Proceedings of the Standing Senate Committee on
National Security and Defence
Issue 12 - Evidence - Meeting of December 1, 2014
OTTAWA, Monday, December 1, 2014
The Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence met this day at 1:03 p.m. to study and report on security threats facing Canada.
Senator Daniel Lang (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Before we welcome our witnesses, I would like to begin by introducing the people around the table. My name is Dan Lang, senator for Yukon. On my immediate left is the clerk of the committee, Josée Thérien, and on my far right is our Library of Parliament analyst assigned to the committee, Holly Porteous. I would like to invite the senators to introduce themselves and state the region they represent, starting with our deputy chair.
Senator Mitchell: Grant Mitchell, Alberta, deputy chair of the committee.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: Jean-Guy Dagenais. I am a senator from Quebec.
[English]
Senator Ngo: Senator Ngo from Ontario.
Senator Kenny: Colin Kenny, Ontario.
Senator White: Vernon White, Ontario.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Carolyn Stewart Olsen, New Brunswick.
Senator Beyak: Lynn Beyak, Ontario.
The Chair: Thank you. Colleagues, on June 19, 2014, the Senate agreed that the Standing Senate Committee on National Security and Defence would be authorized to study and report on security threats facing Canada, including but not limited to cyberespionage, threats to critical infrastructure, terrorist recruitment and financing, and terrorist operations and prosecutions, and that the committee would report to the Senate no later than December 31, 2015.
This afternoon, the committee will be meeting for four hours as we continue to look at threats to Canada, specifically terrorism. As noted before, this national conversation that we are having is an opportunity to learn more about the threats Canadians face and what is being done and what more should be done to ensure peace, order and good government.
So far we have learned that 93 Canadians are defined as high-risk travellers; that is, they are seeking to leave Canada to support ISIS. These people are under surveillance or have had their passports seized. In addition, there are 80 Canadians and dual nationals who have returned to Canada after providing material support for ISIS. We do know that there are 145 Canadians currently abroad with ISIS. Together, we have a known threat of 318 Canadians, and these are the ones known to our law enforcement officials.
At least 173 radicalized individuals deemed to be some sort of threat are living amongst us and obviously consuming vast amounts of law enforcement resources while posing a threat to Canada and Canadians. Over the last few weeks, the media have reported that the United Kingdom security forces can only reasonably maintain 24-7 surveillance on 50 individuals at a time. With 173 known radicalized individuals amongst us, one wonders about the hard choices law enforcement officials must make when it comes to prioritization of terrorism files.
The committee also learned that significant financial support leaves Canada to finance terrorism. FINTRAC, the agency that tracks terror financing and organized crime, tabled their annual report which states that they made 1,143 disclosures to law enforcement agencies in 2013-14, up from 919 the previous year. Of that, 234 were related to terrorist financing or threats to the security of Canada. This is almost a doubling in cases reported from the previous year.
In order to get a local and regional perspective on threats to Canada, we are pleased today to have with us in our first panel Mr. Marc Parent from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, the SPVM. Mr. Parent is the thirty-fifth director of the SPVM and has 26 years in the organization. From 2003 to 2010, he held the position of assistant director of the SPVM, where he manages some 1,000 employees from 10 neighbourhood police stations serving a population of over half a million people.
Mr. Parent holds a BA in business administration and an MA in public administration, and he also has a degree from the FBI National Academy, University of Virginia.
In 2003 he was entrusted with the position of executive assistant to the director, where among other duties he was the spokesperson for the SPVM with the American Northeast Regional Homeland Security Directors Consortium concerning terrorist activity control after having taken part in setting up the national anti-terrorism committee.
Mr. Parent, I understand that you have an opening statement, and if you would also introduce your two officers.
[Translation]
Marc Parent, Director, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal: I would like to thank the committee for the opportunity to tell you about the counter-terrorism role that the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, or SPVM, plays on the national stage.
I would like to begin by reiterating something my colleagues from other police forces have told you. The SPVM recognizes that the best way to prevent terrorism is to focus its efforts on prevention. The SPVM also believes in the importance of partnership and cooperation.
Before continuing, I would like to introduce the individuals who are with me today, if I may. To my left is Bernard Lamothe, Assistant Director, Specialized Investigation Department, and to my right is Inspector François Bleau, Intelligence Division.
A number of events have occurred since we last appeared before a Senate committee in 2010. We need only think of the social movement that captured Quebec, quickly propelling Montreal into the epicentre of public discontent. In connection with those protests, we also saw incidents of domestic terrorism such as smoke bombs being thrown in the subway during rush hour. Other events underscore the importance of taking action against radicalization to violence, such as the École Polytechnique massacre — the 25th anniversary of which is coming up on December 6 — and the events in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu and Ottawa, which directly affected all of us.
When we appeared on November 15, 2010, Senator Joyal rightly pointed out the fact that the public does not perceive the police as believing that citizens have an active role in fighting terrorism and organized crime. People do have a responsibility within their communities, and that has never been truer than it is today.
With respect to the situation in Montreal, we know that nearly a hundred Canadians have been deemed high-risk travellers, and they include Montrealers. So, of course, our intelligence and investigation teams, who have been actively working to counter terrorism for years, are extremely involved on that front. Combatting the terrorist threat has always been a top priority, and monopolizes a multitude of the SPVM's resources, both human and financial.
In a period of two months, we initiated a hundred or so terrorism-related investigations. The cases involve suspicious behaviour, death threats and radicalization. Currently, an estimated 40 per cent of cases involve individuals with mental health issues. That is a telling figure when you consider the fact that lone wolves are more likely to suffer from mental health issues, making them more vulnerable. They are characterized by the fact that they act alone, do not belong to an organized terrorist network or group, and devise and carry out their modus operandi in the absence of an external command or hierarchical structure. They use all kinds of extremist ideologies to justify violence. It is important to note that most lone wolves have a criminal past, drug problems, financial troubles and a history of violent behaviour.
The anonymity offered by the Internet and social networks now plays a critical role, because it is often outside the reach of parents, teachers and police organizations, which lack the necessary muscle to take action. That is what makes the Internet an ideal recruiting ground and propaganda tool for terrorist organizations. Terrorists understand that police use traditional social networks to track them down and have developed other communication platforms, making our job even more complex.
Regarding the territory under the SPVM's jurisdiction, I should tell you that we benefit from sharing information and working with other police forces, such as the RCMP and the Sûreté du Québec. Recently, we have made tremendous strides in terms of transparent and open communications with all of our partners, including CSIS and the Canada Border Services Agency.
I would like to point out that, under Quebec's Police Act, the SPVM is responsible for providing level 5 services on a scale that goes up to level 6. Therefore, we are responsible for responding to a terrorist incident that occurs in the territory under our jurisdiction. The Structure de gestion policière contre le terrorisme, an anti-terrorism police management structure established in 2003 and led by the RCMP and the Sûreté du Québec, represents a trilateral partnership combining the forces' human and material resources to provide the most effective response possible. That same approach applies throughout all of Quebec, meaning, that if an event occurs elsewhere in the province, the SPVM will still contribute to the response. We are also involved in numerous decision-making committees dedicated to emergency preparedness, including the Comité aviseur antiterrorisme de Montréal, the Comité aviseur en sécurité civile and the Organisation de sécurité civile de l'agglomération de Montréal.
Against that backdrop, you will, no doubt, appreciate the scope of our challenge and the importance of the SPVM's community-based policing approach. In carrying out its mission to protect the lives and property of citizens, the SPVM focuses on building meaningful relationships with citizens based on integrity, trust and mutual respect. Citizen engagement is not possible if a police force does not have roots in the community. Engaging the community hinges on building genuine trust and adopting a coordinated, sustained and honest approach.
Community engagement is achieved by building collaborative relationships with community members on a proactive basis in order to promote information sharing and better meet community needs. For instance, those who run our neighbourhood police stations prepare their local action plans in cooperation with a variety of community partners and make a point of being accountable to the community for results at the end of the year. This closeness to the community enables SPVM officers to better understand the concerns and dynamics of each individual community. That is where the SPVM's strength lies.
Another example of our longstanding community engagement efforts are our vigilance committees. Since 2003, these committees, which bring together members of Montreal's various neighbourhoods, have been meeting with police to discuss long-term strategies. The communities were not selected for security reasons but so that police could draw on the in-depth knowledge these individuals have and be more effective at meeting their expectations. These committees also enable us to strengthen our cross-cultural skills. In that connection, the SPVM has developed training packages on different cultural communities, in collaboration with those communities, in order to educate each of our officers on the specific dynamics and characteristics of each community. I have a number of copies I could leave with you, if you would like to have a look. We have also developed little booklets in different languages to help us improve our communications with each community. Every officer can refer to these booklets in the course of their communications.
Our community-based approach serves as a tangible response to radicalization to violence because local officers and citizens work together as security partners. The approach relies on a coordinated and integrated effort.
Furthermore, we make extensive efforts to build community relationships with all segments of the population. We do not focus exclusively on a single community or ideology. For instance, our vigilance committees represent the various cultural communities in our territory: Black, Latino, Arab and Asian communities. We also have seniors and youth vigilance committees, as well as a racial profiling committee and a strategic committee comprising institutional and academic experts.
Now you understand why the SPVM devotes so much energy to community policing. Underlying the SPVM's efforts to anchor itself in the community is a citizen-centred approach advocated by our socio-community and front- line officers. They are present in a variety of settings, including schools, youth centres, places of worship, and recreational and community centres. Our community-based presence promotes information sharing that strengthens not just the community's sense of security, but also crime solving.
Now for some recommendations. This dialogue alone is not sufficient to combat terrorism. We feel it is important to continually examine the efforts being made throughout Canada and around the world in order to assess the feasibility of importing those solutions here. If I may, I would like to share with you some solutions that I have personally chosen or that I view as priorities, community-focused prevention programs.
Such programs must equip communities with the tools they need to counter the rhetoric of violent extremists so that every possible communication vehicle can be used to send out an even stronger message. Police initiatives to engage the community can take many forms and should leverage appropriate communication media that offer high penetration rates in the targeted populations. These may include popular community TV and radio stations, the Internet and community newspapers. To spread the message to as many people as possible, it is important to use multiple communication vehicles to get out targeted messages tailored to the diverse nature of the communities.
And since violent extremists leverage all of these tools and more to seek out new recruits, community engagement initiatives to counter those efforts should take advantage of the same communication tools. Traditional repression- based efforts to combat terrorism usually focus on terrorists and their active supporters. Terrorists, however, devote a significant amount of energy to their audience so they can recruit members. Therefore, in order to be as effective as possible in combatting radicalization to violence and recruitment, stakeholders must work with local communities to draw their attention to compelling and targeted counter-messages. These messages must refute pro-violence rhetoric in response to perceived injustices on an individual, or one's family or community. Drawing on specific statistics that underscore the misguided nature of using violence as an effective solution can help to cast doubts and contradict pro- terrorist rhetoric.
It is also important to support families with a member who is becoming radicalized to violence. It is necessary to reach out to youth and work with schools to spread positive messages, because high school is often a time when young people are very vulnerable. Those who work in schools and other places where young people gather, such as youth centres, community and recreational centres and parks, can help spread positive messages to at-risk youth and provide psychosocial and other types of support of that actively counter violent extremism.
New community-oriented prevention programs should focus on listening to youth and talking to them about the damage that Islamist extremist attacks cause. These programs should target a deeper understanding of how extremist groups operate, recruit members, promote their subculture and incite people to violence.
In addition, we also need to develop and facilitate training programs for those on the front line working with at-risk individuals. We need to develop training programs that take into account the specific issues and dynamics of the local community to support community engagement and policing. Local stakeholders need to learn how to identify key behaviours and indicators. Equally important is ensuring that all community-oriented policing initiatives are based on trust and respect; stakeholders should be properly trained on all aspects of the community relationships and interactions specific to their environment. For instance, neighbourhood police could have training manuals on community policing, as well as pocket guides to teach front-line officers about behaviours and indicators to watch for, so they are better equipped to distinguish between potential violent extremism and normal behaviours.
Front-line officers should have training on cultural, societal and religious behaviours specific to the community and know the difference between normal behaviours and signs of extremist, violent, criminal or potentially dangerous behaviour. Training methods and materials need to be regularly reviewed and updated to keep up with changing threats and good practices.
We should also consider deploying substantial resources to address cyberspace, the preferred breeding ground for radicalization to violence.
Lastly, we must continue to train our officers on terrorism and indoctrination to violence. To that end, we began training counter-terrorism information coordinators some time ago. To date, nearly 134 officers have been trained across all SPVM units, especially in the Métro and airport units, and other key front-line units.
In conclusion, the SPVM continues to take the threat of radicalization to violence very seriously and has developed a five-point response plan focused on prevention, intervention, investigation, intelligence and communication. It is important to keep in mind that heavy-handed approaches that favour social control and preventative coercive measures can be counterproductive when it comes to counter-terrorism strategies.
It is therefore important to establish a terrorism prevention strategy based on deradicalization, one that promotes police-citizen relationships further to a community-based policing approach.
It should be kept in mind how difficult it is, from a counter-terrorism perspective, for officers on the ground to do their jobs as police officers, in other words, keeping the public safe on a preventative basis and being ready to respond to any eventuality, while taking a compassionate attitude with all members of the public. There is no way around the conflicting nature of the officer's compassionate and coercive roles.
Front-line police officers play a fundamental role in this strategy. Changing how they approach citizens is more than just a model of community policing or a matter of organizational ethics; it is a crucial strategic step in the fight against terrorism.
As far as citizens and communities as a whole are concerned, their understanding of the strategy, as well as their involvement in its implementation and desire to foster a peaceful and safe environment, are instrumental in the strategy's success.
Police officers have limited credibility and knowledge, not to mention basic cultural experience, when it comes to effectively communicating a message to a community that may be closed, or even impenetrable. If the target population is to assimilate the message, it is essential to work with credible representatives, and that necessarily means appealing to the population and, above all, involving the community in identifying and applying possible solutions.
One final thing to keep in mind is that an effective counter-terrorism strategy cannot be based on coercion or conciliation alone.
Recent studies have shown that the effective approach is one that relies on a balanced mix of both components. What we want more than anything is to work hand-in-hand with you to successfully counter this threat, which is currently plaguing a number of countries. Thank you.
[English]
The Chair: The clerk will circulate the information that Mr. Parent brought to the committee. I would like to begin with the questions. Thank you very much, Mr. Parent.
[Translation]
Senator Mitchell: Thank you, Mr. Parent. That was a very impressive presentation. It is clear that you and your organization fully understand the issues and challenges involved. My thanks to you and your organization for your contribution.
[English]
I'm very interested in so many things that you've said, and we only have so much time. I think people believe so much that this is a national problem, yet although the RCMP are national, they don't do, in many places, the kind of policing you do. You're right on the front line.
You alluded to the importance of the integration, and there are a couple of programs. As recently as 2012 I know that Public Safety set up the Building Resilience Against Terrorism program, and there is a longer-term program headed up by the RCMP called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, INSETs, program. Could you give us an idea of how those are working, from your point of view? I think you were quite positive about the relationship with the RCMP.
Are there other relationships within CSIS, CSEC, Canada Border Services Agency? Do you have the resources? How are these programs working?
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: We work with the RCMP, and we have also established a partnership with that entity to provide training internally. An instructor and an RCMP member provide various types of training on the terrorist threat to our coordinators, and the 130 individuals I mentioned have undergone training provided in partnership with the RCMP.
As for communication tools related to the alignment of national and even international strategies, when we need to communicate with front-line police officers on the ground, we use a consistent approach to provide them with adequate skills. Of course, that must also be adapted to our various realities.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal consists of front-line officers who keep a close eye on various intelligence — be that intelligence related to emergency situations or to more serious cases. So we can quickly raise a red flag and pass on that information. This is a bottom-up and top-down approach. We can also quickly establish a connection to various existing programs.
