Search: “CSIS”

In recent days I have been slammed on social media (LinkedIn and Twitter) for blogs I have written on terrorism.  The one had to do with whether CSIS has a right to investigate terrorism on university and college campuses (answer: YES!) and the other was on the threat from Sikh extremism in Canada. The criticism […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 19, 2018. July 1 is, of course, our national day.  Whether you celebrate it like we do here in Ottawa with a series of events centred on Parliament Hill capped by the awesome fireworks display or in your own local way (at the cottage, in your […]

I guess it is that time of year.  No, not the holiday season – the appearance of the annual Public Safety Canada terrorist threat overview!  As the Minister of Public Safety himself – Ralph Goodale – wrote, this is “part of our commitment to being open and transparent through a balanced and frank assessment of […]

So the Trudeau government has responded to a Parliamentary “Supply Day Motion” (NB I have NO idea what that means) dated October 23 that called on the Government of Canada to “immediately bring to justice anyone who has fought as an ISIS terrorist or participated in any terrorist activity, including those who are in Canada […]

Once a month or so I get an email entitled “Updates on Radicalisation Research” from something called ‘Radicalisationresearch.org’ ( I assume it is from the UK because of the way ‘radicalisation’ is spelled – either that or Canadian although I doubt that).  This newsletter usually lists a dozen or so papers written in a number […]

Keeping with the theme of the OPV/TSAS conference on PVE (preventing violent extremism) in Edmonton last week I’d like to pick up on a theme that is getting a lot of attention in Canada, that of right-wing extremism (RWE for short).  There was a panel on this menace that I had to unfortunately skip as […]

I have just returned from a CVE (countering violent extremism) conference in Edmonton organised by the Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), the Canadian Practitioners’ Network for the Prevention of Radicalization and Extremist Violence, and the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society (TSAS) where I gave a presentation on what we know about the extremist […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on November 26, 2018. We all know that many nations have a foreign intelligence service that sends spies here, there, and everywhere to collect the information its government tells it to in order to protect state interests. There is the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) which has been featured […]