusive.
Bloc
Andréanne Larouche Bloc Shefford, QC
Professor Bailey, do you also think that this new legislation in Europe goes too far?
Should Canada draw on it?
Prof. Jane Bailey
From my perspective, I think there is a little more leeway than perhaps Dr. Davies sees.
The reason I say this is that we have to pay attention to other parts of the context. When we leave content out there, who's paying? It's the communities that are targeted. It isn't a zero-cost game. We have to think about what not doing things means for the capacity of members of marginalized communities to actually function in society and to contribute meaningfully.
I also think we have to pay attention to the fact that social media, while it is certainly not ideal for dealing with public values, social media platforms, in fact, are making decisions about content every single day. Their terms of service reserve every right to them about what kinds of decisions they are going to make. There's very little transparency and accountability on that.
It isn't as if they are not already doing this. They are. It's just that we don't have good information as a public to understand what the basis is upon which these decisions are being made.
We also have to recognize—
Liberal
Prof. Jane Bailey
There's a business model at the base of this that generates hits and profiles for sensationalism. You can't ignore that.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Jim Carr
Thank you very much.
Mr. MacGregor, you have two and a half minutes, which will take us to the end of this panel.
Go ahead.
NDP
Alistair MacGregor NDP Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, BC
Thank you, Chair.
I will direct my last question to you, Mr. McAleer.
In his opening statement, Dr. Davies was talking about how we can't counter emotion with facts and statistics. You also echoed that. I think every member of Parliament has had that experience, when we are confronted with conspiracy theories. We try to answer that no, that's not true because of this and this. It's obviously not working as a connection.
As policy-makers and as the public, I think we rightly want to denounce the hateful ideologies that exist. Where's the balance between denunciation, but also that compassion for the individual who's spouting off that belief without othering them?
Obviously, we want to counter their white supremacist views, the neo-Nazism and the hate they are directing against minorities, but how do we find that balance so that we're not othering them and we're finding a way to pull them from the brink that they are at?