Canada lacks strategy to catch radicals early
Groups step in to fill gap as Ottawa struggles with intervention program
Canada’s national anti- terrorism intervention strategy has been delayed another year, with the government saying Tuesday it expects a rollout in late 2015. Since the program’s 2013 announcement, communities across Canada — including Calgary, Hamilton, Toronto and Winnipeg — have launched their own programs.
The RCMP’s Countering Violent Extremism ( CVE) program aims to match young people showing signs of radicalization with social services and preachers, with the goal of dissuading them from pursuing criminal activity.
In an answer to an Order Paper question, the government disclosed Tuesday that the Mounties are “anticipating that the program will be fully operational in late 2015.” The RCMP originally expected a launch last autumn. The project head told the Ottawa Citizen last December they are “definitely going to be rolling in the winter of 2015.”
The federal government has also finally outlined the program’s funding. Eight employees will work full- time on a $ 1.1- million budget, while using roughly $ 2 million of existing headquarter resources. There was one training session last October, when an officer from the United Kingdom’s Prevent program trained 18 RCMP officers and 12 officers from cities across Canada.
As the program stalls, communities across Canada have been working to dissuade young people from conducting violent terrorism at home and abroad.
In Calgary, a team of four case workers are currently working with families of five Canadians and two Americans who either aspire to join terror groups, or have already gone abroad to do so.
Christianne Boudreau, whose son Damian Clairmont was killed last January fighting in Syria, launched the Canadian chapter of German outreach group Hayat last September.
Named after the Arabic word for “life,” Hayat is a spinoff of Exit, an initiative which has helped hundreds of Germans leave neo- Nazi hate groups.
“Every time we hear of someone who hasn’t gone abroad, or who’s still alive, there’s hope,” said Boudreau, who raised funds with Shahina Siddiqui of Winnipeg’s Islamic Social Services Association to fly over a German counsellor to train both their teams.
“We need a national system,” said Siddiqui, who is leading a team of six through counselling training, to soon roll out the Hayat model as part her association.
“Some of the youth will travel, if they notice ( an intervention). They will move to another province, if we do not have that linkage … we may run into difficulties later on.”
But Siddiqui is more focused on preventing young Muslims from needing intervention in the first place, developing a curriculum on Islamic core values to counter manipulative propaganda from the Islamic State group ( ISIL).
Meanwhile in Toronto, Muhammad Robert Heft says he’s helped dissuade about 10 to 20 radicalized youth who he feels had a real risk of joining a terror group abroad.
The Canadian- born convert, who is now an imam, has run the social services organization Paradise Forever since 2004.
He says he’s helped another 100 young people who were radicalized, but didn’t present a serious risk of violence.
“The vast majority are newly practising Muslims, or new Muslims,” said Heft. He said that while some have had mental- health issues, many simply sought information and fell upon easily accessible extremists.
Nearby in Hamilton, lawyer Hussein Hamdani has helped at least 10 young Muslims from joining terror groups, by assisting them in finding ways to address problems in their personal life, or foreign- policy grievances.
“After talking to them, we’re able to get them ( to) volunteer at a local soup kitchen, or at a homeless shelter,” he said.
All four groups work with local social services, and approach police only when there’s a risk of critical activity. Similarly, the RCMP program aims to link young radicalized people with local groups that can help, in an effort to keep them from committing criminal terror acts.
Officials say roughly 80 radicalized Canadians have returned home from fighting overseas with terror groups, while an estimated 145 remain abroad in combat or support positions. As of early 2015, at least 93 others are believed to have been planning to join the fight.
While all four community groups operate in a Muslim context, the RCMP strategy does not focus on any specific group or religion. CSIS recently pegged white supremacists as a larger public safety risk than radical Islamists.
Experts readily admit that early intervention can fail, such as in the case of Martin Couture- Rouleau, whom RCMP liaised with for months before he killed a soldier in St- Jean- sur- Richelieu, Que., last October.
But Heft says the RCMP has a much better chance of success than the U. K.’ s Prevent program it’s emulating.
“The RCMP’s made incredible inroads in the last seven years. Why? They took a chance,” he said, noting that officers have taken time to reach out to numerous mosques and communities that may be suspicious of police.
“We don’t have a history of false arrests or total entrapment. We don’t have such a bad relationship, because they’re real relationships.”
Meanwhile, Canada has no program to rehabilitate citizens who return from terror groups abroad. Current laws, which the government aims to reinforce through the new Anti- Terrorism Act, aim to incarcerate such returnees.
Every time we hear of someone who hasn’t gone abroad, or who’s still alive, there’s hope.