Public Safety Committee on May 5th, 2022

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

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

Welcome to meeting number 22 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.

We will start by acknowledging that we are meeting on the traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin people.

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.

Members and witnesses participating virtually may speak in the official language of your choice, and you will see those choices at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) and the motion 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.

I would like to welcome the witnesses here with us today. We have Jane Bailey, full professor, faculty of law, University of Ottawa; Dr. Garth Davies, associate director, institute on violence, terrorism, and security, Simon Fraser University; and Tony McAleer, author and co-founder of Life After Hate.

This is the thirty-second warning to everybody. Colleagues know it well. Witnesses will get to know it well. I have leeway of 10 seconds but no more, and if I have to cut you off, I have to cut you off. Everybody has been warned, and that's the rule as to how we manage time around here.

I would now invite Dr. Jane Bailey to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

Jane Bailey, the floor is yours.

[Professor Jane Bailey, Full Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa, As an Individual]

Thank you very much for inviting me to appear before you today.

I'm a law professor at the University of Ottawa, and I co-lead The eQuality Project, which is a SSHRC-funded initiative that focuses on young people's experiences with privacy and equality in digitally networked environments, including experiences relating to tech-facilitated violence.

Like those of you in the chamber, I appear today on unceded Algonquin territory. I want to acknowledge and thank the Algonquin peoples who have cared for, and continue to care for, this land.

You have heard and will hear from many witnesses with specific expertise in ideologically motivated violent extremism, or IMVE, from numerous perspectives, including psychological, security and technological. The perspective I bring today is a more general one that is based on my research and policy submissions on tech-facilitated violence, including work related to Internet hate speech targeting members of marginalized communities. It was initially inspired by having acted many years ago as junior co-counsel to a complainant in the first Internet hate speech case to be heard by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal under the former section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act.

I was pleased to see that the motion initiating this study aims to eventually enable government to table a comprehensive response. IMVE targeting members of marginalized communities forms part of a spectrum of hatred and violence against them. That spectrum both reflects and is reflective of a broader and complex context that is rife with social inequality and systemic oppressions. Development and implementation of a nuanced, multipronged national strategy will be essential to meaningfully address the complexity of IMVE and other forms of hate in a way that affirms and respects the rights of members of marginalized communities to fully participate in all aspects of public and private life, free from violence and hate.

Criminal law should form only part of that strategy. Criminal law's post hoc nature and its disproportionate use against members of marginalized communities means that some will have good reason not to see criminal law, or even law in general, as a meaningful solution when they are targeted by hate. For this and other reasons, approaches beyond legal measures will be necessary, including proactive ones aimed at structural and systemic factors. At all costs, we must avoid solutions that do further harm to marginalized communities who are simultaneously disproportionately targeted by both hate and discriminatory state surveillance and violence.

I turn now to seven considerations for developing a multipronged national strategy prioritizing a survivor-centred, substantive, equality-focused approach.

One, centre members of affected communities in policy processes like this—including women, Black, indigenous, Jewish and Muslim peoples, people of colour, and members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community—to ensure that understanding the diversity in their lived realities is prioritized in this process. It also means centring the expertise of researchers who are members of those communities, including those from disciplines outside of law, criminology and security studies, and centring the experience of community organizations that are trusted by and serve those communities.

Two, reject approaches that make targeted individuals and groups responsible to avoid harm. Instead, focus on the responsibility of society as a whole, individual perpetrators, and the role that the underlying “data in exchange for services” commercial model that currently characterizes digital networks plays in shaping the environment in problematic ways.

Three, better support marginalized community members targeted by hate through such measures as funding trusted community agencies that serve them and, with respect to tech-facilitated violence, creating an administrative body that they can contact for assistance.

Four, support proactive human rights-based educational and outreach initiatives aimed at dismantling underlying systems of discrimination and dehumanizing stereotypes that undermine marginalized community members' right to full and equal participation.

Five, ensure that the central and important goal of defending the rights of members of targeted communities does not become an excuse for unnecessary expansion of police powers and surveillance.

Six, improve the responsiveness of the criminal justice system for survivors who do wish to pursue that avenue with social context training for law enforcement officers, prosecutors and judges that centres principles of substantive equality.

Seven, recognize that although IMVE is part of a spectrum of violence experienced by members of marginalized communities, the complexity of IMVE and other forms of violence—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Prof. Jane Bailey]

—on that spectrum raise unique considerations requiring tailored measures rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.

Thank you. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you. They're coming soon enough.

I would now like to invite Dr. Garth Davies to make an opening statement of up to five minutes.

The floor is yours, sir, whenever you choose to take it.

[Dr. Garth Davies, Associate Director, Institute on Violence, Terrorism, and Security, Simon Fraser University, As an Individual]

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—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

You have 10 seconds, please.

[Dr. Garth Davies]

—that we are afraid of them and that we need to essentially not be afraid of these—

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you.

