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:
A look at conflict hot zones in 2026
Episode 311 – What should the world worry about in the new year when it comes to conflict? That conflict is part of the human condition goes without saying. What is challenging is determining what kinds of information to rely on when thinking about ongoing conflicts. After all, there is a lot of disinformation and…
Operation ISIS Still Is-Is
Good morning subscriber. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to look at the threat posed by ISIS/ISIL/Daesh worldwide as of early 2026. The code name for this mission is Operation ISIS Still Is-Is and is classified Top Secret Maximum: do not share this codename or any operational information with anyone without a…
What was it like to be a sniper in Afghanistan?
Episode 309 – If you are going to kill terrorists, send in the best Fighting terrorism is complicated. My background is in security intelligence and I know a lot about what goes into a terrorism investigation. When it comes to the military, things are different. On occasions, soldiers need to use lethal force to kill…
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