You mentioned CSIS. We have noted a major difference in information sharing, but the guidelines are still the same. Some headway could be made by giving us access to information classified according to a certain security level. Beyond that, whenever we work with Canadian intelligence stakeholders, through the RCMP, we are now much more efficient than before as a result of widespread awareness of the need to obtain highly fluid and relevant information, on an ongoing basis and in real time. We want to have access to resources that will enable us to work upstream and to be much more agile in our responses.
The Service de police de la Ville de Montréal is also an organization that interacts with different community stakeholders, such as community groups and various individuals who can help our collaborations and ensure an ongoing relationship. Our organization has coordinators trained in terrorism matters, but we also have community social officers. There are about 70 of them, or approximately 2 per police force. They visit schools, places of worship and community organizations. Those individuals must receive ongoing training and be aware of the new reality we are currently facing, so that they can also recognize warning signs or understand statements from Canadians who sometimes communicate in a veiled or confidential manner, and so that they can ultimately help us transmit the information.
We have to apply all the positive leverage available in the various communities, aside from our intelligence liaison officers, who are also on the ground and visit various meeting places of people who could provide information. We really have to use all of our contacts across the territory, as that helps us transmit all the information gathered.
I invite our intelligence specialist to complete my answer and give you more information on our liaison with CSIS.
François Bleau, Inspector, Intelligence Services Division, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal: In our daily activities on the ground, we have noted that information sharing has accelerated owing to the Islamic State's actions. Those actions were a trigger, and we can now see that we are all on the same page when it comes to information sharing, given the notion of national security.
This means we have daily meetings with CSIS people to review our methods in order to determine how we can interrogate witnesses with them or improve our approach. The goal is to do an even better job of fulfilling our mission, which consists in identifying indicators or people. To their credit, our partners came to us. We have a better knowledge of the field, and they took the time to come meet with us. On the other hand, they have empirical experience in strategic analysis. Ours is a very practical marriage. This winning approach is reflected in our daily operations.
Bernard Lamothe, Assistant Director, Special Investigations, Service de police de la Ville de Montréal: The police anti- terrorism management structure consists of four components, under which we share information. The first component has to do with investigations we collaborate in, as members, with the RCMP and Sûreté du Québec, as well as with CSIS, which is another member of that committee. Through this approach, we can examine files in a comprehensive manner, establish a comfort zone and find a way to outdo ourselves when it comes to various investigation strategies.
The second component has to do with responses — so what we do on the ground when an incident occurs. That coordination is also a joint effort with our other partners.
The third component is related to the communication of intelligence. My colleague discussed this earlier.
The objective is to observe situations, make a game plan and a response plan, especially in cases involving multiple deaths. What should be done across the City of Montreal in the wake of a catastrophe like the L'Isle-Verte tragedy, where several people died in a seniors' residence?
It is certain that, in the immediate aftermath — whether we are talking about a plane crash or a problem in the subway — we will assume the terrorism aspect is omnipresent. Therefore, we will deploy all of our resources and try to be as efficient as possible. All those coordination structures are used to help share the best practices and the best resources in order to establish the best operational strategies.
[English]
The Chair: Colleagues, we have 25 minutes, so I would ask everybody to be brief in their preamble and get to their question, and I would appreciate fairly short and concise responses so we can get through all the questioners.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: I would like to thank our three guests. I am always somewhat proud when I meet representatives from the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal.
My first question is for Mr. Parent. Based on your experience in Montreal, could you give us an approximate number of individuals who may have been involved in acts of terrorism or radicalization over the past five years?
Mr. Parent: It would be difficult to provide an exact figure over the past five years. Earlier, during my opening remarks, I talked about some 100 cases that were opened for various reasons, including instances of radicalization. We are always careful when sharing our statistics, not because we lack transparency, but because of the definitions that make it possible to attribute the right status to those people. In other words, we need to determine whether we should consider their behaviour as suspicious and susceptible to radicalization or other. Our intelligence specialist could perhaps elaborate further on this, but it is certain that Montreal is a place where we have to manage various files according to their definitions, based on various ongoing cases.
Mr. Bleau: I am also careful about discussing statistics, but it is important to understand the process behind all this. Each case is reviewed daily. Overall, stakeholders are gathered around the table, whether we are talking about intelligence stakeholders, our partners or our internal resources. Everything is analyzed, and we pay special attention to radicalization with a tendency toward violence, as well as to detectors and indicators that lead us to people whose behaviour changes rapidly. For instance, quick changes may be observed within six months. We may get calls from the family, professionals or teachers. We are careful in such cases.
Senator Dagenais: You said that the type of radicalization you have observed was mostly noticed in methods or behaviour. Could you elaborate on that?
Mr. Bleau: In some cases, teenagers' parents themselves call us to report strange behaviours. Their child may have found money, a knife or something like that. The parents may realize their child has committed robbery and then find out that they want to join the fighting in Syria. We are talking about those types of cases of rapid radicalization.
We also receive tips from schools, when teachers notice that a young person is changing their way of thinking. It is also important to understand the Internet's impact. Our children now spend their evenings in front of a computer, and that is when these things happen.
We are talking about young people aged 15 to 25 who are more susceptible to such influences. These types of cases are a great source of concern for us, and we are keeping an eye out for signs of radicalization.
Senator Dagenais: I would like to come back to radicalization. You do not need to give me any statistics, but have you noted an increase in radicalization activities? Is the phenomenon increasing or decreasing in scope? Is it stable? Have you noted an increase in the Montreal region in particular? Certain events may have influenced some people.
Mr. Bleau: Influence can be an issue.
Mr. Parent: We do not have any significant data that would indicate a trend in either direction.
Mr. Bleau: I think this is something that has always existed and will continue to exist. But the police and community effort is exposing more and more cases. This is just like anything else. When street gangs became an issue, authorities took an interest, and much more activity was uncovered. The same goes for biker gangs. Focus placed on a specific issue often increases reporting in that area.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you for your presentation.
[English]
It was very informative and professional. I have a few questions. I want to take us there. They will be quick. We need to know if section 83, the portion of the Criminal Code that deals with terrorism, gives you enough tools to do your prosecutions, or can you suggest something more that you would like to see?
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: I will let my colleague answer the question, but before we discuss section 83 more directly, I would say that the Attorney General's authorizations require several steps, which encumber and slow down the process. That is where things may get more complicated in our investigation process that leads to the laying of charges.
That issue is a fairly important factor. In Montreal, one of our approaches — and this is something François Bleau could maybe clarify — has to do with all the provisions under section 810. That is a worthwhile approach that enables us to monitor individuals and ensure a better follow-up in various situations.
Mr. Bleau: Exactly. In order to protect citizens, we try to be a quick and agile municipal organization. One of the tools we have found is section 810, which gives us a certain temporal flexibility. It is easier to set conditions and exclude people, and to at least be able to have some sort of control over those individuals.
We normally handle profit-driven crimes, but in this case, we are talking about an ideological crime, which is very difficult to pinpoint. Section 83 makes the process somewhat cumbersome. We were hoping to find a solution with staff prosecutors who, being closer to the Attorney General, could help under section 83. Narrowing the prosecutor's area of jurisdiction sort of creates a single point of contact. Prosecutors are sympathetic to our reality and are close to us. This is an option to consider.
The Spencer ruling has made it difficult to issue a warrant in cases where the needs are greater and where, in order to obtain any public information, a judicial authorization has to be sought. These restrictions render the process cumbersome for police forces.
Mr. Parent: I would like to add to the answer. You should also understand that, under section 83, we respond indirectly — in other words, individuals are assigned to INSETs, Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, and work at the RCMP under this provision.
[English]
Senator Stewart Olsen: I'm gathering a bit, and I'm not sure if this is correct, but the levels of the threshold for prosecutions may be higher, I believe, from what you're saying. You've mentioned the difficulty in getting a search warrant. Should we address that? Should that be changed?
[Translation]
Mr. Bleau: No, I would just say that it is a bit slower, that the process is somewhat cumbersome. We look for agility in our responses, given that we work a lot on the ground. For us, it is a measure of success when we manage to exclude more quickly or to monitor. That is our vision.
Mr. Lamothe: The SPVM has not laid charges pursuant to section 83. There was one case in 2012 where we did lay charges. The increase has more to do with the fact that we are collaborating with the RCMP within an integrated team. We take care of the front line and leave the enforcement of that provision to the RCMP.
[English]
Senator Stewart Olsen: I note that your greater efforts seem to be on deterrence, and I've noted the five pillars. It's great to have that program. Do you think it's your successful deterrence effort? You had one prosecution under the Criminal Code. Do the RCMP have more prosecutions under the Criminal Code in Quebec?
Mr. Lamothe: I will not answer for the RCMP on that.
Senator Stewart Olsen: That's fine. But only one out of hundreds of files, you said?
[Translation]
Mr. Lamothe: For Montreal, the Attorney General has laid charges pursuant to section 83, and section 83 has even been withdrawn before the courts. To my knowledge, no full prosecution has been conducted under section 83. As for the RCMP, you should check with them.
[English]
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you very much.
Senator Beyak: Thank you very much, gentlemen. In your outreach to the various communities, what due diligence do you undertake to ensure that the individuals you're working with are not related to radical Islamist views or organizations?
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: Our contacts are on the ground. We know our communities and we work with them regularly. Those relationships were developed years ago. This is not a new approach for us, and those are not new acquaintances. We are quickly able to target less cooperative or more at-risk communities, or different individuals who may also be considered uncooperative or represent a risk in terms of their statements and behaviour.
We can clearly have a great appreciation for individuals who can truly help us. We definitely have the ability to bring those people together. Earlier, I listed various committees, such as the Latino, Arab and Asian monitoring committees. We attend those committees' meetings several times a year, and those people undergo our security screening. We really work with people who can trust us.
Just last week, we held our partners day. About 100 partners were gathered in the same room. I spent half a day talking to them about their concerns, expectations, knowledge and expertise. I also explained to them how we can work better together. We have broad representation in terms of diversification and ability to obtain information on what is really happening on the ground.
[English]
Senator Beyak: I study a lot the writings on terrorism, both here and abroad, because I've been concerned with it for some time now. One book caught my eye, by Abu Bakr Naji, translated at West Point, and in it the Islamist noted that ''infiltrating the adversaries and their fellow travellers and establishing a strong security apparatus'' that is more supportive of the security of the revolutionary Islamic movement now, and later the Islamic state, is essential. ''We should infiltrate the police forces, the armies, the different political parties, the newspapers, the Islamic groups, the petroleum companies, as employees or as engineers, private security companies, sensitive civil institutions, et cetera. That actually began several decades ago, but we need to increase it in light of recent developments.''
Given this call, have your forces any concerns about radicals actually joining your forces as a result of recruitment or outreach? It's very serious stuff, as can you tell.
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: The same question was actually put to me by one of the partners who attended our event last week, as people sometimes develop a certain mistrust regarding the ability to infiltrate those groups. It is not new procedure for all individuals employed by police forces to undergo an in-depth screening process.
I just created a new unit dedicated to security and integrity. The police service of Montreal has unfortunately had to deal with untrustworthiness in the past. You have probably heard about the case of Ian Davidson, a police officer who was selling information to criminal groups and committed suicide, as well as the cases of Benoît Roberge and Philippe Paul. Those were instances where individuals were sort of left to themselves for a time when it came to information control and their relations with organized crime.
The silver lining of this situation is that we have created a security and integrity unit that will conduct much more advanced and modern security screenings, as well as random spot checks on our employees of all backgrounds. That will enable us — especially within the most involved units — to carry out security screenings and monitor people regularly when it comes to their knowledge of intelligence, especially in the case of individuals working in units as specialized as those dedicated to criminal intelligence, investigations, surveillance and wiretapping. Large organizations clearly have much more advanced investigative methods, as they deal with more important files. So we need to have the right tools to identify those situations.
[English]
Senator White: I think you said you have 134 staff involved in these types of investigations. I thought it would be probably in the $15 million to $20 million range for your organization. Would that be correct?
Mr. Parent: It depends.
[Translation]
Our counter-terrorism information officers do not do that full time. We have more staff for the investigation, intelligence and response component. We also have the staff involved in our group SAMU, which is really the emergency unit for terrorist threats. That works out to about 100 full-time employees. There are also our coordinators, who account for an additional 130 police officers. Moreover, our social and community officers collect information and share it with various communities in their daily work. So over 300 individuals may be indirectly involved in this file.
However, this unfortunately means we have to set aside other priorities. Currently, employees involved in intelligence and security liaison activities spend 90 per cent of their time on the terrorist threat component. During that time, we are not dealing with other files that have to do with more local threats or less serious and lower priority issues. So this file is eating up a lot of resources and generating much higher expenditures than anticipated.
[English]
Senator White: Thank you very much for that. I think we've heard others talk about having to re-prioritize things that used to be a priority and moving them down the list.
The amount of money and the amount of resources for any organization are challenging. What number of people would we actually be pursuing or keeping an eye on and trying to manage within that? Are we talking 50 people or 150 local people?
Mr. Parent: Suspects?
Senator White: Yes, please.
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: I will let Mr. Bleau answer that question.
Mr. Bleau: I would say there are 10 to 20 suspicious individuals.
[English]
Senator White: Are we talking, again, $15 million to $20 million to try to manage a very small number of people?
Mr. Bleau: Yes.
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: It is very difficult for police organizations to make the right choice, to find a balance between real threats and the resources that must be dedicated to them. We never know when those people will change dramatically and take action. That means we have to remain extremely vigilant and make choices.
[English]
It keeps you up at night.
[Translation]
Those choices are not always easy to make.
Senator White: I understand, but you are facing many other challenges in the city of Montreal and in other cities.
Mr. Parent: Yes. We are also facing additional cuts.
[English]
Senator Ngo: Mr. Parent, just now you mentioned about finance and money for terrorism. In the FINTRAC annual report they note that there have been about 683 cases reported to law enforcement since 2009. Why has only one case been prosecuted? Are the local police not able to do the work, or are other factors preventing the police from prosecuting these organizations?
[Translation]
Mr. Lamothe: We have concluded a partnership with FINTRAC at the SPVM level, mainly within our proceeds of crime unit. So we are working together and sharing information.
It should be understood that, in FINTRAC's case, the funding for terrorist organizations often comes from outside the Montreal area and even the province. These types of activities often have national and international ramifications. That is why we transmit most of the information to the RCMP. Any files we are involved in that concern FINTRAC are mainly related to organized crime.
So that is the main challenge. For international issues and other cases that exceed provincial borders, we provide the information to the RCMP.
[English]
Senator Ngo: When you have this kind of information, you say you're going to share this with the RCMP and so on. Do you have anything concrete? In your local police force, do you have your case and you present it to the RCMP and that's it? Do you follow up?
[Translation]
Mr. Lamothe: There is no police service of Montreal coordination mechanism regarding the funding of terrorist activities. There is no dedicated committee that looks at that issue. We collect the information that comes in piecemeal or is transferred, but there is no SPVM working group entrusted with examining that with the RCMP. We let the RCMP act; it may share information with us, but rarely.
In fact, this morning there was a newspaper article that talked about the Saphir project. I asked my staff if anyone knew about this project, but no one did.
So we leave this up to the RCMP, because of the international ramifications, but we do, on an as-needed basis, work in partnership with them. If they need surveillance on the ground, we collect as much information as possible, but we let the RCMP manage the file.
[English]
The Chair: I would like to follow up on the question of prosecutions. We've had a series of hearings here over the last number of weeks, and we're finding, with the information that has been provided to us, that very few prosecutions are undertaken either at your level or at the federal level.
This begs the question that Senator Stewart Olsen asked, and I believe Senator Mitchell pursued and others, in respect to just exactly what are we doing here in view of the fact that there are these numbers out there. Mr. Parent, you mentioned that 100 files were opened this past month. We have these other statistics nationally.