[Dr. Garth Davies]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much, sir.

Now I will call upon Mr. Tony McAleer.

Sir, thank you for coming, for showing up in person. We get to enjoy your company.

For the next five minutes, you have the floor for an opening statement.

[Tony McAleer, Author and Co-founder, Life After Hate, As an Individual]

Thank you for having me.

My name is Tony McAleer. I'm the author of The Cure for Hate: A Former White Supremacist's Journey from Violent Extremism to Radical Compassion.

I spent 15 years in the violent far right in Canada and the U.S. as a follower, a recruiter and a leader. I left that movement in 1998 and began a journey of transformation and healing that involved over 1,000 hours of individual and group counselling with a coach and mentor who, ironically, was Jewish.

In 2010, I decided to help others who were where I once was and co-founded the U.S.-based, non-profit called Life After Hate, which has helped over 700 people leave violent, far right extremist groups behind.

My experience of getting into and out of these organizations and ideologies has led me to consult and advise governments of all levels over three continents, including two prime ministers in Austria and New Zealand.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

While the challenge of the rising tide of ideologically motivated violent extremism is nothing new, the speed at which ideas are spread and the recent trend of mass murders make this a dangerous global terrorist threat.

We remember Anders Breivik, murderer of 76 people in Norway; the Christchurch mosque massacre in New Zealand; the AME church in Charleston; the Oak Creek Sikh temple in Wisconsin; and the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Closer to home, the mosque shooting in Quebec City, the mass vehicular homicides in London and Toronto, the rise of anti-Asian attacks and assorted hate crimes against indigenous, Black and LGBTQ2S communities create a climate of fear that tears at the fabric of our society.

This is a complex problem that requires a thoughtful and nuanced response. Often well-meaning but expedient solutions can cause unintended consequences and be counterproductive. The responses fall into three main categories: technological, law enforcement and public health.

Technology is the arena in which these ideologies are spread, the Internet and social media. Again, this is a complex area, and great care must be exercised to set healthy limits to freedom of expression.

In the 1990s, I operated the Canadian Liberty Net, a computer-operated messaging system that contained anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and Holocaust-denial messages that was subject to a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, an injunction and ultimately a trip to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The more the hate line was suppressed, the more callers dialled in and were drawn into the world of intolerance. At its peak, it received 300 calls per day. The court proceedings became a powerful recruiting tool, an example of unintended consequences that has become known as the Streisand effect. Banning something makes it more popular.

Policy to tackle online hate should be carefully considered to avoid overreach and the appearance of politicization to avoid this effect.

On the Internet, content does not necessarily go away; it goes somewhere else. Content from large platforms gets pushed onto smaller platforms that often don't have the capacity to moderate.

Of the two other main responses, law enforcement and public health, the latter has the greatest gaps and opportunities, and I will focus there.

By the time a person gets involved in violent extremism and appears on the radar of law enforcement, several opportunities have already been missed. While there's a growing network of providers, social workers, counsellors and psychologists, for example, for interventions, a more robust effort can be made to engage and train existing resources in the community to utilize their skill set in a way they hadn't considered by creating the opportunities to intervene further upstream, long before law enforcement becomes involved. Training school counsellors would be an example of this.

Currently based on the number of conversations I've had with several municipalities, there seems to be almost no primary prevention.

Believe it or not, ideology is not the primary drive as to why people join these movements. Yes, it is a factor, but identity, belonging and a sense of meaning and purpose are far greater draws, according to research. The lack of these are the result of vulnerabilities that these movements exploit. The ideology is the pill one swallows to obtain these important drivers.

Research has shown that 15% of the general population has had two or more adverse childhood events: trauma, abandonment or neglect, for example. But of those in ideologically motivated violent extremism, 66% had four or more. Although trauma often creates the vulnerabilities, it's important to note that trauma is not a predictor. There is a whole host of anti-social outcomes, addiction, for example, that are possible from these vulnerabilities, of which violent extremism is but a small sliver and a very dangerous and harmful sliver, nonetheless.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Colleagues, we now move into the first round of questioning, and to lead us off I will call on Mr. Van Popta for a six-minute slice of questions.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to our witnesses for being here with us, and our apologies again for the delay. Thank you for your patience.

Professor Bailey, I'll start with you. Thank you very much for your testimony. It was very clear and concise, and thank you for that.

Professor, I know from your earlier testimony and some of what you've published, and also from statements that you have made at previous committees, that your focus has been on technology-facilitated violence against women and youth in particular. It's very important work.

Today's study is about ideologically motivated violent extremism. You did touch on that, but perhaps you could just expand on the relationship between the primary focus of your research and the study we are undertaking today.

[Prof. Jane Bailey]

There certainly are connections between the work I have been doing and IMVE. First of all, young people have, at least historically, been primary targets for radicalization initiatives, and in terms of hateful attacks we only have to look at incel extremism in Canada and elsewhere in the world to understand the degree to which women are the subjects and objects of attack by very violent and misogynistic physical violence and rhetoric.

