Thank you.
Good morning, committee members. I'm very happy to be here today with my colleague from Public Safety's Canada Centre for Community and Engagement and Prevention of Violence, Mr. Robert Burley, as well as my colleagues from CSIS and RCMP.
The opportunity to speak before this committee on ideologically motivated violent extremism, or IMVE, as we call it, is a welcome one. My team and I at Public Safety have been following this study for the last several weeks. We have watched with interest the quality of witnesses who have come forward and offered their views and expertise, and we're pleased to be able to add to it today.
By way of context, Public Safety Canada's national security mandate is to coordinate the activities of federal departments and agencies representing the Canadian security and intelligence community, or, as we refer to it, the S and I community. In this role, it is the responsibility of Public Safety Canada to develop and provide policy advice to the Minister of Public Safety on national security matters in support of the many operational activities undertaken by the S and I community every day in service to Canada. This includes functioning as a centralized hub for coordinating work on a number of national security issues, including cybersecurity, critical infrastructure protection, countering foreign interference and, of course, counterterrorism and ideologically motivated violent extremism.
On this last point, I wish to highlight that Public Safety is also responsible for terrorist listings. It is worth noting that in 2021, Canada added 17 new groups to the Criminal Code list of terrorist entities, including six IMVE groups and one individual, raising the total IMVE-specific listings to nine. In fact, just last week, the RCMP charged a suspected member of the international neo-Nazi terrorist network, Atomwaffen Division, in Windsor Ontario. Atomwaffen Division is one of those six groups listed in 2021.
With respect to IMVE, in December 2021, the Minister of Public Safety received his mandate letter from the Prime Minister. In that letter, the minister was instructed to bring forward measures to counter IMVE and strengthen the capacity of police and prosecutors to bring terrorist suspects to justice to the fullest extent of the law.
We in Public Safety Canada, along with others in the S and I community, are actively working to support this commitment now and over the longer term, both internationally as well as domestically. We know that it will require significant effort and will not be resolved overnight. IMVE is a complex, ever-evolving threat, as this committee is well aware.
Internationally, the rise of IMVE is an issue that Canada's closest allies are equally grappling with. For example, countering terrorism and violent extremism in all forms was a key commitment in the road map for a renewed U.S.-Canada partnership signed by the Prime Minister and the President of the United States in February of 2021.
Countering IMVE is also a growing area of collaboration with our Five Eyes—U.K., U.S., Australia, New Zealand—and G7 partners, and is a subject of other multilateral efforts of which Canada is an active participant. The most notable among these would be under the Christchurch call to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.
I raise this point only to highlight that countering the rise of IMVE is not a uniquely Canadian issue, and that concerted international co-operation and dialogue will continue to be needed to effectively address it.
Domestically, we at Public Safety are aware of the need to be open and transparent with Canadians when it comes to making and sustaining progress to counter IMVE here at home. This means, in practice, engagement with civil society, academia, industry, provincial and territorial partners, and others in trying to understand Canadians' expectations of the federal government in this space, and to ensure Canada's approach is a whole-of-society one.
I also wish to underline that we recognize it will be highly important to hear from vulnerable and racialized communities, and ensure that their views and experiences are heard. We are highly attuned to the need for engagement that is respectful and reassures all Canadians of our understanding of IMVE for what it is, which is a serious threat confronted by Canada today.
In this vein, it is important to highlight the role of prevention as an essential component of a whole-of-government and a whole-of-society response. Prevention is key to countering—