In view of the fact that this is in part a question of ideology, are you pursuing and have you taken any actions in respect to the question of charging or utilizing the hate laws that are presently in place federally? Is that within your tool kit to use from the perspective of your enforcement and the area that you're involved?
[Translation]
Mr. Lamothe: I would like to make a clarification. When you refer to approximately 100 files, these are not all cases that could give rise to terrorist acts. Death threats are frequently made; we use the Criminal Code to lay charges in those cases. These can be hate crimes, as you said earlier, expressed through graffiti, for instance, and in such cases mischief charges are laid. However, in the case of those 100 files, a propensity to commit terrorist acts as defined in section 83 is not necessarily present. Charges are nevertheless laid by the police service, but they are more general charges. These are mainly charges of mischief and death threat offences. Mental health is also an aspect of all of this, and intent is not necessarily present. We see that as well in these files.
The Internet is a big factor. In 40 per cent of the files, the Internet is used to make threats or express hatred towards certain individuals. Citizens call us to say that they heard two individuals discussing their intention to place a bomb in such and such a location, and so we investigate. But generally speaking, the mental health aspect is very prominent.
[English]
The Chair: I would like to put one question on the record, and then I will leave Senator Mitchell to have a final short question. I would ask if you could provide for us, in view of your last comments, a breakdown on the question of your resources dedicated to tracking or watching. For example, how are your categories? You might have White supremacists. You might have radical environmentalists. You might have Islamists. Can you provide us with a breakdown within your resources of how much time and effort you're spending in these categories? Can you provide that to the committee? Thank you.
Senator Mitchell: This is a follow up to Senator Beyak's question. An earlier witness that we heard made a very strong point that the police are sometimes if not often misled by the community members they work with, and these people aren't really what they appear to be. They give you one story, but they are actually radicalizing behind the scenes. How would you respond to that? It sounds to me like you work with hundreds of people, and it seems to me they can't all be like that.
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: As I said earlier, I do not want to be redundant, but of course these are not new relationships with the various communities who sit on our committees. We are also present in all kinds of places, such as community meetings or places of worship. We have undercover officers who go to these places anonymously, confidentially. Information circulates; we can establish profiles for individuals outside of our formal communication channels. We want to know what they are up to, and we are not the only police organization in Montreal who does that type of monitoring.
Police organizations communicate at various levels. We have the Police Counter-Terrorism Management Structure, an anti-terrorism police committee, that includes representatives of the RCMP, the Sûreté du Québec and the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, and we exchange information. They communicate directly regarding various individuals who could pose a threat, or at least raise questions, even if they are only basic questions.
This is also, clearly, our way of being aware of doublespeak or of someone who tries to directly infiltrate our ranks or our cases.
[English]
Senator Mitchell: So it's difficult to beat good police work done by good police people. You're not duped.
[Translation]
Mr. Parent: Yes, but clearly this has to be ongoing work. We are aware of that. We have learned from our experience. I was talking earlier about cases of moles we have had amongst us, and this taught us an enormous amount. I talked about our new structure and our ways of doing things at the national level, at the last Canadian intelligence committee which was held in Vancouver last August 22. We learned a great deal, especially in Montreal, in light of everything we went through in the past.
[English]
The Chair: I want to thank our guests. It has been very informative.
As we continue our look at threats to Canada, specifically terrorism, joining us on the second panel is the Chief of the Edmonton Police Service, Mr. Rod Knecht. Mr. Knecht was sworn in as the twenty-second Chief of the Edmonton Police Service on June 7, 2011. Prior to his appointment, he served as Senior Deputy Commissioner of the RCMP, ranked as the most senior uniformed police officer in the RCMP. In this role, Chief Knecht was responsible for the efficient and effective operation of all components of the RCMP, including managing a $4.7-billion budget and 31,000 employees. Chief Knecht was responsible for the RCMP in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Northwest Territories and Nunavut.
In the dual role of Deputy Commissioner, Northwest Region, and Commanding Officer ''K'' Division in Edmonton, Alberta, he was responsible for managing the operation of 108 Alberta detachments and the delivery of community policing in the Northwest Region. Over the course of his 37-year policing career, Chief Knecht has spent the vast majority of time working in an operational capacity.
Welcome to the committee. I understand that you have an opening statement. Please begin.
Rod Knecht, Chief, Edmonton Police Service: Thank you for opportunity to speak to the Committee on National Security and Defence. I don't have prepared notes here this afternoon. I was provided with seven questions, and I don't know how the committee would like to proceed, whether they want to ask those seven questions in succession or whether they would like me to respond to the questions as they were presented to me in an email last Thursday.
The Chair: Why don't you go through the questions and respond to them, and then we'll ask questions after that?
Mr. Knecht: Thank you very much. So the first question on the email was this: How serious is the problem of terrorism in your region?
I can tell you that what we do know is that we have a series of files, largely in Edmonton, Calgary and Fort McMurray. However, we don't know what we don't know, obviously, and with the changing dynamic of terrorism certainly in this region, and I would suggest across Canada with the advent of social media and the radicalization of youth, the opportunity to recruit is available anywhere in this province.
We do have a number of files presently. We work very closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and we were part of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams in the province here. The Calgary Police Service has secondments to the INSETs, as they are known, as well as the Edmonton Police Service. We currently have two full- time secondments with the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams. We recently provided them with an augment of resources. We don't know right now, but we have two more investigators on either a short-term and maybe a longer-term investigational requirement. As well, we are currently providing them with our surveillance teams to assist in following targets that are active within our jurisdiction.
We also have a very robust outreach program here with the Edmonton Police Service, and that's part of the larger community policing model that we employ. Those folks are working with our cultural communities, our religious communities throughout the city. I have a chief's advisory committee made up of a cross-section of people in cultural groups, religious groups, et cetera, throughout the city; and that cascades down to community liaison groups in each specific community throughout the city. That provides us with information on youth outreach as well as the broader outreach in each and every community across the city.
Edmonton is growing exponentially. In the last two years, the community has grown by 60,000 people, the broader region probably equally that. Edmonton is the gateway to and from the North, so we see a lot of folks coming through the international airport and going throughout northern Alberta to work on oil and gas.
The economy is very robust right now. Jobs are not hard to come by. As a matter of fact, for all intents and purposes we have zero unemployment, certainly in the Edmonton region, and that provides for opportunities for anybody to have access to significant dollars to do with as they please.
I will leave that question at that. I don't know if you want to ask questions specific to that particular issue, or would you like me to go on to the second question?
The Chair: I think you should go on to the second question, if you could.
Mr. Knecht: What are the support infrastructures that you have identified locally — financial, indoctrination, glorification, radicalization — and where are they happening?
We do have a number of religious and cultural groups in the city that continue to grow. We have huge in-migration from other provinces and territories within Canada, as well as a significant immigration from outside the country into Edmonton and the Edmonton area.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation published a broadcast two weeks ago specific to what they became aware of, a number of youth that were radicalizing in the African community within the city. Obviously, we're looking into that. I can't at this time substantiate that. I can tell you that we are working with all those communities, and again we have a significant outreach program. We don't know specifically of any activities in these specific groups that relate to that CBC article.
Are there things that can be improved to facilitate investigations that can lead to prosecution? The short answer is absolutely. I think there is lots of opportunity. One of the challenges that we face not only in terrorism investigations but investigations in general is lawful access and our ability to access computers. Obviously we know that radicalization is being facilitated by social media, and our ability to access computers and hand-held devices is becoming more and more challenging and problematic due to lawful access issues.
We know that manufacturers are now creating devices that they themselves can't even access. Obviously, that is a challenge for law enforcement right across the country. We would be looking to legislation that would have manufacturers create the ability to access these devices; and then, of course, we would access legislation through legal search warrants by going before a judge or a justice, stating our case to allow us to have legal, lawful access to these devices and getting important information that would show associations, intelligence or criminal or terrorist activity that is being facilitated through social media and through Internet and cybercrime.
Has the Edmonton Police Service made any recommendations for charges under section 83 of the Criminal Code, leaving Canada, material support for terrorism or peace bonds? The short answer to that is no, we have not. We checked our records and we have not done that.
However, I can tell you that we work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police through the INSET program, and the RCMP would respond to that particular question in more detail. Again, the Edmonton Police Service has not used section 83 legislation to date.
The fifth question: Does your force receive timely information to deal with issues of concern on a national security basis? The answer is yes. Again, we have an excellent relationship with the RCMP and other police services in the province. As well, we enjoy a very good relationship with the Canada Border Services Agency and CSIS.
Some of the legislation is restrictive, certainly for CSIS to share information in a broader access for us, and it's difficult because the information sharing with CSIS is usually one way, and we understand that, and that's a result of the legislation. But we do provide CSIS with information on a continuous basis, and they do provide us information on more of a need basis when a threat escalates to a certain level where front-line responders have to be employed.
As the police service of jurisdiction, we obviously are first-line responders, and it's important for us to get the information as quickly as possible to diminish the threat to the public as well as to our officers who are responding to these calls and investigations.
The INSET investigations, the broader, long-term investigations involving the use of sources, Part 6, interceptions and undercover operations, are of a broader nature. Most of those are largely reactive, as are the front-line responses.
These counterterrorism investigations are extremely resource-intensive. They take a lot of resources, as I stated earlier. In most cases, they require one if not multiple surveillance teams, and depending on the threat, those surveillance activities may be 24-7 in nature, so they can go on for days and weeks. We at the Edmonton Police Service, with our colleagues in the RCMP, have been involved in a number of those deployments where we have had surveillance teams tied up 24-7 for weeks at a time. So the impact on resources is significant, and the cost is significant as well.
One thing that I'm advocating currently is that our front-line responders be trained on counterterrorism investigations so that they're better able to respond. We know that many investigations have been thwarted in Canada, in the United States and abroad as a result of the awareness and the education in the training of a front-line responder. That has saved lives on multiple occasions, and there is all kinds of evidence to that effect.
I'll go on to the sixth question: Is there a resource issue in terms of managing the threat and bringing charges forward? I've alluded to that already. There is a significant impact on resources. If I were to compare it to any other kind of investigation that we're involved in from a criminal perspective, it would be similar to a homicide investigation. Homicide investigations are front-loaded investigations that require a lot of resources in the first instance. As the investigation goes on, whether we can prove or disprove the amount of resources required, we will start to peel off those resources as the investigation moves forward.
A terrorism investigation is a front-loaded investigation as well. You probably heard before that the bad guy, the terrorist, only has to get it right once. We have to get it right every single time. These are largely zero-risk investigations, so we cannot do a balance of risk similar to maybe other investigations that we undertake, where we can resource it to a lesser degree. These investigations are of the highest priority and have the greatest impact on public safety and on our reputation, certainly in policing and as a country generally.
These investigations require a huge amount of highly trained resources, the best of equipment and obviously the full repertoire of investigational techniques that would normally be available for any other investigation.
Intelligence is critical. The ability to gather intelligence is challenging in these environments and requires a tremendous investment of folks doing intelligence gathering, analysis and then turning that information into workable intelligence for investigation purposes and obviously presenting that before the criminal justice system here. The threshold is high and challenging. Respecting all of our constitutional values creates resource challenges for us in order to present these cases before the courts.
The final question: Do you have any recommendations to prevent terrorism or reduce radicalization in Canada? Obviously, I think our best tool is prevention. Our ability to have a robust outreach program in this country and in every community would be essential from a prevention perspective. We at the Edmonton Police Service have an outreach program, but obviously resources dictate the ability for that program to reach all communities along a continuum. We see that as a gap in our service delivery model right now, particularly around terrorism, and we would look to having more resources for outreach, and youth outreach specifically. We do have a school resource officer program, like every major city in Canada, but that is limited in its span. It's largely focused on high schools, and it would be my recommendation that we broaden that program and broaden our youth outreach into junior high schools and, dare I say, into elementary schools as well.
I think that would be the biggest opportunity to reduce, diminish and eliminate radicalization, certainly within our community. We also require a more robust intelligence program, so we would be looking for resources in the area of analysis, specifically highly trained people in the area of counterterrorism analysis, those who would understand the information coming from the community and be able to analyze it for investigational purposes or for further outreach as deemed necessary.
Here in Edmonton we have two full-time resources on counterterrorism, which are woefully under-resourced. The model we have here works very well, where we have the RCMP, the Canada Border Services Agency, CSIS and municipal police services working together. We're able to gather intelligence from a number of areas and venues right across the province in order to address the threat and use the least amount of resources possible or use the limited resources that we have as effectively as possible.
Collectively, I think you're going to see all police services, certainly in this province, saying they're under-resourced. We have critical infrastructure in this province, certainly in Calgary and in Edmonton and even north of Edmonton — Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, et cetera. We have critical infrastructure with communications, transportation and the oil and gas industry, which certainly drives the economy here in the province and provides jobs and opportunities right across the country.
Those would be the responses that I have for the seven questions that were posed, and I'm certainly open to any questions at this point.
The Chair: Thank you very much, chief.
Senator Mitchell: Thanks very much, chief. I really appreciate having an Edmontonian from my home town here.
You gave a very good and specific presentation. That's excellent. Part of what you are focusing on is the distinction — and there's a tension — between official legal powers and programs. You gave us some specific ideas about legal powers.
In Edmonton recently, the Edmonton-based Canadian Somali Congress of Western Canada wrote to the Prime Minister and said, ''We need some more help.'' It seems to me that that's probably paralleling your comment about junior high school and high school community-based programs.
Are you saying that these community-based programs do work, can work, but are under-resourced?
Mr. Knecht: Absolutely. That would be the community's view and our view.
Last week I did an open forum with the African community here in the city, and they echo those comments as well. Obviously these people are Canadians, and they want to be involved in the community. The interesting dynamic there is that they're fearful, too. They're here in our community; they want to participate; they have businesses and children going to school. They want to participate in the community as much as possible, but they fear the backlash of folks as a result of activities that are totally out of their control. These are people who are committed Canadians and are part of our community at present, and they have their concerns, but they see the opportunity in our youth going forward.
The message to me last week was certainly the important dialogue between the police and the community working together, that we're all after the same thing. They want community safety, and obviously we want community safety as well.
One of the biggest investments we can make is the outreach, to get to the youth and work with them and have them understand that the police are their friend in this community, that we want to work with them. As I have stated many times, we have 1,800 police officers on the street, 1,800 sets of eyes and ears. We could make that a million sets of eyes and ears if every member of our community worked with us in order to address the threat of radicalization in their communities. These people do not want that; we don't want that. And they want to help the police. The message was very clear that they want to work with the police and help them, and if they see challenges in their communities, they want to be able to come forward to the police and help us in order to address them.
Senator Mitchell: So you don't see the threat being of a process of radicalization through mosques or through schools, but quite the contrary. To some extent, you're saying the people in these places, say Muslim people in these places, are good, decent people who want to work with the police, whom you can trust, and who are as concerned about radicalization of their youth as everybody else is?
Mr. Knecht: Absolutely. I think you've said it accurately here. We do have a concern, and they have a concern about radicalization as well, and they want information on what are the things they should be looking for. What are the things they should be aware of in their community? Many of these people immigrated very recently to our community here, and they're aware of the challenges they've left behind, and obviously they've left those challenges behind and want to help us here to make their community safe, and they want to participate in making it safe.
They do worry about their children. They know that their children, when they leave the home, they're going to school, but that's not where I think they are concerned about the radicalization. The radicalization aspect, I think they're more concerned about external radicalization through social media and the Internet.
Senator Mitchell: You made the point that one of the issues for your force is the training up, I think was the word you used, of your front-line people, the 1,800 pairs of eyes. To some extent the Counter-Terrorism Information Officer program of the RCMP is supposed to address that. Are you saying that that's under-resourced or could be done better, or that it wasn't designed to do what you're saying needs to be done?
