From the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy

By Collin May

Arrests linked to terrorism reveal concerns over both imported and homegrown radicalization

Recently, Canada’s immigration system has come under scrutiny due to a series of arrests of individuals alleged to be planning terrorist attacks. The first arrests came in July when a father and son, Ahmed Fouad Mostafa Eldidi and Mostafa Eldidi, were charged with a number of terrorism-related offenses after their arrest near Toronto. The pair immigrated to Canada, where the father obtained his citizenship, prompting a review of immigration screening processes.

This was followed earlier this month by the arrest of Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, who was alleged to be planning a mass shooting at a Jewish center in New York City. Kahn, a Pakistani citizen, was in Canada on a student visa. He was arrested in Quebec on his way to New York.

While these two cases playing out in eastern Canada have drawn the most media attention, we need to look to western Canada, specifically to the province of Alberta, to find several examples of homegrown Canadian terrorism. Earlier this month, Zakarya Rida Hussein, a Canadian citizen living in Calgary, Alberta, was sentenced to six years in prison on terrorism-related charges, including plans to bomb Calgary’s Pride Parade in 2023.

Even more problematic for Canada’s international reputation were two Alberta residents exporting Islamist terrorism to the United Kingdom and Israel. In July of this year, a London jury found Anjem Choudary, the notorious leader of the radical Al-Muhajiroun group, guilty of directing a terrorist group. However, Choudary was not alone in the dock. Khaled Hussein, originally from Edmonton, Alberta, was also convicted of holding membership in the same banned terror organization.

Similarly, in Israel, radicalized Alberta teacher Zachareah Adam Quraishi was killed earlier this summer when he attempted to attack an Israeli security post at Netiv Ha’asara. Quraishi was educated at the University of Alberta.

These incidents suggest a growing problem as it relates to both the importation of terrorists into Canada and the radicalization of Canadian Muslim citizens with the added concern that Canada is now exporting Islamist terror to our allies in the US, Europe, and Israel. This raises the question of what Canadian governments, at the national and provincial level, are doing to counter the importation and domestic growth of terror.

Immigration is primarily a federal responsibility, and opposition Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman has been attempting to hold the Canadian government’s feet to the fire. Over the past few months, Lantsman has been demanding answers as to how the father-son duo was able to immigrate to Canada, and why a student visa was issued to Khan, allowing him to use Canada as a staging ground for attacks in New York.

In terms of the domestic radicalization of Canadian citizens in the province of Alberta, there has been little discussion regarding how this is occurring or what the federal and provincial governments are doing to stem the tide. In Canada, for instance, education is a provincial responsibility, but nothing has been said by the conservative Alberta government about the proliferation of Islamist ideologies in the province or if anything is being done through the education system to counter their impact.

This silence is coming at a time when Canada’s federally-appointed special representative on combating Islamophobia, Amira Elghawaby, recently sent a letter to college and university administrators in Canada recommending the hiring of more Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian professors. Far from expressing concern over the growing Islamist terror threats emanating from Canada, Elghawaby highlighted an alleged dangerous climate on Canadian campuses for pro-Palestinian protesters.

The province of Quebec, no friend of Elghawaby, called for the federal Islamophobia representative to resign, citing her interference with Quebec’s provincial jurisdiction and its stance that academic hiring in the province should be based on principles of secularism rather than religious affiliation. No such call has come from the Alberta government.

That the Alberta government has had nothing to say on these matters should not surprise Canadians given that Alberta’s minister responsible for advanced education, Rajan Sawhney, was the only member of the Alberta provincial government to publicly call for my own resignation as chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission in 2022.

My crime, in Sawhney’s eyes, was having written an academic review of a book on historic Islamic imperialism penned by renowned British-Israeli historian Efraim Karsh and published by Yale University Press in 2006. Ms. Sawhney’s initial statement condemning my review has since been removed from her Facebook page.

To date, there is little evidence that most Canadian governments, federally or provincially, are overly concerned about Canada’s new reputation, and especially that of Alberta, as exporters of Islamist terrorism. However, as governments grapple with the potential negative blow-back from our allies, this attitude may undergo a rather abrupt change.

