Extremists ‘want to kill Canadians’

Canada’s spymaster has issued an unusually stark and unsettling message to Canadians: Serious people are out to kill us.

“There are violent people and violent groups that want to kill Canadians,” Michel Coulombe, head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), writes in the service’s latest annual report, tabled Wednesday in Parliament.

“There was a period after 9/11 when many people assumed that an effective terrorist attack was necessarily one that involved a network of highly trained operatives bent on committing a spectacular mass-casualty event.

“In truth, a single assailant with low-tech weaponry — a rifle or even a car — can bring tragedy and insecurity to our communities,” as happened in October’s terror attacks against unarmed soldiers in Ottawa and Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu.

Terrorism remains the top threat to the nation, according to the report. Especially troubling is a recent surge of mostly young Canadians heading oversees to join extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq.

A chief concern is that trained, combat-hardened Islamists will return to Canada to set up terror networks or launch small-scale or solo attacks.

It has already happened in Europe. At least one of the shooters in January’s terrorist massacre at Charlie Hebdo in Paris and a Jewish grocery store reportedly had terrorist training in Yemen. Yemen’s al-Qaida branch claimed responsibility for the attack on the magazine in retaliation for the French military’s airstrikes against ISIL in Iraq. The Royal Canadian Air Force is part of the same western bombing campaign.

Another big concern is economic espionage, especially foreign statesponsored computer intrusions to steal advanced technologies and government proprietary and classified information.