Mr. Knecht: It's a great program. We have exercised and utilized it here with the Edmonton Police Service frequently of late. It's a current program. It's being updated all the time based on what we know of the current threat. If I had a complaint, it's that there's not enough training available. We wish there was more training. It's a great program. It's delivered well; it's just not well resourced to the extent that it addresses — I think the RCMP would even tell you that, that they wish more of their front-line workers were able to participate in the program, and we certainly see it as an opportunity here in Edmonton. If our front-line people could be more exposed to that program, I think we would be in a far better place.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you, chief, for a very comprehensive and excellent presentation. I have to say you've answered a lot of my questions. I have a few that I need some clarification on.
Section 83 of the Criminal Code, you suggest that you would like to see lawful access, something changed and worked on. Is there anything else in legislation that you would like to see?
Mr. Knecht: I think the current legislation around lawful access is such a resource inhibitor. It's a challenge for us and is leaving huge gaps in investigations. I am very worried, as I think a number of my colleagues right across the country and internationally are worried, about the lawful access issue, particularly where the manufacturers are going where they don't even have access to the device. We know these devices are used every day, all the time. Every one of us has this on our hip, and it's just an advertisement. Basically, if a criminal or a terrorist knows that device isn't accessible, they're going to use it to forward their cause.
These devices have an international component to them. We can share information in a heartbeat internationally now, and I think it really constrains law enforcement. I think it's something we're going to regret in the future, and we're going to be talking about this into the future, how it has really hobbled law enforcement in getting the necessary intelligence and information that we need to protect our citizens throughout this country.
I think it's very predictable. I think most law enforcement officers see it coming. It's a challenge for us. I'm not advocating for us to have the ability to just go into somebody's computer and access it either remotely or by seizing the instrument. What I'm advocating for is that we have the opportunity for lawful access. That's where we the police have to state our case with reasonable and probable grounds, go before a judge or a justice, who may even be specifically trained on these issues, counterterrorism issues, and we would be able to, I guess, make our case through a lengthy affidavit on why we should get access to these devices, and then the judge can determine whether we do get access, if we've made our case. Obviously, if we haven't made our case and we can't demonstrate that lives will be lost or citizens will be injured, then that can be denied, but what I think we're looking for is the ability to protect our citizens proactively.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Would you consider, then, that the threshold is set pretty high, the bar is set pretty high for these types of prosecutions or for these types of asks? If you go before a judge regarding lawful access or anything else, would you say that the bar is higher in these cases than it is normally?
Mr. Knecht: No, I wouldn't say that. I would say that it's the same bar because at the end of the day if somebody is killed by way of a terrorist act, they will probably be charged with homicide under the Criminal Code, so the bar is essentially the same.
Now, could we look at legislation where we differentiate from a terrorist act, given the fact that these are somewhat different investigations and require, I guess, a remarkable skill set and more exclusive resourcing? Perhaps there could be that differentiation in legislation that would allow us more streamlined access to the information we need. Particularly when an investigation is ongoing and we know an act could be taking place and that we need that information in a fairly timely manner, I think that sort of legislation could be undertaken and that is possible.
I do believe we will want this into the future. It's a concern of mine, and again, we want to be above board. We want to be transparent. We want to be open, but we want to function in the interests of all Canadians.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you very much.
Senator White: Thank you very much and great to see you, chief, out in Edmonton.
My question is about the amount of resources you're actually expending on this threat, from a financial perspective but also from a person perspective. We had a Montreal chief speak a few minutes ago about the number of people they have working on the files, up to 300 on some occasions, and the amount of cost it is for the few people they have that they're actually keeping an eye on. Could you give us an idea of the resources you're using and how many people you see as a threat in your community right now?
Mr. Knecht: We have only two fully trained, dedicated resources on the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team out of Edmonton. However, given the current environment, we have provided further resources to the INSET teams. We have provided all our surveillance teams of late. We've also provided further investigators to augment the INSET teams in cooperation with the RCMP here in Edmonton, and we continue to have further asks.
Obviously we have to deliver the day-to-day policing to Edmontonians, the regular policing that we do, but we are taking resources away to respond to these files, and we're not doing it very well. We do not have the resourcing to do that.
We are funded through municipal dollars, as well as provincial grants. We get $16 a head from the provincial government for policing in the city of Edmonton, and we do have some resourcing, some minor resourcing from the RCMP as well — or I should say the federal government, rather — but we're woefully under-resourced, specific to counterterrorism, and we do the best we can with what we have, addressing the highest and most critical threat, but there are some files that are left at the bottom and will not be resourced based on the lack of resources. Obviously, if that threat escalates on these particular files, we will respond because, as I've stated earlier, the risk is marginal on these files. We cannot not investigate these files because the threat is so huge to community safety here.
It takes up considerable resources — human resources, financial resources, monetary resources, informational resources, as well as we have folks gathering information all the time doing an analysis on that information. I can tell you we have a number of active files right now. The INSET teams will address the highest threat. The lower or lesser threat is being addressed by the Edmonton Police Service, but again we're under-resourced.
Senator White: I want to take you back to when the Boston bombers successfully set off an explosion at the marathon. A number of people talked about the fact that the FBI had engaged one or both of these individuals and that the local police may not have had the amount of knowledge necessary to be engaged as well.
We heard evidence from a number of witnesses who talked about the sharing of information — and I think you referred to it as well — that it's role-based, as and when necessary. Do you think it's time for us to look at a national standard for police officers so that they have easier and more timely access to some of this information instead of having people figure it out as they go? A national standard could be put forward by Public Safety.
Mr. Knecht: I absolutely agree with your comment. I think there has to be a standard now.
Information is power. Information is the ability to get things done quickly and easily and with the least amount of resources. We tie up some of our resources in the toing and froing of information, and I think we could streamline that.
I know in our recent conversations with CSIS we just had 18 more people with the Edmonton Police Service security-cleared, or are in the process of having them security-cleared. That's a long process. It's a difficult process, and it chews up a lot of resources. I think there is a way to speed up that process, and I think if there were standards in place to do that and that process were properly resourced, we would be in a much better place.
These things happen in real time. Some of these investigations don't involve a lot of planning. It can be something done as quickly as an individual or a couple of individuals getting together and saying, ''We're going to do this in a week or two.'' They see an opportunity on the horizon and they take advantage of that.
If we're slowed down by process or bureaucracy, that serves no one's positive ends at the end of the day other than the bad guy.
Senator White: Just as a reminder, and I know you know this, chief, having sat on both sides of the to and fro, the top 10 police services in Canada in the two largest provinces of this country are not policed as a jurisdictional police service by the RCMP. This is more to emphasize that I agree with you. I think that the opportunity is probably most important right now and that we actually push for those types of standards so we can share this information back and forth. I want to thank you very much for finding time today.
Mr. Knecht: Thank you for your questions, senator.
The Chair: I want to follow up on Senator White's questions, if I could, before I go to the next questioner.
He asked specifically how many files you were dealing with in respect to your responsibilities. As part of our mandate for this particular public conversation that we're having, we're trying to get a sense of what the real threat out there is to Canadians. I think it's important that Canadians know within their community really in the neighbourhood of how many people are out there that could be a serious consequence to them. Do you have an answer for the number of files that you're dealing with at the present time?
Mr. Knecht: I don't know if I should be giving an exact number. My initial comment would be that we don't know exactly what the threat is in its entirety.
I can tell you that the threat we're dealing with right now is that we don't have a tenth of the resources we need, unless we are going to use all or a significant portion of our resources to do strictly counterterrorism. I don't think that's the reality either, because we obviously have other threats to public safety beyond counterterrorism.
These are resource-intensive investigations; they take a lot of time, effort and money. The files that I'm aware of currently in and around the city of Edmonton, there's no way we have the resources to address them at this time.
The Chair: Maybe I'll pursue this a little bit further.
Senator Dagenais: Mr. Knecht, based your experience in Edmonton, has the number of people involved in terrorism and radicalization increased over the last five years? Do you have any idea?
Mr. Knecht: In my previous life with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police I was the deputy for the northwest region, and I was aware of all the terrorist files we had at that time.
At that time the threat was somewhat different. The threat was from outside, and some of the files we were addressing involved terrorist financing and folks leaving this country to go elsewhere. That threat has changed, and I think that's the challenge for us in law enforcement. Because that threat has changed, with homegrown terrorism and the radicalization of individuals already in our country, that's what has left a significant gap in our ability to know exactly what that threat is.
In my estimation, the threat has grown over the last five years, but that threat is different today than it was five years ago.
Senator Dagenais: What type of shift in radicalization have you seen, and do you have any statistics you can share with us?
Mr. Knecht: I don't have any statistics at my fingertips here. I can tell you the threat has shifted, and I think it has permeated a younger demographic.
Here in Alberta, folks immigrating to and emigrating from Alberta are the 18- to 34-year-old male. That's what we're seeing as the biggest dynamic. We know from a criminal perspective that that's the demographic that is the biggest victim of crime, and also the biggest perpetrator of crime. I think we've seen a shift where there are more youth involved, and I think that's a result of social media where younger and younger people in the community are being exposed to radicalization and radical thought processes.
Where that might have historically been through word of mouth or throughout the community, people being radicalized at say a post-high-school level or even a post-secondary education level, we're now seeing it permeating lower and lower in the community as far as the age group goes. It seems to be younger and younger. There's greater awareness at that level, at that age group, and obviously if there is a greater awareness there is the potential for radicalization as well.
Senator Dagenais: Are you monitoring radicalized individuals specifically in your region, and how? How many radicalized individuals are you monitoring in your region?
Mr. Knecht: I don't have those specific numbers. The RCMP would have those specific numbers, and we could get those through our Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams.
We are working on a number of individuals, and the best way for us to deal with this, to challenge the radicalization process, is through an outreach program. We have a robust outreach program right now, but it's certainly not as robust as it should be. I think it was dealing with yesterday's challenges, and the challenge has shifted. We have to be forward-looking and see where those future challenges will be.
As I said, I think we have to address those issues, work more closely with our communities and have a more robust outreach program, not only at the high school level but certainly at the junior high school or the middle school level and the elementary school level as well.
The Chair: I take it then you'll send us the information in respect to the number of individuals that you presently are investigating or have at least identified.
Mr. Knecht: I can give you those numbers; yes, sir.
The Chair: That would be very informative. As I said earlier, we're trying to get a sense of what is the scope of the threat we're facing.
Senator Beyak: Thank you, chief, for your presentation. We've heard from witnesses over the past several months. Most are very supportive of the police services, the outreach and what's happening in the communities. Four or five have told us that we're being duped, that we have our heads in the sand and we don't recognize the seriousness of the threat.
I have the same two questions for each of our presenters today. With your chief's advisory committee that you mentioned, how did you do due diligence to make sure that the people you were reaching out to were actually not involved with radical organizations or radical viewpoints?
Mr. Knecht: That's a great question. As a matter of fact, we just had that question last week as well, as we wanted to make sure we don't have the wrong people on that chief's advisory committee. That's why it's so important to be reaching out to that community in its entirety, to not just take it at face value but actually have the back-and-forth dialogue.
I think historically what we've found, and I think some of the failures have been, that we've just assumed certain people were leaders in that community, and so we take them at face value. They become the spokesperson, or the official spokesperson, and they have that relationship with the police and they may not actually be the spokesperson for that community. You may have a dynamic in a community — and we've experienced that here in Edmonton — where there are multiple spokespersons or there is an individual with an agenda that has very little to do with the community.
That's why it's important to have that ongoing dialogue at multiple levels in that community and not just talk to those people. For example, the chief's advisory committee meets every three months. We have a cascade approach to that chief's advisory committee. We have the community liaison committees that make up that chief's advisory committee, and the community liaison committee is really where the work gets done. That's where the engagement and interaction is with that community on a daily basis. So that's where you get the feedback, where you get folks saying that maybe this individual does not speak for the community or maybe this person has extreme views on the left or the right. You get your community to police the entire program. So it is the community that polices that chief's advisory committee and ensures that we get the true representatives of the community engaging at the highest levels in the police service.
We do another unique thing in Edmonton. In some police services they may have a constable do that engagement with the community. In Edmonton, we've learned through trial and error and best practice. We have the community liaison committee headed by a senior officer. In our service here, a superintendent heads up that community liaison committee. At a very senior level, he has more access to a broader range of resources and opportunities, and he's able to filter the process a little bit better than, say, a front-line constable with six or seven years, a little more experience under his or her belt, a little more wisdom they bring to the table. That's not to diminish what those constables do out there, because they are feeding the broader process, but it just allows us, at a more senior level, to engage the community.
Senator Beyak: It sounds like an excellent program. Thank you.
Senator Day: Chief, thank you very much for your comments. I join with my colleagues in thanking you for appearing.
I would like to follow the question that was just asked in relation to community outreach and your chief's advisory committee. Recognizing the limited resources you have for an expanding role that you have to play, could you tell us what you're able to do to build confidence and trust with these new communities that are growing in your region? What are you doing in relation to sensitivity to language and culture of these new communities that would help you with your community outreach?
Mr. Knecht: First and foremost — and this is a challenging environment we're in right now — with the robust economy, we do have recruiting challenges here in Edmonton, where an individual can make $150,000 driving a truck, as compared to $100,000 being a police officer. We have that challenge. That extends into the broader community in various cultures.
We want a police service that reflects the community that we police. We've been very aggressive here of late, I'd say in the last 18 months, in getting out in those communities and trying to recruit in those communities, and it does present challenges. I've learned something myself. I think we took the historical White Anglo-Saxon approach to recruiting, which is that we get those young people interested in policing at an early age. That still works, but we're finding in some of the communities that it is not the kids we have to win over; it's not those young adults we have to win over, because they do want to become police officers. It's actually the family. It's the parents we have to win over, because some of these folks come from places where policing is not an admirable profession, where the police can be the bad guys as opposed to the good guys, and there is a fear of police.
It's important for us to get into those communities, to engage those communities, to let them know what their police officer here in Canada is all about — that we're here to help, to work with them and to ensure their safety and everybody's safety. The challenge for us in some communities is that we have to win over the parents and the grandparents. If we get their support, they will allow their children to go into policing as a profession.
Recruiting is so important to us. We hear this all the time: ''Why don't you have a police officer from our community in your police service?'' Obviously, we want to recruit so that it is reflective of those communities. I think the most important thing we can do as the police is to listen — listen to their needs and wants — and that's community policing.
We don't have all the answers. We certainly can't have all the knowledge about every culture that we work with, so we've got to listen; we've got to be good listeners and we have to engage those communities and work with them. We're doing the work that needs to be done specific to those communities, and we really do have to be jacks of all trade.
Senator Day: I know how important intelligence is to you and gathering information from various sources, so you're recruiting people in the community or encouraging people in the community to provide you with information so you can be on top of developments in these various communities. How does that play into what you've just explained, where you're trying to recruit new young people to be in the community? If the parents knew that you had an informant in their area, they would not be very happy to allow their children to join the police force. How would these two activities play against one another?
Mr. Knecht: We might be talking about two different things. I think the important thing is to recruit police officers from those communities so that we have proper representation, a better understanding, and the ability to engage and interact with those communities, to understand the cultural and linguistic realities, and some of those are challenges for us. There are folks in those communities that maybe their English isn't what they want it to be, or we have older people who aren't as well-versed in English as everybody would hope. But that shouldn't be a barrier, and I think by recruiting into those communities, that becomes less of a barrier. We have folks who can engage every member of that community, old and young and everything in between.
The other aspect is getting the information. Information can be very innocuous. I look at the case of solving a homicide investigation. Somebody in the community comes forward with a licence plate or a description of an individual, and that can save hours and weeks and months of investigating by just providing a licence plate or a description of an individual. We have had those cases here in the city, in one particular community, where folks have come forward and helped us solve a homicide investigation in 24 hours, as compared to maybe two or three years ago when there was that lack of trust in the police in a particular community, where they would withhold that information and wouldn't come forward with that information.
