Search: “national security”

I want to start this blog with a confession: I am not a Doug Ford fan.  Hell I am not a Ford family or a Ford Nation fan either but all that is besides the point I want to make.  The latest of Mr. Ford’s gaffes has me very worried about political interference in national […]

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 […]

OK, OK, I am getting fed up with hearing about the Khadr family and I am pretty sure I am not alone in this.  Canada’s #1 Al Qaeda-supporting clan has been a pain in the ass for decades and I for one just want them to go away – literally if possible.  They have become […]

This piece appeared in The Hill Times on December 3, 2018. Way back in medieval times there was a concept known as sanctuary.  Under this notion, those who had committed crimes could place themselves beyond the long arm of the law by hightailing it to a church or monastery, where supposedly divine law trumped the […]

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 […]

This piece appeared  in The Hill Times on November 19, 2018. I imagine that most Canadians are already very tired of this story and yet here I am weighing in on it, from the perspective of national security.  To sum up this debacle, not that I think anyone does not know the salacious details, MP […]

This piece appeared  in The Ottawa Citizen (online) on November 12, 2018. I never knew my maternal grandfather.  He emigrated to Canada in the early part of the 20th century from western Ukraine (or eastern Poland, the details on that are fuzzy) and settled in Montreal where he worked at the CPR’s Angus workshops, along […]

In the US there is a big debate going on, at least among some in Democratic Party circles, to do away with ICE – Immigration and Customs Enforcement.  In truth, parts of ICE have been involved in activities that some seen as inhuman such as the location, detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants who have […]