Rick Hanson calls on firms to support youth programs
The former Calgary police chief is urging the business community to help curb the risk of terrorism by supporting local programs aimed at at- risk youth, even as the city continues to struggle with an economic downturn.
Rick Hanson said the individuals most at risk of joining terror groups, radical organizations and gangs are those who are marginalized, who have troubles fitting in, who face financial barriers, live in abusive households or struggle with mental health issues or addiction.
And it’s important to intervene early, starting with children in elementary and junior high school who are showing signs of high- risk behaviour. “The one thing they (businesses) can really do something about is supporting those programs that recognize that if you can intervene early with those young people that have been identified as already struggling, you can have a huge impact,” Hanson told reporters Thursday following a presentation to the Calgary Chamber of Commerce at the Fairmont Palliser Hotel. That includes everything from funding sports programs or music lessons to supporting counselling programs, providing job opportunities and supporting school programs, Hanson said. “You can’t ignore kids that are on a path, going in a direction that leads to a dead end, because we are all going to pay for that,” he added. Hanson said Canada is not immune to the threat of terrorism. The country, he said, has great intelligence capacity, great investigative capacity, and great response capability through collaborative work with local police forces, the RCMP and international partners. But while individuals and companies can “harden their own targets and have alarms,” the important thing for the business community — in partnership with schools, police and social agencies — is to to be part of the solution in preventing attacks from happening in the first place. And that’s getting at those most likely to be recruited by these radicalized groups. “We can makeBut the ourselves reality target-hardened.is, if you’re doing it for a continuous wave of new prospects, you’re never going to get ahead of it. The magic will be … identifying those high- risk young people and doing something at the right time,” he added.
Hanson recognized that now may be a hard time for businesses to allocate funds, especially with the state of the economy. But now is a good opportunity to get innovative and start planning, he said.
“When economies take off and companies take off and money suddenly flows like water, people tend to forget that not everybody has that opportunity. The time to build programs and look at efficiencies around partnerships is now,” he said.
“Then when the economy takes off, you see those programs, those partnerships, those initiatives grow.”