It is all about trust, and we certainly don't want to betray the trust of that community. People come forward with information anonymously. We have to respect that and help them understand how the law works here around disclosure and how the criminal justice system works in Canada as opposed to where they came from because obviously the dynamics are completely different.
Senator Day: These individuals from the new ethnic communities who are moving to and settling in your region, are you having them wear the uniform, or are they doing jobs that they're out of uniform? We know that part of building the trust and confidence will, over time, be the uniform that they see police officers wearing and they're coming from communities where people in uniform are not always highly respected by these people.
Mr. Knecht: Absolutely. That's what we hear from the community as well. They want to see representatives of their community wearing the uniform of the Edmonton Police Service. We've working aggressively to make that happen. We've had successes in a number of communities, and we've had less success in other communities. If we're not always able to get a member of a particular community immediately as a sworn member of our police service, we certainly engage them in non-sworn activities. That may be around translation and working with the various programs we have with the community or just with the Edmonton Police Service. We want to give these folks as broad exposure as possible to the Edmonton Police Service so they can tell two friends and they tell two friends and so on and then we build that sense of community as quickly as possible.
Senator Day: Thank you very much.
The Chair: I would like to look at another area. We talk about radicalism, yet we haven't talked about any of the ideology that causes radicalism other than referring obliquely to the Internet. As we go through the course of our hearings and the more we read, not just in Canada but internationally, there is definitely a political, religious ideology that is being spread around the world by a very extreme group of individuals, starting with ISIS and others.
Some comments were made at our proceedings here last week that further what we read where there is a conscious effort to some degree in some quarters out of Saudi Arabia coming in and financing certain institutions and also perhaps, it's alleged, basically giving the guidelines in respect to the teachings that would emanate from that particular area.
In order to ensure that this political, religious ideology is not being brought into our country, are you on an ongoing basis monitoring the churches, temples or in this case mosques or other institutions such as universities to ensure that this type of ideology ideal is not being preached at the grassroots level?
Mr. Knecht: The short answer would be no, that wouldn't be our approach here in Edmonton certainly. The approach we're utilizing here is to engage the community and have the community work with us in providing us that information.
Based on your example, it would be very challenging for us because — and, again, it's the whole openness of the Internet and of social media — policing that is totally impossible and an extreme challenge. I don't think we would have enough resources to be able to do that because obviously they're out there. They're in every single home and on every single device if you want to access that information.
I'll talk about our region specifically. We're finding the methods of recruitment are similar to the methods of recruiting young people into gangs and that is to look at the disenfranchised, the disengaged and those individuals who feel isolated from community, who feel isolated from family, who feel isolated from culture and they're vulnerable. Due to that isolation, I think these groups take advantage of that isolation and capitalize on it and turn it against Canada and Canadians.
The Chair: Just to conclude, I want to pursue this a little further. What we're finding, at least in the research that members have done internationally, is that this political, religious ideology is being spread or being brought forward in certain areas of a community. If that was being done in a public institution, as opposed to a separate institution, I don't think we would be tolerating that.
As a member of a community in charge of enforcement, you start with the young people. I don't disagree with the fact that those who are disenfranchised would perhaps fall very quickly into that area, and then proceed accordingly. I don't quite understand why we wouldn't at least be taking some notice of these institutions so that we might be aware that this is going on so that we know where, in part, along with the Internet, this type of message is being propagated.
Mr. Knecht: If we became aware, if we had intelligence that a particular individual or group were facilitating radicalization, then we would pursue that by way of an investigation. Again, the threshold is the reasonable grounds to be able to investigate. Our best weapon against that is folks coming forward and advising us of that and to the extent it is involved and how many people it is touching. We would then be able to properly investigate that with the very scarce resources that we have.
The Chair: I wish to thank Chief Knecht very much for taking the time to appear before us.
Continuing our look at threats to Canada, specifically terrorism, our third panel today is Deputy Chief Brian Adams of the Peel Regional Police. Deputy Chief Adams began his career as a police constable with the Peel Regional Police in 1981, and I believe it will be 33 years next week. In April 2009, Deputy Chief Adams was promoted to superintendent and became the divisional commander at 22 Division. He was later selected to be the incident commander for the Peel Regional Police incident protection unit, providing court security for the Toronto 18 terrorist trial. In 2013, Deputy Chief Adams was assigned as officer in charge of the investigative services branch of operations support services. Deputy Chief Adams has a diploma from Sheridan College and is a graduate of the Institute for Strategic International Studies program. On September 15, 2014, Brian Adams was appointed deputy chief of police.
Mr. Adams, allow me to offer our congratulations on your recent promotion as deputy chief. You have had quite a career. I understand you have an opening statement. Please begin.
Brian Adams, Deputy Chief, Peel Regional Police: Firstly, I would like to thank the committee on behalf of Chief Jennifer Evans and the men and women of our organization and the citizens of Peel for this opportunity. We're very honoured to be here.
We're all aware that in dealing with any threat of terrorism, it is important that federal, municipal and provincial partners work closely together and share information. It is also important that we partner with our community, ensuring that we share information and feedback with one another to ensure the safety of our citizens.
I will take a quick moment to give you oversight of my region and organization, for those who don't know where we are or who we are. Peel Regional Police has been the second-largest municipal police force in this province. We police 1.2 million residents in the cities of Brampton and Mississauga. We have approximately 957 officers and 848 civilians. We have five divisional facilities. We have the facility for our special services and police headquarters.
Our service delivery is 538 square kilometres. The City of Toronto is on our eastern border, and the Regional Municipality of Halton is located on our western boundary. The Region of Peel borders Lake Ontario. Our marine unit patrols a shoreline, including inland bodies of water and 272 square kilometres of water to the international border with the United States. Canada's busiest airport, Toronto Pearson International Airport, is situated in the city of Mississauga and is policed by our organization. It is estimated that 35 million passengers go through the airport.
The mandate for my organization is to maintain peace and good order, protect lives and property, investigate and resolve criminal activity, prevent crime and respond to our community's needs. Balanced by a sensitivity of the importance of successful major crime resolution, our organization is committed to community-based policing, the development of effective and proactive initiatives and crime prevention programs. That gives you an overview of the Peel Regional Police.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Deputy Chief Adams. I will start with the deputy chair, Senator Mitchell.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you very much, deputy chief. My first question would be to try to get at one of the features of our mandate, which is to get at the magnitude of the issue of radicalization of threat. Could you give us some idea of the number of files that you're working on in your jurisdiction that would involve radical or terrorist potential activity?
Mr. Adams: You're looking for a specific number. We have a handful of investigations specifically situated with Peel that my officers are dealing with. I think it's important for you to understand that we are part of INSET. We're one of the joint force operations, so we are part of INSET. I have one officer assigned to INSET. We have one officer assigned to what we call PATs, provincial anti-terrorism. For my own investigation, we have the intelligence security section. We have five specific officers, a detective and four constables, that are assigned to deal with terrorist activities or radicalization. That specific unit works right out of my intelligence area. We deal with that.
If you're asking for specifically what we're dealing with, we're constantly dealing with it. It's their job to do that on a daily basis. As a result of this, we have a handful, somewhere between five and ten, cases. Once again, I want to be clear. I call some of that a probe, something that we're looking into, and some of the investigations are a little more intense, so from a scale of one to ten, that one to ten could vary somewhere between a five to a ten.
Senator Mitchell: There is a dichotomy here between policing powers, powers of investigation, powers of charging and arrest, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, programs to make sure kids aren't being led down the wrong path early on. There needs to be a balance there. Could you give us some idea about whether you feel you have enough policing powers and yet, at the same time, what kind of assessment you make of the programming side of the approach?
Mr. Adams: Being a municipal police service, we deal with our provincial and federal partners. With the majority of our investigations, we'll get to a certain point and then, via the law and via the mandate, we bring in our provincial and our federal partners, the provincial anti-terrorism team, or we go to INSET, which is the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team. That's how we work.
Do we have a relationship with CSIS? Yes, we do. They're more at the investigative level. They have a very good relationship on a working basis. I believe it was two weeks ago that the assistant director of CSIS came to Peel to speak to our executive to give us a general overview on where they are moving towards and what we're dealing with. I'm not sure if that answers the question.
Senator Mitchell: That's just about it. That's one side of it. The other side is, what about community outreach? Do you put an emphasis on that? Do you have the resources to do that? Do you see that there is a need to do that?
Mr. Adams: Very much so. Can I refer to my notes? There are a couple of things we've done. I think we try to be innovative.
The first thing that we created is the Countering Violent Extremism Initiative. That's a four-hour course we're going to give to all the men and women in our organization. This will be a teach the teacher or teach the trainer. I will take you where we hope to go.
We've gone through about 150 to 175 officers. We just created that in the last couple of months. I will give you a breakdown of the presentation. It's a baseline, so radicalization and terrorism would be the first part of this presentation. We'll do a piece on ISIS to give a general political climate. We'll talk about global events and how they affect Canada and the Western world, and we'll identify different symbols and identifiers, what our officers should be looking for.
I'm not sure if this has been discussed in front of this committee, but a big part is the effect this has had on our officers and their families. It's opened up a different look for us, as they're working on the road, and what they need to be looking for and concerns for their own safety and that of their families. I've been an officer for 33 years, and it's the first time I can remember in my career where you're getting that reaction from the officers.
It's a different world for today's generation. So that four- or five-hour presentation is being made, and what we've done is create a softer selection of slides. We have an officer in every high school in the region of Peel. We have a youth education bureau that deals with all the elementary schools. We are in the schools from the start of September until the last day in June.
These four or five slides will be presented to the teachers and their assistants to help with educating them and different things that they need to look for and should be cognizant of. They're a good source for us to say that we've got a couple of kids we feel may need some attention, and we would like to bring that to light. That's in regard to our schools.
I would like to bring up diversity. We have what we call an ''inclusion group'' in Peel. It involves 50 different organizations and cultures that we meet with on a quarterly basis. We're trying to build up that trust and opportunity to exchange ideas and information. The big part in policing is that trust factor, and being able to build the trust that you can sit down and receive information from one another. We've been doing that for the last couple of months.
Recently, our chaplain was able to put together a group of 50 imams to come to Peel so we could sit down and talk to them to see what their concerns or issues are and how we can work together and alleviate some of the stressors they're feeling. It's all about trust.
It was brought to our attention that the RCMP and CSIS had reached out to them; so everybody was going to the community. The big part about building a community, you want to make sure you are showing them there is a value for themselves instead of going there looking for information and things to assist you. It's important to say what your concerns and issues are and how we can work with one another. We've done that. The school system is very important. You have to deal with it at the very early stage. As you are aware, elementary is anywhere from Grade 1 to graduation from high school. So those are a couple of programs we're doing, sir.
Senator White: Thanks, deputy. By the way, I think the deputy completed the Rotman program last week as well at the University of Toronto, so congratulations for that.
We have had other people speak today about the impact some investigations are having. The number of investigations aren't great in numbers, but the impact on resources seems to be great. Could you walk us through how many resources you have in and out and what impact that's having on other priorities as a result?
Mr. Adams: I guess not just on this investigation, but after the tragic deaths of our two military officers — and I would like to name them, Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent and Corporal Nathan Cirillo from my hometown of Hamilton — things changed for all of us. We talk about the normal investigations. These investigations are more intense now in regard to 24-7 coverage. You talk about the tactical aspect, whether there are wiretaps or probes involved. The personnel resources are immense, but we also found after those two deaths that the citizens of the Region of Peel became cognizant of what they needed to be looking for.
Our call intake went up tenfold in regard to people finding something suspicious or that they wanted to bring to the attention of the police. So that started putting a different aspect on our general calls. That's where we started to notice the public calling in and saying, ''Can you look at this?'' A lot of it was unsubstantiated, but it still took time and effort to investigate every call. Our job is to do that and to make sure we are being thorough. It is becoming very resource- driven.
Senator White: We've had others speak to the sharing of information. We have over 200 police agencies in Canada, and our top 10 city services in our two largest provinces, the jurisdictional service is not the RCMP; instead, it's municipal or provincial agencies. There is always a challenge, we understand, around the standard of sharing of information between agencies. Do you believe it's time for Canada to set forward a national standard that police agencies have to meet so that sharing is less challenging than some agencies will tell us?
Mr. Adams: Sorry for my little smile. I guess after 33 years you've seen that relationship evolve over the years, as you are more than cognizant of. I think the lines of communication are better now than they have ever been. That's not speaking as a deputy chief. I had some time in my hotel room this morning where I phoned and spoke to the investigators. To a man and a woman, they said it has improved. It is better.
The big part of policing in general, as you are aware, is that communication piece. Can it be better? Absolutely. Can it be more transparent? Yes, sir, it can be. Is there a good sharing of information? I believe there is. Can it be better? Yes.
Senator White: How many officers do you have in your agency that are top-secret cleared to the federal requirement?
Mr. Adams: In my agency?
Senator White: Out of 1,900 I think you have.
Mr. Adams: Maybe 20 max.
Senator Beyak: Thank you. It was an excellent presentation. I wanted to ask you the same thing that I have asked other police chiefs. In your outreach, what kind of due diligence do you do to ensure the people you're reaching out to are not radicalized already or aren't part of the organizations that hold radical views?
Mr. Adams: Any group we deal with, we'll do our due diligence in dealing with them. There has to be a trust factor, as you are aware, for any community outreach to build bridges. We have a diversity unit of, I think we're at seven now — a detective and six constables — and we're out there every day building those bonds. I'm not beating around the bush. I'm trying to say, do we ever have any doubt that some people have been radicalized? We do our best to indicate that they are not. We follow up and do our checks. I'm not sure what more I can say.
Senator Beyak: That's reassuring. My concern is that we've heard from so many witnesses. Some tell us that the police outreach is working well across Canada. Four or five have told us we're being duped, that we have our heads in the sand and there are a lot of groups we should look at more closely. So knowing that you have a committee that checks that out and does its due diligence is reassuring.
Mr. Adams: My only comment is that there are no 100 per cent relationships, no matter what those relationships are. You have to have trust and believe in one another. You also have to be vigilant all the time in regard to the information you're gathering and that is brought forward. If that changes in a community relationship, then that has to be addressed.
Senator Beyak: Thank you.
The Chair: If you do have some doubt in respect to an individual, can you call CSIS and say that you have had some relationships with so-and-so and you are just checking to see if there's anything in the background? Are you able to do that?
Mr. Adams: Yes, we have a very good relationship with CSIS and INSET. Sometimes the information comes to us, so to say that we haven't been contacted and we have had our eyes opened, we have.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I have just a couple of questions that could be helpful to us. The Edmonton Police Service witness indicated that one of the changes he would like to see or augmented in section 83 of the Criminal Code, which deals with terrorism, would be more on lawful access. With new technology, it's very difficult; apparently you can't get into these computers or whichever machines. Lawful access remains a difficulty.
Is there anything else you might point out to us that could be augmented under the Criminal Code to assist with prosecutions?
Mr. Adams: There are only a couple of ways you can approach certain investigations. One of them is whether to human source information that is being provided to you, and the other piece is a technical piece.
I would agree with the Edmonton representative. I am not sure who spoke, but the technical side of things is becoming very difficult for policing. You would be speaking to the PGP phones where you cannot get into that data. We're unable to do that. I'm finding that the organizations or the people we're dealing with learn as much about the investigations as we do. As we go to court and we go through the process, they're educating themselves, and that community is educating itself on what we are capable of doing and what the law indicates that we can do. That's how they run their business.
So they're educating themselves just like the police do to keep themselves at the top of their game. I'm finding after 33 years that it is becoming more complicated for us to get into that technical piece and be able to do that. Those are challenges that we all have to face. Would legislation help us out in that regard? It would, but once again, there are still devices wherein every time we catch up, we seem to be behind, if that makes sense to you.