Collin May is a lawyer in Calgary, a senior fellow with the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, an adjunct lecturer in community health sciences at the University of Calgary, a former chief of the Alberta Human Rights Commission, and the author of numerous articles on the psychology, philosophy, and social theory of cancel culture.

By Mark Milke

The effort by MP Leah Gazan to criminalize residential school views she labels “denialist” is a mistake. Gazan’s Bill C-413, if passed, would criminalize any statement that might be interpreted as “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian residential school system in Canada through statements communicated other than in private conversation.”

Let’s start with examples of whose speech Gazan’s bill would criminalize, if repeated in the future: indigenous Canadians who have publicly “condoned,” or at least partly justified, residential schools.

In 1998, Rita Galloway, a teacher who grew up on the Pelican Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan and then-president of the First Nations Accountability Coalition, was interviewed about residential schools. She noted that she had “many friends and relatives who attended residential schools,” and argued, “Of course there were good and bad elements, but overall, their experiences were positive.”

In 2008, the late Richard Wagamese, an Ojibwe author and journalist, wrote in the Calgary Herald about the many abuses that took place at residential schools. He then straightforwardly argued that positive stories needed to be told, too, including his mother’s.

After praising her neat, clean home and cultured lawn on a reserve outside Kenora, Ont., Wagamese noted how his 75-year-old mother “credits the residential school experience with teaching her domestic skills.” Critically, “My mother has never spoken to me of abuse or any catastrophic experience at the school.”

Wagamese argued the then-forthcoming Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) “needs to hear those kinds of stories, too,” and that telling “the good along with the bad” will “create a more balanced future for all of us.”

That’s not because such schools were perfect — or even optimal. As has been extensively documented, physical and sexual abuses occurred in some schools, and that is something that no one should downplay.

But it’s too easy to forget the limited choices that existed for 19th- and early 20th-century Canadians. As we do today, most people back then believed in the value of universal education. Many Canadians, indigenous and non-indigenous, lived in poverty, had rudimentary transportation links, limited job opportunities and thus limited possibilities for day schools in remote areas, such as reserves.

Imagine the outcry today if earlier generations of parishioners, parents (including Indigenous parents) and politicians mostly ignored remote reserves and failed to provide indigenous communities with educational opportunities. The same voices today who accept no nuance on residential schools would likely excoriate that choice to deny education to Indigenous children.

The choices in the 19th and 20th centuries were not between perfection and its opposite; they represent a trade-off between suboptimal choices. Understanding this requires nuance, which is in short supply these days.

As an example, consider the perspective of Manitoba school trustee Paul Coffey, a Metis man who made a presentation to the Mountain View School Division board meeting in Dauphin, Man., about racism in April and was pilloried for it. His remarks included comments about residential schools. Coffey tried to argue that residential schools had good and bad aspects, but he was roundly criticized for his views.

In a July interview, Coffey again offered nuance about the schools, noting what much of the media missed in their initial firestorm coverage: “I said they were nice. I then also said they weren’t. I said treaties were nice and then they weren’t. I said even TRC is a good idea, until it isn’t.”

Criminalizing these stories and opinions would mean that these three indigenous voices, and many others, could face fines or jail time. This is precisely why speech, unless urging violence, should never be criminalized.

Another reason not to criminalize speech is because it makes it even more difficult to correct bad ideas and lingering injustices. An open society requires open discourse. It’s the only way errors can only be corrected. That disappears if one becomes subject to fines and imprisonment for thinking out loud, including when one is ultimately proved to be in error.

Gazan’s bill is the latest attempt by Canadian politicians to suppress views and conclusions with which they disagree. That suppression is illiberal and unhelpful. Mandating a single point of view damages the accumulation of knowledge that’s necessary for progress, prevents a useful dissection of why abuses occurred in residential schools and will prevent the open discrediting of wrongheaded positions.

No one person will be right every time. Open, public debate is critical to exposing errors and advancing human progress.

Mark Milke is the president of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy.