About Us
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd.
He worked as a senior strategic analyst at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. He is the author of six previous books on terrorism.
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. and former Program Director for the National Security program hub at the University of Ottawa’s Professional Development Institute (PDI).
He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2015, specializing in violent Islamist-inspired homegrown terrorism and radicalisation. From 1983 to 2001 he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment (CSE – Canada’s signals intelligence agency), specialising in the Middle East. He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013, focusing on community outreach and training on radicalisation to violence, until his retirement from the civil service in May 2015, and as consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) from May to October 2015.
He was the Director of Security and Intelligence at the SecDev Group from June 2018 to July 2019. Mr. Gurski has presented on violent Islamist-inspired and other forms of terrorism and radicalisation across Canada and around the world.
He writes at www.borealisthreatandrisk.com.
He is the author of The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West (Rowman and Littlefield 2015) Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), The Lesser Jihads: Taking the Islamist fight to the world (Rowman and Littlefield 2017), An end to the ‘War on Terrorism , When Religion Kills: How Extremist Justify Violence Through Faith (Lynne Rienner 2019), The Peaceable Kingdom? A history of terrorism in Canada from Confederation to the present (self-published: 2021, republished by Double Dagger in 2022), and the forthcoming The Fenian Brotherhood: Canada’s first terrorism threat? (Double Dagger 2025). He regularly blogs and podcasts (Canadian Intelligence Eh!), and tweets (@borealissaves) on terrorism and intelligence matters.
He was an associate fellow at the International Centre for Counter Terrorism (ICCT) in the Netherlands and is currently a digital fellow at the Montreal Institute for Genocide Studies at Concordia University.
Mr. Gurski is a regular commentator on terrorism and intelligence for a wide variety of Canadian and international media.
Read the latest publications by Phil Gurski:
How serious is the jihadi threat in Mozambique?
Episode 279 – What, another ISIS affiliate in Africa? Mozambique achieved independence in 1974 after a long civil war with its former Portuguese colonial power. Like most African nations, however, peace and stability are not that common in the post European power era. The southeastern country has been facing down a jihadi movement affiliated with…
Canada’s Public Safety Minister’s Alleged Support for a Designated Terrorist Entity Requires Clarification and Due Diligence
This piece was co-written with Nelly Shin, former Canadian Member of Parliament. You can find it on Substack here. A recent series of Global News reports have addressed concerns about Canada’s current Public Safety Minister, Gary Anandasangaree, and his past ties with the Tamil Tigers or Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), a designated terrorist entity…
Personal reflections on Air India flight 182 – 40 years later
Episode 266 – Why did Canada’s protectors not prevent a terrorist attack by Sikh extremists in June 1985? For those of us who work(ed) in national security the job boils down to one thing and one thing only: stop bad things from happening. So what gives if we screw up and a bomb on an…
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