Senator Stewart Olsen: It does. Just for information, how many terrorism charges have you prosecuted in the Peel Region? How many people?
Mr. Adams: We haven't.
Senator Stewart Olsen: It would be left to the RCMP to do that?
Mr. Adams: We would be part of that team. For example, we're doing an investigation that I can't provide many details about, but we had three young females that had left the Region of Peel. They were stopped in Turkey and then they returned. That was a simple missing persons call. It was a uniformed officer doing their day-to-day hard work, out there speaking to the family. They were able to speak to the family, and it was very uncommon for these three girls to not be home. With a check of their computers by the parents, it was at that point the uniformed officers and the parents discovered that they had been convinced to go to Turkey and they were stopped there before going to Syria.
That's as much as I can get into the investigative piece, but that will lead into dealing with our friends in the RCMP. What I've given you there is public knowledge anyway.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you. I just want to commend Peel Region for the incredibly good work you're doing. It's a hugely involved division, and it's pretty remarkable how you guys are keeping your head above water. Congratulations.
Mr. Adams: If I can just give you some quick facts. We have a very diverse community, compared to a lot in this country. I threw some statistics together. We have 56 mosques, 15 gurdwaras, 12 Buddhist temples and 3 Jewish synagogues, and that's just the beginning. Sixty-nine per cent of people speak only Punjabi at home in the Region of Peel. It's a very diverse community. What happens globally affects not just — we're talking about ISIS sometimes. It's affecting a lot of these different groups, which affects our region. The people, the diversity and the community groups are doing very good work. We're proud of them.
Senator Day: Thank you. Perhaps I misheard you, but I wanted to clarify this point. You were talking about bringing together outreach, and I think you talked about 50 organizations and cultures being brought together so you can exchange some views. Then I thought you said you discovered that the RCMP and CSIS or another organization had been doing the same thing.
Mr. Adams: No. If that's the way it came across, I didn't intend it to. That was one of the outreach programs we've done. What we have found is that on occasion, they will go into the various communities. So they haven't set up that type of pool like we have within the Peel Region, but they would go into different communities to speak to them or to address them.
Senator Day: ''They'' being the RCMP?
Mr. Adams: RCMP and CSIS, on occasion. When those things are happening, it's important that we need to let each other know what we're doing.
Senator Day: I would think so. You're saying it's not happening?
Mr. Adams: It happens on occasion, but once again, communication could be better. For years, if I did a criminal investigation in Toronto, you needed to knock on the other guy's door to tell them you're in their neighbourhood. We could do better than that.
Senator Day: I have a follow-up question in relation to outreach. Could you tell us, do you have a significant number of members in your force who are visible minorities or of the different culture groups that are reflective of the society that you're protecting?
Mr. Adams: We do. It could be better, I would suggest to you, yes. That is one of the things we're trying to do as we move forward, to create those changes and get the numbers you're looking at. It's going to take time. We are moving forward with it, and that's part of all our recruiting drives. That's the educational piece for the younger students, too.
With a lot of these cultures, you need to get them at a young age and convince the families that this is a very loyal, traditional job. Sometimes policing is viewed differently in other countries. We're moving forward with that, and I think we're doing a very good job at it.
Senator Day: These people who are hired and who are reflective of ethnic communities, do they wear a uniform in the community afterwards? With the officers you have in the schools, are they wearing a uniform or are they plain clothes?
Mr. Adams: They're in uniform. All interactions in the school are in a uniform. We have a very strong relationship with the school boards. We've talked about softening that piece, but a majority of the school boards want uniformed officers in there for that look and presence.
Senator Day: It goes to the issue of building trust.
Mr. Adams: One hundred per cent.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you, Mr. Adams. Based on your experience in the Peel Region, has the number of people involved in terrorism or radicalization increased over the last five years?
Mr. Adams: Has it increased? Most of the things we're talking about are unknown to us. Are we more active in regard to these investigations? Yes, we are. To say the specific targets, I'm not sure whether the numbers have really changed. We're more cognizant of them now because of what has happened in the last year or two years, if that makes sense to you.
Senator Dagenais: What type of shift in radicalization have you seen? Do you have any statistics you can share with us?
Mr. Adams: Statistics, no. Most of the data and information we have comes via the sources through our federal and provincial partners. As far as at the municipal level, that's our source of our information.
Senator Dagenais: How many radicalized individuals are you monitoring in your region?
Mr. Adams: Specifically, what number are we looking at? Like I said, speaking to our federal partners, we are between five and ten.
Senator Dagenais: Thank you so much, Chief Adams.
Senator Beyak: I wonder if you could table with our committee the names and the list of the imams you have reached out to in your community over this project.
Mr. Adams: Do I have them?
Senator Beyak: You could table them with the committee, if you could get it.
Mr. Adams: I don't want to do injustice to my chaplain. Imran Ali is one of the chaplains for Peel Regional Police. He was the gentleman who set that up. I will certainly make sure I get those names and will reach out.
Senator Beyak: It's very much appreciated.
The Chair: I would just like to follow up on the question that I think Senator Stewart Olsen asked on section 83 of the Criminal Code of Canada. We have a number of very clear offences there. One is if you want to leave the country for the purpose of terrorism, the question of a peace bond, all those various sections that are incorporated there for the law enforcement agencies to utilize for the purposes of your final job, and that is to lay charges if it is necessary.
The question that comes to mind — and I'd like to hear what you have to say on this — I know you're at the municipal level, but what we don't understand is with the number of files that been identified to this committee, which is basically 170 or 180 or with what has been said today maybe it's 200 involved with terrorism in one manner or another in this country, we see so few charges being laid.
Is the threshold for evidence so high, is that why we're not seeing charges? That's what Canadians are asking. They don't quite understand why we're putting all these resources into the question of investigation and identifying, and the public is aware now, which we never were before, of the numbers we're dealing with. Yet we see so few charges being laid. Perhaps you could comment on that.
I would think it would be very frustrating if I were a member of the police force and doing the necessary legwork day after day, 24-7 and then no charges are laid. I've done my due diligence.
Mr. Adams: I don't think it's any surprise to this committee that this is a federal mandate. As a municipal partner, we'll do our investigation, provide a thorough thing and work with our partners and take that to them.
In regard to the legislation and why charges aren't laid, that involves the judicial system and not just the police, I would suggest to you.
Senator White: Would you not agree that one of the goals in relation to terrorism — and I hate to use it because it sounds like it already exists — is to actually disrupt and dismantle, not just lay charges? A success story might be one you never read about.
Mr. Adams: Eloquently put, and I completely agree. That is the old school, I apologize. You always look at the end result of that. Disruption plays a major role in what we do, not just terrorism but all other elements of our duty. I think that's put very well.
Senator White: Some would argue that realistically the Canadian public don't want more terrorists arrested; they want less terrorism to occur in the first place.
Mr. Adams: Yes.
The Chair: The converse is if we know the numbers and they're out there, then we have to ask ourselves — and this is why we're having this national conversation — with respect to the fact that very few charges are being laid. The question that has to be asked, to people such as you, Senator White, is why? Is the threshold too high? What exactly is occurring? That's the question I would have.
Mr. Adams: One of the things we have to be cognizant of is the fact that everybody wants to hear what the number is, what that result is. Once again, when you sit down and look at these investigations, you prioritize them. I gather federal partners have a system by which they score and which investigations we move forward on and which we don't. I'm not sure what the matrix was, what the prioritization was or how they scored to say we have 180 people. Is that based on their travel? Is that based on their beliefs? Is that based on information provided via a source or other matters?
We have to be cognizant or a little leery of throwing numbers around. I'm not sure how they've scored those numbers. Once again, I'm a policing partner, and we sit at the table at the executive level for INSET and PATS. To throw that number around, I'm not sure where they're getting those numbers. Each and every case has never been provided to us in that manner.
Senator Mitchell: To follow up on this back and forth, and maybe to supplement Senator White's approach more than my chair's approach, could you argue that the fact that you identify people but then there doesn't seem to be as many arrests as that number might indicate, that fact might in itself be indicative of the sensitivity and the earliness with which you catch these people in a stage of their radicalization? It may actually be proof positive that much of this is working, the fact you get them early. You follow them early, you disrupt them and there doesn't end up being a charge.
Mr. Adams: That certainly plays a factor. In speaking to the chair and his comments, once again we've got to understand the judicial system and how the courts play a role in this.
All we do as police officers is present the best case possible. We take that to the courts. The courts and the Crown attorneys play an equal role in whether we take this into the system and prosecute. We don't have control over that. The best we can do is doing a thorough job on the investigation. That includes my federal and provincial partners. Take it to a court of law and let them decide whether we are laying criminal charges and if we have the evidence to do that.
Senator Mitchell, I agree with you. That's the other piece of it. We do work hard and thoroughly. Does the end result always have to be a criminal charge? If that were the case, it would be great if we could pull that off. If we can't, to be perfectly blunt with you, the disruption is the piece. But the courts play as much a role in this as we do, and I'm not sure whether they're going to be sitting at this table or not. They play as much a role as the policing does.
Senator Beyak: I asked this already of the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, but in light of your vast experience and your long-time work in a very diverse area, like Peel Region, how do you ensure that you don't have infiltration in your hiring process?
I've studied terrorism since 2008. I read information from around the world and how they've handled different things.
One book I read was by Erick Stakelbeck called The Terrorist Next Door, about the infiltration of our entire society. They called it stealth jihad.
But the most alarming one to me was called The Management of Savagery: The Most Critical Stage Through Which the Ummah Will Pass, a book by al Qaeda strategic thinker Abu Bakr Naji, translated from Arabic by William McCants, a fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point.
The Islamist noted in his book, ''. . . infiltrating the adversaries and their fellow travellers and establishing a strong security apparatus'' that is more supportive of the security of the revolutionary Islamic movement now, and later the Islamic state, is essential. ''We should infiltrate the police forces, the armies, the different political parties, the newspapers, the Islamic groups, the petroleum companies, as employees or as engineers, private security companies, sensitive civil institutions, et cetera. That actually began several decades ago, but we need to increase it in light of recent developments.''
They say that they are infiltrating our law enforcement and our armies. I just wondered, with your long experience, what you've noticed.
Mr. Adams: I notice that our systems are very thorough, our research into our officers. I can't speak on behalf of the military, but in my years of working with them, their systems are similar to ours. It's a very thorough process.
Eventually, at some stage, you would think that you would see some type of an effect or process within an organization, them trying to change how we do business. That has never occurred in my organization.
Like you, I try to keep myself up to date with our policing partners. I can't think of any situation where that's happening in the policing industry. I think we've seen several people within Canada charged with espionage, that piece of it there, but not within professional policing. I can't speak for the military, but I will speak for policing.
You've got to depend on our systems. Once again, we're cognizant of that. We have to, every once in a while, keep our heads up, that no systems is impenetrable. But you need to continue to be thorough and make sure you're doing your due diligence when looking at your people.
The Chair: Are there any more questions? I would like to thank Deputy Chief Brian Adams. Once again, congratulations on your promotion.
Mr. Adams: Thank you very much, sir.
The Chair: You certainly brought a lot of information to the proceedings here today. It sounds to me like you have the Peel Region to some degree under control. We appreciate what you had to say to us.
Joining us for our final panel today, as part of our look at terrorist threats to Canada and to Canadians, is Michelle Walrond. Ms. Walrond is an English teacher, an anti-poverty activist with ACORN and a founder of the National Islamic Sisters' Association of Canada.
Ms. Walrond came to our attention last week when she raised concerns about the radicalization of her son in Ottawa, something she said she has been struggling with for over the past 20 years.
Ms. Walrond, we understand your concern as a mother and as a Canadian about what has been happening not just to your son but to other Canadians. I would like to commend you for speaking out and hope that in some way we as parliamentarians can understand the radicalization that happened with your son and we can help mothers like you by assuring no other mother has to go through what you're dealing with.
Again, thank you for agreeing to come before the committee. We look forward to hearing from you. I understand you have an opening statement, and I understand there are copies available in English only. Is it okay with members of the committee that they be distributed? Agreed.
Ms. Walrond, please begin.
Michelle Walrond, mother of a radicalized man, as an individual: Thank you, Senator Lang, for this opportunity to address this honourable assembly. I hope you don't regret asking me to share my outlook and experience with you because it has been a long time coming. I have been ranting against the Wahhabi cult for nearly 20 years.
Because there is no other person in Ottawa that I know of who is a person born and raised in inner city Philadelphia, whose grandmother was a social activist, whose father, brother and oldest son were soldiers in the U.S. Army, and who has the experience of having converted to Islam before Wahhabi influence was dominant in the Muslim world, and then, a quarter of a century later, having their son express views that I know only became prominent as a political ploy of the Saudi government, I feel I have a unique outlook on the issues, characteristics and causes of Islamic radicalization and how to combat it.
Also, anyone who knows me will tell you that I'm a veritable idea machine. I constantly try to come up with solutions rather than belabouring the problems, so I want to take a few minutes to open discussion on what I think can and should be done.
Wahhabism, also called Salafi'ism, whose adherents might refer to themselves as Ahl al-Hadith, Ahl al-Sunnah or Zahiris, is the same ideology at the foundation of the uncontrollable monsters ISIS, al Qaeda, al Shabaab and Boko Haram. It may not be the only ultra-conservative influence that exists among Muslims, but because of the Saudi billions used to fuel their politically motivated propaganda machine, it is the most prolific and ubiquitous. And it is the ideology that my son was taught right here in Ottawa.
At the core of the Salafi teachings is the rejection of traditional scholarship, the collective rulings of a body of skilled theologians possessing above-average intellect and having fulfilled the requirements of advanced academia. Conservatism can be derived from rulings on one extreme of the traditional scholastic spectrum, but there are numerous checks and balances that scholars must navigate, and in no case is the scholar allowed to disrespect or invalidate another scholar's view.
Over the past 14 centuries, pre-Wahhabi traditional scholars considered differences of opinion as a source of blessing, as it gives the community a broad range of judicious, informed approaches, all based on common fundamental beliefs and intellectual maturity.
No de-radicalization treatise can be entertained without discussing how the values of Wahhabism differ from those of traditional Islam and Canada. Many of our young men are uninformed, socially insecure and emotionally fragile. If you teach 100 young men the Wahhabi ideology, along with a good dose of misinformation, and provide them with a feeling of camaraderie, thereby exploiting their emotions, by the time they are in their thirties, 80 of them will have become ultra conservatives, taking a literal dogmatic approach to all aspects of life; 10 will have become so confused or turned off that they will reject religion all together; 7 will advocate for or support violent extremism in theory, as my son did; 2 of them will become violent and abusive to their families in an effort to implement their religious policies in their homes; and 1 will become a potentially dangerous violent radical.
My son is almost 40 years old. The only way to give older Wahhabis an honourable exit from their position is to get them to change of their own volition.
The Chair: Ms. Walrond, could you speak a little more slowly? You're doing very well. We've got lots of time. It's for the translators.
Ms. Walrond: Okay, thank you. I was trying to keep it to seven minutes.
The Chair: Don't worry about that. The floor is yours.
Ms. Walrond: The only way to give older Wahhabis an honourable exit from their position is to get them to change of their own volition. I've read that some countries with much more complex and widespread problems with radicalism have had success with de-radicalization by engaging those with radical views in debates. The parameters of the debate, as I envision it, would require that all participants learn the views of their opponent, perhaps even taking an exam administered by their opponent before the debate, with the condition they will honourably renounce their position if they cannot support it from Quran and Hadith. That would require the person with radical views to study and think rationally. If they are unable or unwilling to focus on facts or think rationally, well, that would answer any questions about that person's mental health.
