Good morning, Mr. Chair and committee members.
It is a beautiful day indeed.
I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today to continue answering questions about IMVE.
As a quick refresher, I'm Mike Duheme, deputy commissioner of the RCMP in federal policing. This includes the national security portfolio that falls under my responsibility.
Over the past months, my team has been following the work being conducted by this committee. We commend you for bringing forward such a diverse and knowledgeable list of experts on the subject, as well as the key service providers and industry professionals who need to be part of the solution going forward. Throughout these appearances, you have been given a great deal of information, some of which has no doubt raised concerns about Canada's ability to effectively combat the growing threat around IMVE threat actors.
For the most part, the calls for concern that you have heard are real. We know the IMVE threat environment is rapidly evolving and complex, and is increasingly fuelled by misinformation and hostile rhetoric surrounding a host of grievances, many of which focus on the government's response to COVID-19 and other matters. This has sewn distrust in government institutions, including law enforcement, and has augmented the ability for extremist groups to both recruit new members and increasingly foster hostility.
For you and the majority of Canadians, this hostility has manifested itself in the daily news and social media. For many RCMP officers and our fellow law enforcement partners it has manifested itself in all too real confrontation, both during the occupation in Ottawa and the numerous border crossing blockades.
Since the onset of the pandemic, the RCMP has seen a marked increase in the number of instances of ideologically motivated violent extremism, or IMVE, occurrences, the majority of which come from threat actors who have no clear group affiliation, who are motivated by highly personalized and nuanced ideologies that lead them to incite and/or mobilize to violence.
During my last appearance, I described the scope of the problem the RCMP is facing. My appearance today will focus on what the RCMP is doing about it. Before answering that question, it must be made clear that the RCMP's Federal Policing Program is one part of the solution. Our enforcement actions are the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to a broader Government of Canada response. The bulk of our collective response needs to be focused on proactive measures, steps that can be taken before frustrations can be moulded into hate and violence.
Further, it is important to remember that the RCMP Federal Policing Program is specifically responsible for threats that cross into the national security space, which means criminality that meets the criteria laid out in section 2 of the CSIS Act. Police of jurisdiction maintain responsibility for investigating hate motivated criminal activity, which make up the vast majority of occurrences.
With that said, for the past year or so, the RCMP has taken concrete steps to get its own house in order. It began by talking to our investigators in the field in our various national security focused units, because these are the people who deal with IMVE threats on the front lines. We then met with the support teams at national headquarters who assist with and provide intelligence information to those officers. In both cases, we identified the real-life gaps and challenges that are being faced when trying to identify and take action on potential IMVE threat actors.
From that, the RCMP has developed a comprehensive strategy that will seek to address those gaps and challenges over the next three years. This will mean revamping everything from the training that our officers receive to reallocating resources to better fit the current threat picture. It will mean rethinking how we share information with key partners, as well as aligning federal policing resources to undertake what needs to be done to give our officers the tools they need to address this threat effectively and efficiently.
Like any broad approach to dealing with complex problems, the RCMP strategy also focuses on shifting from being largely reactive to being proactive. This will improve our relationships with key partners in the community and the respective local law enforcement bodies so that we can identify threats before they cross the national security threshold. It will be done by improving information sharing and building up our own intelligence capacity, specifically in the online space. By doing this, we will be in a better position to identify individuals and groups who pose a threat before they are motivated to violence.
In addition, the RCMP will continue to use all the tools that it has at its disposal when IMVE threats are identified. This would include the use of peace bonds, listing regime, revocation of passports, the use of the Secure Air Travel Act, the no-fly list and other tools that will disrupt the imminent. However, make no mistake. As several of the academics have informed this committee—