Obviously we cannot in this context or in any other context, whether it be child pornography or anything else, draw direct causal connections between these issues. I'm not trying to do that, but they certainly seem to be related to each other and therefore certainly are a cause for concern.

I also think my work with young people related to the Internet is also important, because it has helped me to understand a little bit better what young people prioritize in terms of what issues they see and what sorts of supports and solutions they would like to see there.

While the young people we have spoken with definitely see room for legal responses to the kind of extremist content that's the subject of this hearing, there is a whole other part of the spectrum that young people are very interested in and, I think, are concerned about and want to have other kinds of approaches to that deal more swiftly with removal of content and so forth.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Good. Thank you so much for that.

In your testimony you touched on a national strategy and you gave us seven points. I scribbled them down as quickly as I could. Your point number three was to reject approaches that focus on victims having to defend themselves, and number five was to do so without expanding policy services or police powers.

A colleague of mine has introduced a private member's bill on stopping Internet sexual exploitation, which builds on recommendations from a study in the ethics committee on MindGeek and other platforms that were using pornography without consent. The intent of the bill is to prohibit platforms from using pornographic material without the consent of people, and they need to be 18 years old.

This is a quote from a press release:

It is time to place the burden of due diligence and corporate responsibility on companies rather than survivors and law enforcement.

What do you say about that? From your testimony, I'm assuming that you agree with that.

[Prof. Jane Bailey]

I think it's complicated, as all of these issues are. Absolutely, yes, I think that we have had a tendency in the past to focus on things, especially with young people, like safety planning—how to stay safe, what you should do and what you shouldn't do—and less on the environment that creates an ecosystem that leads to problems for young people in particular.

I do think we do need to be thinking beyond.... The analogy that I often use is that we not only need to teach our kids how to safely cross the road, but we also need to have rules and regulations about what people using the road are allowed to do and what they're not allowed to do. Consent is a very important component of sexual expression, whether that expression is posted online or not.

The one thing that I would want to emphasize, to go back to Dr. Davies' points, is that we have to be careful about the degree to which we rely on private entities to be making these kinds of decisions for us.

[The Chair, Liberal, Jim Carr]

Thank you very much.

I would now like to turn to Ms. Damoff for her six minutes of questioning.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you so much, and thank you to all of our witnesses. This has been very enlightening testimony today.

Mr. McAleer, you've been quite outspoken against deprogramming for people who have fallen into extremist views. What recommendations would you give to the government to assist us to help people from joining these far right extremist groups, and also to leave those groups? What recommendations would you give to us for that?

[Tony McAleer]

There are two aspects to that. There's what we can do before people get radicalized and what we can do after people get radicalized. There are already fairly robust intervention services within the country. Obviously, these could be improved, and public safety is working towards that.

But I think it's important that there are already existing resources in the community, whether they be social workers or psychologists, or even school counsellors, who have the ability to intervene in these situations, but they don't have the cultural nuance and cultural sensitivity training to deal with that particular population. Rather than build whole programs with dedicated individuals like psychologists, I think a lot could be done with empowering local resources that already exist and giving them the training they need to do that.

On the prevention side, I think there's a huge gap in primary prevention. When we talk about primary prevention, we're not talking about individuals. We're talking about addressing communities and building resilience that helps to inoculate them against the.... These are not ideologically specific services or programs, but programs that create a resilience in young people or older people so that they are less likely to be drawn in by these seductive ideologies.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Do you think there's a lack of awareness amongst these people of, for example, white supremacist movements and that they do not necessarily have the awareness that this could be a problem for a young person?

[Tony McAleer]

I think that's changing, but I think it certainly was the case. Until the last couple of years, we were very focused on responding to ISIS and al Qaeda-inspired terror threats, and ignored the white supremacist terror threat, but I think that's changing. That certainly is important.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

Thank you.

Ms. Bailey, you mentioned in your testimony something about a “survivor-centred” approach. I haven't heard that term before.

What kind of recommendation should our committee make to ensure that what we are doing does take that survivor-centred approach?

[Prof. Jane Bailey]

It is central to my submission and it connects back to the prior question I was asked regarding the outstanding bill.

Survivor-centred approaches are approaches that take into account and centre on what it is that survivors of particular kinds of violence want and need. What are the sorts of responses, remedies and solutions that they're looking for?

I can recommend to you a paper by general counsel at LEAF, Pam Hrick. It focuses on survivor-centred responses to tech-facilitated violence that is gender-based. I can provide that afterward.

The point is that this helps us to avoid the problem I also identified, which is developing solutions that may not just not help people, but may do more harm than good, particularly to the most vulnerable members of our community. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but that's what I mean by survivor-centred.

[Pam Damoff, Liberal, Oakville North—Burlington, ON]

If you could provide that paper to the clerk, that would be terrific.