Extreme radical views that could cause a person to be led into violent extremism are a manifestation of ignorance. Salafi'ism is one of the vehicles by which ignorance is spread. Ignorance of history, religious jurisprudence and modern politics fuel that vehicle. Ignorance is like an infectious disease. It has to be excised aggressively. I have some thoughts that could help with the surgical procedure.
I have five suggestions for eradicating ignorance and its offspring, violent religious extremism. I will just go over the headlines, and I have submitted expansion on the topics in printed material before you. I am putting forth the ideas without consideration of their feasibility. That's your job. I hope these ideas will inspire dialogue, and I am prepared to answer questions about them.
One: Create a certification or licensing standard for clergy and religious leaders in Canada.
Two: Create a religious school board.
Three: Require licensing or certification for all Canadian religious leaders and make them legally accountable for the effects of what they teach.
Four: Stop allowing tax exemptions for building projects.
Five: Give government support to social enterprise for non-profits and religious institutions and make the earnings of the social entrepreneurs and remunerations to the volunteers tax-exempt and claw-back exempt.
These measures I'm proposing would help to remove the ambiguity about what religious practices and ideologies are antithetical to Canadian values for current and future generations, namely those beliefs and practices that engender harm to other human beings and inhibit the ability and incentive for foreign influences to permeate Canadian institutions. Eradicating ignorance, which means eradicating the influence of foreign-born radicalism, is the only way to ensure safety from extremism. These ideas would destroy the seeds of radicalism before they can take root here in Canada.
Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much Ms. Walrond. We appreciate your being here and bringing forward a series of recommendations. We will start with our deputy chair, Senator Mitchell.
Senator Mitchell: Thank you, Ms. Walrond. It was very well written and well presented.
My first question concerns the statistics that you used on the top of your second page, the 100. Can you tell me where you get these statistics? Do you have studies that back it up, or is this an assessment from your personal experience?
Ms. Walrond: It's from observing lots of people over lots of years.
Senator Mitchell: In the case of your son and his progression, were you able to identify that it was happening when he was a youth? He was a youth some time ago, and maybe it has changed now, but are you aware of places, if radicalization were happening to someone's child today, where they could go, where they could refer? I'm told that in the U.S. there is a movement where parents can phone hot lines, as it were, and get assistance for a child that seems to be going the wrong way.
Ms. Walrond: In my experience, with my son, he never had any problems when he was a kid. My situation is different from a lot of Muslims because I'm an immigrant to Canada, but I'm not an immigrant to North America. My kids were raised in North America, in North American culture. I'm the first convert to Islam in my family. All the rest of my family is Christian. He came up in a multicultural, multi-faith, multi-outlook environment. He was always a good boy, very obedient. The difference came when he moved to Ottawa, the first time being away from home by himself when he was 18. He wanted to teach his wife, I think, how to be Muslim. They were married for two years, and then she converted. I don't know exactly how he got to meet those particular Muslims here in Ottawa, but they basically befriended him. He was kind of like a superstar in the 1990s. A Black American in Ottawa was like wow, this is a catch.
In the 1990s, it was different than it is now. After 9/11, most of the extreme Salafists that were voicing really harsh and dogmatic — I don't want mix up the terms ''radicalism'' and ''extremism,'' because radicalism just speaks to your views on something. Extremism more points to radical views and potential actions. They were more so espousing extremism at that time, whereas nowadays, if a kid wants to find that type of rhetoric out in the open, it would have to be on the Internet. Nobody is standing in their mosque now preaching that, including the same people who were doing it 20 years ago.
How you would identify it would be by looking at what they look at on the Internet. They learn the code words on the Internet so when they go to the mosque and speak to these people that really do have these views, they will just pick it up. They know the code words, so they don't have to say anything. The young person will take it and carry it on on their own.
Senator Mitchell: Would people in the congregation like you be aware of these people who would pick up these code words, and would you not turn them in to the police?
Ms. Walrond: What I want to emphasize today is that it's not a specific set of words or concepts. It's the way that the Wahhabism has taken control over the dialogue and the discourse on Islam, all over the world; and if they plant the seeds, as I said, I've seen Salafi'ism and extremism expand and contract over the years, but they plant the seeds. If a person has the right mix of emotional and social instability and ignorance in general world views, they would gravitate toward that extremism and progression towards violence in that respect.
I wanted to emphasize the fact that Salafi'ism is an ideology that is relatively new in Islam. The Saudis haven't been around that long, but most immigrants came from countries that by the time they came out of colonialism and despotic regimes and they came to North America, they didn't have any other information, other than what the Salafis are producing.
A lot of Muslims, just like a lot of people in general, don't know that what you think today is mainstream Islam is coloured and influenced by Wahhabism to such an extent you can't even find the alternative; it's very hard to find. That's what I want to get across to you today. The approach that I would have taken when my son first encountered this is not the approach that you need to be taking now. It's a different world now.
Senator Mitchell: What approach would you be taking now?
Ms. Walrond: As I said, the first thing is to eradicate ignorance, if I could elaborate on the five ideas that I have. For example, the first idea that I wanted to present was to create a certification or licensing standard for clergy and religious leaders in Canada.
Currently, in the Canadian Muslim community, any group of men can hire a man and give him a job description that goes something like this: ''You will get paid somewhere near minimum wage; you will lead the prayers and do what we want, how we want. Your job title is imam.'' But in traditional Islam, such a person is no more entitled to be called ''imam'' than a Christian with a similar job description would be entitled to be called ''archbishop.''
The qualifications for all Canadian licensed or certified religious leaders, teachers, clergy and ministers would be established by a university-level curriculum developed by religious scholars who have verifiable knowledge of the doctrine, philosophy, history, cultures, laws and languages of all the major religions — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism — and the similarities and differences in the beliefs of at least five sects of each religion, as well as atheism and agnosticism.
The certification requirements would include psychology courses that give at least basic knowledge of how to identify mental illness and minister to vulnerable populations within Canada. The main benefit it would have, relevant to our discussion today, is that it would eradicate religious ignorance, which is the root cause of religious radicalism and extremism, eliminate the confusion among Canadian Muslims regarding the qualifications of religious leaders heralding from Saudi Arabia and neutralize the influence of those who use copious amounts of money to promote their religious agenda.
This is the problem. People think that, oh, this is an imam. Whatever he says, he has authority to say. That's not the case, in reality. I am using the terms ''Salafi'ism'' and ''Wahhabism'' as opposed to traditional Islam.
Senator Mitchell: You are not talking about all imams.
Ms. Walrond: No, I am not talking about all imams. I'm not talking about all Muslims. But I am talking about the fact that here in Canada anybody can call themselves an imam, and who pays them is whose agenda they will promote, and who has the money to pay an imam? I want a different imam than what's available to me, but I can't afford to pay him, set him up to promote his ideas and promote what I believe is correct, which is moderate traditional Islam.
In order to understand Islam and God, we are told that we have to perfect our knowledge. We have to increase and expand our knowledge. Islam is supposed to be very open-minded, and people are supposed to have intellectual maturity in their outlook. That's not the being promoted. That's where the problem is. You cannot become an extremist and be a knowledgeable Muslim.
Senator Mitchell: Do you think women should be able to be imams?
Ms. Walrond: Women have been imams in traditional Islam. I wouldn't want to be an imam, but I don't want to be a leader anyway. But women have been imams, and they are respected and honoured as being a great asset to our history, but I couldn't be a Salafi woman imam.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Thank you for coming and trying to help us understand this very difficult issue of youth radicalization, which we're all facing today and trying to get handle on. You're telling us that things are different now. You mentioned how your son was radicalized. Do you think that that same thing is happening now? You mentioned it has changed. It's probably more by social media, but there are still people working at doing this. Can you expand on that?
Ms. Walrond: Let's say, for example, I go to a certain mosque, maybe not so much the mosque now. You see, there was a time when a woman would go to a mosque even wearing beige or a bright colour, and there were some people in the mosque that would say, ''You know, your colours are too bright, and you shouldn't be walking in here like this.'' She's covered, but she's wearing a bright colour. It happened to someone I know. She was wearing beige. This is not necessarily the imam, but she can't go to the imam and say, ''Do you know what these people told me?'' Because this person has the image of being a pious Muslim, he has the beard and the rolled up pants, which is another story, and he speaks Arabic, so they think he's religious and if he says it that means I should do it.
The image, which actually has nothing to do with Islam, of people who are all about the external, superficial aspects of religiosity, just because that is being promoted as being Islam and you have to toe that line. So that person, for example, if they went home and changed clothes, well, now they know, oh, this person will follow what I say. The next thing is, ''It's a good thing, sister or brother, you did what you were told. You're a good Muslim.'' You feel important. Nobody is telling you that you're definitely going to paradise because I approve of you.
People like me and most Canadian Muslims would be turned off by that. Just get out of my face, I don't want to hear that. But the one who does — and that's what I mean about the 100 — she's going to now wear black, brown or dark colours all the time, and she's going to want to identify herself because she's in that mindset.
Out of that 100 again, I already mentioned the people who would say, ''Later for you, I don't want to be bothered, you don't know what you're talking about.'' Then you have a few other people who will go into more of the doctrine that has to do with politics.
Once they get you involved in politics, as long as you don't know too much about it, then they'll start tugging at your emotions. ''Look at what's happening in Syria.'' No one ever says, ''Look at what's happening in Saudi Arabia.'' Every day somebody is being decapitated or their hands or legs or something is being cut off or they're put in jail because they spoke out. No one mentions that, especially in the mosque.
They'll say, ''Look at what's happening in Syria.'' ''Look at what Assad did.'' ''Look at what Gadhafi did.'' ''Look at what Saddam Hussein did.'' But as far as the people in the Saudi group, they don't mention that.
They give you this misinformation or this skewed world view and then, from that, that tugs on your emotions. Once they can get you under their emotional influence, you can't be rational and emotional at the same time. That's where the danger lies. It goes beyond that.
When this person is traversing this path and these people are manipulating them in this way, there is no one else around, and the ability in the Muslim community — there is nobody. They don't have the voice, they're not known, to say that's not right, to speak out about it. It can be for many different reasons.
One reason could be that they're afraid there will be repercussions on their family back home, or they themselves don't identify as being religious. ''I don't wear the hijab, I listen to music and I hang out with my friends at work. I'm not that religious so I can't get into that.'' They think that's religiosity in Islam. It's a very intricately intertwined web of deception that we're up against.
The reason I'm trying to speak out about it is, number one, they cannot do anything to me. They can kill me, I guess, but I'm a street fighter. If you want to kill me, kill me out in the open.
Second, they can't mess with my family. They already did that. They can't take away money from me or business interests. They've already done that as well. They can't do anything to me. Everybody else has some reason that they're not clearly able to say that those are the people that are doing this. That's why I'm the one speaking out. I have a lot of support in the community. A lot of people are cheering me on.
A lady called me earlier and said, ''I want to help you. I want to be involved with what you're doing.'' I said, ''Listen, there are repercussions that you would have to deal with.'' More often than not, when women come to me like that, their husband is scared for them. The husband wants to protect them. ''It's okay. Just be quiet. It will be okay. You just don't get involved in that. We're not going to point fingers or say anything.''
I want to reiterate that a lot of people, because of the history of where we are right now in the world, the Saudis filled the vacuum of religious knowledge that existed after colonialism and when the new regimes in the Muslim world came in. They took over and hijacked the religion at that point. A lot of people don't know, even now people who will be watching this won't know what I'm talking about when I say ''traditional'' Islam.
That's why I'm saying we want to open a dialogue. It's not something that can be dealt with just right now. I'm hoping I'll be able to open up some doors so you can look at it from a different perspective now when you think about it.
Something happened today. My main teacher here in Ottawa is a young man named Dr. Mohamad Jebara. One of his students sent him an email asking a question about a concept about love for God. He gave the answer, but he explained why there's so much confusion about that concept. It had to do with something about two different historical figures with similar names and the books that they wrote. The teachers from Wahhabism will use the traditional person's name and trick people into believing that that person is also the person who says things like that you cannot love anything in the creation because that would be like polytheism, worshiping an idol. You only can have love for God.
You see how subtle that little twist is. First, they ascribe that concept to someone who is universally accepted in Islam as being some reliable, respectable person. At the same time, they tweak it to make it sound like — it goes a long way before it gets to this extreme, but this could happen — I shouldn't feel upset about this cruelty and violence because I don't have any love for creation. When they destroy the historical sites, which they're doing, or killing scholars overseas and burning libraries, they get away with it, so to speak. The Muslim world looks at that and says that doesn't seem right. They were worshiping those scholars. They kissed their hand and showed them reverence. That's like worshiping.
You see how just that little bit of a subtle exaggeration or manipulation of information can bring about a trend that could lead with all the other right components. The average Muslim kid is just the average kid. But a lot of our children are looking for answers, looking for understanding and acceptance and can easily be manipulated by the one-sided information that they're offered about world events. That's what we have to watch out for.
We can give our kids the proper knowledge and the means by which they can acquire knowledge, but how can we find out what the other voices are saying? What are traditional Muslims saying, people who are following mazhabs? A mazhab is a school of thought founded by scholars, similar to the distribution of what I said a certified religious leader would have to have in Canada. It sounds like a lot, right? But that's what an imam is supposed to have, and a lot more.
You see, if your son or daughter went to such a person, they would first of all encourage them, just by virtue of how much knowledge they have acquired, to gain knowledge and keep an open mind. Somebody who just went to a 35- year-old school in Saudi Arabia as opposed to going to al-Azhar, a 900-year-old school, or al-Qarawiyyin, the oldest university on Earth, and somebody who just takes this comparatively five-second sound bite of information as being all that they need to know, if you can get a kid to accept that, then what else do you have? What can you hope for?
Senator Stewart Olsen: I'll go on the second round and give someone else a chance.
The Chair: If we can keep the responses a little clearer so we can get around to everyone. You're doing well.
Ms. Walrond: Just tell me. I could have finished a long time ago.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: If I understood correctly, you blame Canadian Wahhabis, funded by Saudi Arabia, for having turned your son away from moderate Islam, in which he was raised. In your last opinion piece, you say that this funding aims to influence what is taught in mosques and chartered schools in Canada, with variable results.
Can you explain to us what you know about how these funds are conveyed to Islamic institutions in Canada?
[English]
Ms. Walrond: First of all, I didn't say the chartered schools or the madrasahs in Canada particularly. I can't really speak to that because I don't really know anything in particular about them. My grandkids have gone to them, but they don't go to them now; they go to public school.
What I spoke about was that they're able to give huge donations to Wikipedia, for example, which runs on donations and which is the go-to website for any information on the Internet, or they own stock at Google and things like that. Their money can move things because they have a lot of it.
I'm not suggesting that we try to compete with that, but I am suggesting that we be aware of the fact that money is influencing what people are learning about Islam, so what I want the Canadian government and Canadians to do is to support those of us who want to offer the alternate voice. I'm totally convinced that if the alternate voice is presented, even anything near in equal or similar footing, people will naturally be inclined to it, and they will be emboldened to resist any influence or intimidation that they are aware of or that their instincts tell them is not in their best interest or in the best interests of Canada. I think that's just a natural response to being able to access more accurate alternative information about Islam.
[Translation]
Senator Dagenais: This morning Montreal area newspapers stated that considerable sums of money are collected in certain mosques and are reputed to be sent to certain Middle Eastern countries in order to support Hamas, among other things. Are you aware of this?
[English]
Ms. Walrond: No, I have no knowledge about that. I don't know anything about what goes on in any mosque right now. I'm a woman; I'm not particularly interested in mosques. We have a lot of discourse in the Muslim community about whether or not women really feel welcome in the mosque. I just don't see any benefit to going, so I don't go.
But as far as how the funding is handled, in Ottawa, most of the communities that I know of are extremely vigilant about ever sending any money outside of Canada, even the one that my son went to, as far as I know. But as far as money coming in, whereby they would be able to use it to shore up their image as being the mainstream standard of Muslims in Canada, now that's a different story.
