When you work for CSIS or the RCMP in national security the one thing that keeps you up at night is the possibility that you might miss something (or, more probably, don’t have enough resources to run down all the leads you discover) and a terrorist act succeeds in Canada. The second thing that makes […]
Author: Phil Gurski
Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting Ltd. Phil is a 32-year veteran of CSE and CSIS and the author of six books on terrorism.
After much delay, the Trudeau government announced today that it will introduce legislation into the House of Commons that contains a significant overhaul on how this country’s security intelligence community operates. Bill C-59 is wide-ranging in scope and seeks to address some of the concerns Canadians raised over the previous Harper government’s C-51, passed in […]
Canadian courts are showing themselves to be prudent and worthy interpreters of the law of the land when it comes to terrorism. A number of cases have now worked their way through the system and in the majority of them the Crown has successfully made its argument that a small number of Canadians are guilty […]
A man drives a van into a crowd of Muslims near a mosque in London, possibly killing one (although there are reports that a person had earlier suffered a heart attack on that street) and wounding ten. Others in the vicinity pull the man out of the van and hold him until police arrive. There […]
One criticism that has been leveled a lot in the post 9/11 period is that governments, through their security intelligence and law enforcement agencies, has run roughshod over civil rights and what should be seen as legitimate political activity, and criminalised some behaviours all in an effort to prevent terrorism from occurring. The timeline on […]
Most people in Canada have a good impression of Sweden I would think. Whether it focuses on tall, blonde attractive men and women or the increasing number of star hockey players – the Ottawa Senators have been blessed with both Daniel Alfredsson and Erik Karlsson – the images are positive ones. And if you have […]
I am a big Isaac Asimov fan (and a big science fiction fan in general, although I don’t get to read as much as I’d like what with all this terrorism to look at). In his classic Foundation series we are introduced to a character right at the outset named Hari Seldon, a mathematics professor […]
Categories
When hate speech leads to violence
The Fisher King is a 1991 film starring the late Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges in which the latter plays a shock jock radio host who spurs a caller into massacring people at random at a restaurant in which the former’s wife dies. The character played by Williams loses his sanity and becomes a street […]
I suppose it was inevitable. An armed attack on Republicans at a baseball practice in Virginia wounded the House majority whip and several others appears to have been carried out by a leftist terrorist. 66-year old James Thomas Hodgkinson, a former house inspector from Illinois, was apparently distraught at the election of Donald Trump as […]
I have learned a few things over the years in dealing with both counter-terrorism and countering violent extremism (CVE). First is that both fields have attracted a lot of interest from a variety of actors: politicians, academics, and self-styled experts. Secondly is that everyone thinks he or she has THE answer to either preventing terrorism […]