Jeff Davis
windsorstar.com
Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews, seen during Question Period Wednesday, has announced an inter-departmental counter-terrorism strategy.
Photograph by: Blair Gable , Reuters
OTTAWA — Public Safety Minister Vic Toews unveiled Canada's first comprehensive counter terrorism strategy Thursday, which includes response plans to major attacks and strategies for de-radicalizing homegrown terrorists and 'lone wolf' attackers.
Toews said Canada will be more resilient to terrorist attacks now that the sweeping, interdepartmental strategy is in place.
"The reality is that no government can guarantee it will be able to prevent all terrorist attacks all the time," he said. "Nevertheless, Canada is committed to taking all reasonable measures to address terrorism in its many forms.
"One of the biggest threats — the evolution of the threat — is the domestic homegrown terrorism, which is some of the most difficult terrorism to detect," he said.
Security experts welcomed the new plan, saying inter-agency co-operation has declined in recent years, and that domestic terrorism is a much more serious threat than most Canadians realize.
Building Resilience Against Terrorism: Canada's Counter-Terrorism Strategy identifies both domestic and international terrorist threats.
Sunni Islamic extremist groups such as al-Qaida and Al-Shabaab remain major threats, the strategy says, as do radicalized Canadian residents hatching "do-it-yourself" terrorism plots.
Authorities will also be on the lookout for domestic issue-based terrorism — such as the 1995 Oklahoma City bombings or Anders Behring Breivik's bloody rampage in Norway last year — authored by devotees of causes ranging from white supremacy and anti-capitalism to animal rights and environmentalism.
Toews said the Canadian Security Intelligence Service will step up its efforts to counter homegrown terrorism in vulnerable communities such as Somali Canadians.
"Terrorism is not specific to any one religion, community or ethnic group," he said. "Preventing terrorism ideology from taking hold of vulnerable individuals is the best scenario."
Toews said the strategy clarifies the existing counter-terrorism roles and responsibilities of various agencies such as the RCMP, CSIS, Foreign Affairs Canada, the Canadian International Development Agency and the armed forces.
How quickly Canada can bounce back from a major terrorist attack depends on the level of co-ordination between these agencies, he said.
The strategy describes a number of classified government "command centres," and which will be used in response to various types of terrorist attacks.
Toews admitted that it will prove difficult to determine how well the strategy is working.
"Its very difficult to measure effectiveness on the basis of an event that does not occur," he said.
Former CSIS agent Michel Juneau-Katsuya said that while Canadians normally equate terrorism with extreme Islam, what he called "white terrorism" is a bigger threat to Canada.
Since 9/11, Juneau-Katsuya said, Islamic terrorists have not succeeded in detonating a single bomb in Canada. Canadian-born citizens, meanwhile, have successfully staged 30 bombings, he said.
While ten of these were perpetrated by outlaw bikers, the rest came from a motley assortment of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, anti-globalization activists and other politically-motivated groups.
"All those people were born, raised and pissed off right here in Canada," Juneau-Katsuya said. "All the bombs that exploded here were groups operating in Canada, targeting Canadian interests right here."
Juneau-Katsuya said there has a been a sharp rise in membership and activity among white supremacists in Canada and the United States, particularly since Barack Obama was elected president. There already have been multiple attempts on Obama's life, he added.
"The Canadian and American white supremacists and neo-Nazis are keeping close tabs on each other, supporting each other, and providing weapons to each other," he said.
John Thompson, a security intelligence expert with the Mackenzie Institute, said there are significant efficiency gains to be had from closer inter-agency co-ordination and task forces. In Canada, he said, there is an astounding array of federal, provincial and municipal counterterrorism units that often are not informed of each other's activities, allowing clues to fall through the cracks.
"The first problem we have is all of our agencies and police intelligence services are underfunded and understaffed and overtasked," he said. "And one of the way is to increase efficiency through task-forcing."
Thompson said he thinks the government is trying to return to the way it combated terrorism before the Maher Arar Inquiry, which looked into allegations Arar was tortured after being sent to Syria by the Canadian security apparatus.
During the inquiry, as various agencies tried to avoid taking the blame, efficient co-operation broke down, he said.
"What they're going back to is what worked for three or four years after 9/11," he said. "Then the Arar issue came up threw a spanner into the gears . . . everybody stopped co-operating."
Better inter-agency intelligence sharing is needed to stop homegrown terrorists, he said, many of whom are on the verge of carrying out an attack when they are caught.
"With homegrowns, they've been coming faster and faster and police have been catching them later and later in the planning loop," he said.
NDP public safety critic Jasbir Sandhu said his party is uneasy with the new plan, given the government's recent signals that it is willing to use information gleaned through torture. "Their track record isn't exactly reassuring," he said.
Liberal public safety critic Francis Scarpaleggia said he was disappointed that the plan does not create a national security adviser's office, which the Air India Inquiry recommended.
He said he expects Toews to appear before the standing committee on public safety and national security to explain the plan in detail.
"It's very difficult to know specifically what the government is going to do differently," Scarpaleggia said.