I don't profess to know or have verifiable knowledge or research, but my observation has been that — and you can pretty much look on the CRA's website and find out what percentage or how much money they're getting from overseas. Just my casual observation indicates to me that there's a numerical correlation between how much money they get from overseas and how much they promote Wahhabism.
Senator Beyak: Thank you very much. I wonder if you could help us a little. We've heard conflicting reports from various witnesses about how the outreach programs in the communities talk to youth and help them out. It didn't seem to help your son. Other people tell us we're being duped; the outreach programs don't work at all, and they're not the beliefs of Muslims that come to Canada who want a better life here.
Do you have any thoughts on what would have helped your son and what might help another youth?
Ms. Walrond: Like I said, my son's situation was very different in that he came from an American Muslim family. The outreach programs that I know of are run by immigrant Muslims, usually people my age or grandparents' age, because the parents are busy working supporting their families, so they're run by older people. There's a wide disconnect between their outlook and experience and their identity even as Canadian Muslims and the first- and second-generation born Canadian Muslim kids.
I don't know that outreach programs actually address the important problems. I'm glad that they're there, but whether or not they can actually offer the alternate voice that I'm talking about that could protect and divert kids from any possible influence of radicalism, I don't know, and personally, I don't feel confident about it myself.
Senator Beyak: What do you think about the people who are counselling your son? How can we not have people like that out in the community? They obviously weren't helping him.
Ms. Walrond: Of course, he was a grown man, 20 years old at the time, and of course he bears some responsibility for what decisions he makes. If we try to get into making the people who promote this completely responsible for what they teach, then I don't think there would have been a problem. That's why I suggested that they be required to have certification.
When I said require licensing and certification for Canadian religious leaders and make them legally accountable for what they teach, I taught emergency medical techniques for about 15 years to the lay public and to medical professionals. I was expected to carry a minimum of $1million malpractice insurance, in case someone died or was harmed after the techniques I taught were administered incorrectly. So it becomes obvious that I think of faith as a quantifiable skill set, which is sort of like cooking. Each individual or group who wants to distribute this skill for human consumption should be knowledgeable of which ingredients are toxic and responsible if they carelessly use those ingredients or administer them to someone who could be hypersensitive to them.
What they did then they wouldn't do now under this current environment, but they could still do just as much harm because whatever they teach, the kid will go and get the backup material from the Internet. If there's no other alternative, when they google ''Syria,'' if all they get is ISIS and ISIL and all that, and nobody is even able to suggest that maybe this isn't a jihad, maybe there is nothing in Islam that allows us Muslims to impose sharia on anybody else, even other Muslims, the whole concept that it's based on is totally not within Islam. They won't find that. They won't find anything.
Most Muslim websites that teach the alternate view have to name their websites names that the search engine won't identify as being Islamic because our websites are constantly being sabotaged and hacked. This is what we're up against.
Senator Beyak: Thank you very much.
Senator Day: Thank you very much for being here. I appreciate your personal experience and insight. I'm making the assumption that someone would convert to Islam because he or she was not personally fulfilled with the organized religion that he or she was following at the time.
Ms. Walrond: I suppose that could be, but that wasn't my experience. I was a Christian before I became a Muslim. I researched a way, when I was looking for religion, to complete my love for Jesus, to bring myself closer to him by following his example. The only way I was able to find a way to practically apply the teachings of Jesus was in the Islam that I learned at that time.
Now, today, experience is completely different. People are told that Christianity is something that's inimical to Islam. I only know of a couple of people at the most who might give a sermon saying ''love your neighbour.'' There's a lot of ''honour your parents.'' That's prominent among Muslims, but you don't hear ''love your neighbour'' and ''love your enemy.'' You hear ''give us victory over the kuffar, the unbelievers,'' and all that. It can all be translated a different way, but this particular translation is what our kids are hearing.
Actually I've said many times, if I had been looking for religion in this era, in Ottawa, I would never have become Muslim because I wouldn't have seen what I was looking for, which is closeness to God through the example of His messages.
Senator Day: You've described Islam, and then this Wahhabism that became dominant in later years, long after you had converted to Islam. Can I assume that you're telling us now that Wahhabism has infiltrated most of Islam and it's a dominant thought and pattern that's happening now?
Ms. Walrond: Very much so. When I took Shahada, when I first converted, there was a prince in Saudi Arabia who you could write a letter to and tell him you wanted to propagate Islam. He would put you on a payroll. I was told people were getting $2,500 a month. He was killed by his own family, and after that they still kept offering money to anyone who wanted to propagate the religion. However, it had to be like this. That was about 35 years ago. Up to that time I had a large collection of books that were from many different countries and they had alternate viewpoints. One of the important things that I noted that I really appreciated about the books that I owned at the time was that when a person would give an opinion or a treatise on any subject he would, number one, tell you what his qualifications for giving that treatise were. Number two, he would tell you what the alternate voices were, and then, finally, he would tell you what his viewpoint was, giving due respect to the alternate opinions about it.
You don't find that any more. You can't find it anywhere. If you read some of the books and they may present it as if they were showing the alternate view, I've not seen any case where they weren't lying. Straight out, they were just lying. They would distort things like this issue about love for God and how they play with the names because people don't know.
That's what we're up against.
Senator Stewart Olsen: I'm wondering if you've had a chance to share any of this with law enforcement. Have they approached you to get this kind of information from you?
Ms. Walrond: Yes, I was very fortunate. I had a visit at my house on Saturday from a couple of law enforcement professionals and we had a long conversation. They're very knowledgeable about the Muslim community. They know people by name. I said that I don't frequent the mosque. Most of the men I might know as father of so-and-so or mother of so-and-so, but I don't even know their names, but they know them. They've sat down and they've talked with numerous people in the community, as I'm doing with you. I'm trying to share a different outlook on it.
Even a lot of the people who are perpetuating this deception don't even know, unfortunately. They themselves may not buy that ideology or that outlook, but they think it's an acceptable outlook and they don't connect the dots between where it starts, which is pretty innocuous on the surface, and where it could end up. I'm the only one making that assertion.
Senator Stewart Olsen: Is there any movement amongst the imams that perhaps don't agree with this Wahhabism to organize a kind of support for people like you and for Muslims who don't agree and that's the majority? Is there support? It's difficult for a government to step in and say to a religious denomination, ''You must do this.'' In most denominations I'm familiar with, the religion polices itself. If you have pastors who speak against, say, United Church doctrine, they're gone. I'm not sure the government can step in. It's a very difficult area. We believe in the separation of church and state, so I can see there's some difficulty with this, and our comprehension is difficult as well.
Ms. Walrond: To address the second part of your question first, I'm looking at it from the perspective that religious leaders are not just religious leaders. They're counsellors and teachers, and counsellors and teachers normally have to have some kind of qualifications to be that. I'm looking at it from that perspective. From that perspective, yes, I think the Canadian government should put down some guidelines as to who gets to call themselves a priest or an imam or a clergy person.
As for whether or not there are other people, I'm pretty confident that if I go to just about any imam in the city and say, ''This is my problem, and this is what I'm not understanding,'' they'll give me a pretty good answer because that individual himself is a good person. When I started the National Islamic Sisters' Association, we went to many of the mosques and talked to them about what we were trying to do and why. Everyone we met, including the imam of the mosque that taught my son these views, even him, he actually had tears in his eyes and said, ''We really need an organization like yours.'' But he has no power. His board runs the community. The board members, as far as I've been told and from what I've observed, are mainly businessmen. They're professionals. They're not religious people at all. Their religion is being on the board of the mosque. I'm not saying their religion, but their contribution to the religion, their contribution to the community, is being on this board and helping to run things. When it comes down to which direction they go, I believe whoever has infiltrated the board to direct them toward the Wahhabi influence, what are they going to say? They're not that religious. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. In this case, the squeaky wheel gets to run how the imam functions.
You see, it's not like it used to be. This is the way I remember learning about communism when I was a kid. It wasn't a particular person. There were certain key ideas or a certain mentality coupled with certain ideas that would lead a person to embrace communism and become a radical communism anti-capitalist problem for us here. It's not just that simple.
Senator Day: I'd like to take you back to the discussion we were having about the transformation of Islam from your voyage with Islam where you first went. What was the name? Wahhabism was not prominent at that time, or Salafi'ism.
Ms. Walrond: Salafi'ism is just another name for Wahhabism.
Senator Day: They weren't prominent at the time you first went and converted, but you saw a transition. For the last 20 years, you have been warning people about your concerns that Wahhabism was becoming dominant and these extreme conservative views. Is that correct?
Ms. Walrond: Yes.
Senator Day: I am assuming that the same thing is happening in the United States as is happening in Canada, from all your contacts you've had?
Ms. Walrond: I've been in Canada for 25 years, but I think so. I went to Philadelphia. My oldest son was injured in an accident, and I went down to Philadelphia to attend to his needs a couple of months ago, or last month. I went to Philadelphia for the first time in a long time, and I was quite shocked. Wahhabism has taken over everything. They are very, very radical. Like, the women, we have the face cover, which is not necessarily an indication of Wahhabism. Not necessarily. However, they are radical, and that's their uniform there.
Senator Day: The final question I would like to ask then, you have two sons —
Ms. Walrond: I have three sons.
Senator Day: And maybe you have seen differences. Some have been more influenced than others by the teachings that they're getting or by the Internet or whatever. Can you help other people that might be watching or listening to this? What are the signs? How do you know that an individual is becoming radicalized or is moving towards violent tendencies and extreme conservative views?
Ms. Walrond: As I said earlier, the main thing is when they get more emotional than they are rational. Islamism is usually a very rational ideology. Traditional Islam is very rational. The only way that anybody can become radicalized is when they suspend their common sense and logic. They don't pay attention to what they see; they pay attention to what somebody told them that they see.
The young lady that is with me tonight?
Senator Day: She's here.
Ms. Walrond: She converted at the mosque where my son had been. The police officers who visited us this weekend asked her, ''Why didn't you become?'' She said, ''Because I have a mind of my own.'' That's basically what it's like. Most Canadian youth want to eradicate this influence from their community because they're Canadian and they want to be able to think for themselves and they want to be able to do what they believe is right, but they have other people telling them that if they do that, they're not being a good Muslim.
Senator Day: I'm looking for signs. As a mother, looking at your three sons, what are the signs or indications that your son —
Ms. Walrond: He began to argue about things that really I didn't think were arguable, and telling me that everything that I taught him in his upbringing was wrong. My interpretation of Islam was wrong and that an action without any regard to the intent behind it could make you become a non-Muslim. Like I said, he got the full deal. He got the big dose. Of course, I'm sure he was open to it, but there is an element or a part of their philosophy that is the reason that overseas they are killing more Muslims than non-Muslims. They can excommunicate other people. They can say these people are kuffar, these people are not Muslims, and so therefore they should be killed. That's why they're killing the scholars. They are saying they are objects of worship because the people give them respect, and they tell them this person is a Shia or a person of another sect or another religion. They're kuffar, and that means their blood is awful. They use that term.
I sat in a mosque one day and got angry at my son. We were having an argument, and I said, ''I'm going to this mosque.'' This was more than 15 years ago. ''I'm going over there and I want to know who this guy is who taught you this and I want him to say to my face that I'm not Muslin.''
Senator Day: You're only talking about one son. The other two are not —
Ms. Walrond: My oldest son is Christian. My youngest son is just a traditional Muslim. I went to the mosque. While I was waiting for this person, and I don't know his name — I was told a name, but I'm told that wasn't the right name. Anyway, I sat down with some women who were having a class. In the class, they were discussing what makes a person Muslim and what makes a person not Muslim. I said, ''I do that.'' They said something. ''I do that.'' Most of it was in Arabic, and I could understand just enough to interject in English. ''I do that, so does that make me a non-Muslim?'' The teacher, knowing me and knowing how opposed I am to their views, was trying to be sophisticated about it. Sort of like, ''Well, you don't know.'' But the young woman sitting to my left, she's saying in Arabic that I should be killed right there in the class.
I should be killed. ''Her blood is awful. She's not Muslim; she's an idol worshiper.'' I was shocked that she would say that.
The Chair: I have a couple of questions to clarify the record. The questioning of the mosque that you're familiar with, are they all or in part financed through Saudi Arabia, or just a few of them?
Ms. Walrond: I don't know. The only one I know of is the one I'm referring to that my son went to that is, I think, heavily financed by Saudi Arabia. I would say possibly aspects or agents of the Saudi government, not specifically the government itself, people who get money from there and donate it.
But other mosques, as far as I have been told, they try very hard not to accept money from those influences because they know they come with strings attached. However, if you have a $5-million project and somebody dangles a few hundred thousand in front of your nose if all you do is allow a certain preacher to come, I don't know personally, but I know it would be hard to convince my board not to.
The Chair: I know in reading what's happening internationally in some countries, they are starting to question whether or not that kind of money should be allowed in for that type of purpose. Do you have any comments on that?
Ms. Walrond: Yes. I said number four, stop allowing tax exemptions for building projects. When my organization is asking for donations, a lot of people will tell us, ''Oh, we're all behind you. I support you. I just gave a good donation to the mosque. Tell them I want you to receive funds for that.''
I used to go to the mosque, I haven't done it in a while, but I might go to some representative of the mosque and say that we need such-and-such money for such-and-such poor person, and they will say, ''Well, we don't have money. We have to use all the money that we get for the building.''
As a charitable organization, they're allowed to write tax receipts, and they're still allowed to use that money that they wrote a tax receipt for for their building. I'm not saying they shouldn't have charitable status, but I'm saying the charitable status should not be for building edifices, because people can't eat edifices.
The Chair: I am following up on Senator Stewart Olsen's line of questioning. It would seem to me that it would be within the Muslim community, in this case, and there would be the Christian community, that the vast majority of Muslims, the way I understand it, who are moderate and have their own beliefs within their religious connotations, yet at the same time have the same values as all other Canadians. What I don't quite understand is, in view of what's going on in the world, because they are run by a board, you said, why aren't those individuals who are concerned about their community — and there obviously has to be a great number of them — why are they not taking control themselves so that they can ensure their young people will get the necessary training, and they won't run into the trouble that perhaps some other particular organizations have?
Ms. Walrond: Well, I was told recently that less than 10 per cent of the Muslim community attends mosque. All I know is that it's true that most Muslims don't go to mosque. The mosque was something that people who have a nostalgic idea, I think anyway, of what Islam should look like in North America based on the nostalgic idea of their previous country, and they want to have this here as a symbol of ''We're here.''
Canadian Muslims often don't relate to it. Basically, what I think I'm hearing in your question is why aren't Muslims standing up and saying, ''This is not us.'' In the fact that they're not supporting the mosque and that they are not in support of radicalism, in general, they are hoping that they can just leave all that alone and that fringe element will fizzle on its own, but it's too powerful.
As I said in the beginning, there is no alternate voice, and as long as we don't have the support from our fellow Canadians to raise the voice to counter that narrative, then they're going to continue to be dominant.
The Chair: If I could conclude this, this is why we're having this national conversation. This is to support the vast majority of the Muslim community and Canadians in general, in respect to the values that we hold very dear in Canada and to ensure that the terrorism and, in some case, the hate that precedes that is dissipated, if not eliminated. The question that we have to ask ourselves is how to prevent that. How do we aid and assist people such as yourself in your community and other communities across the country?
I want to assure you, from all members here, that that's the purpose behind the study that we're undertaking. We're in a fortunate position to have this conversation, and as we move forward, we're going to be looking for people such as you for ideas and support.
Thank you very much, Ms. Walrond, for your courage to come forward, the time and effort you obviously put into bringing forward this presentation. It will certainly be added to the record, and if we can be of help in the future, let us know.
Ms. Walrond: Thank you very much.
The Chair: The committee is adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)