Threats of terrorism have been on the rise in Canada for the past several years and it’s perhaps linked to two major separate streams which appear to be increasing in parallel. 

A study released by Insight Threat Intelligence found that terrorism-related charges in Canada have been on the rise since 2007, with a dramatic spike in 2023. 

The bulk of the 73 charges during that period involved “religiously motivated” terrorists with links to “jihadist groups”  but “over the last four years, there has been an increase in diversity of motivation, with ideologically motivated individuals also being charged with terrorism offences,” it reads.

True North interviewed Canadian Global Affairs Institute counter-terrorism expert John Gilmore to get more insight as to what could be causing the increase in charges. 

Gilmore noted that from 2015 onward there was a shift in how things were defined, with government agencies moving focus from “religiously motivated terrorism” to “ideologically motivated terrorism,” which encompassed a broader range of attacks and threats. 

Ideologically motivated terrorism includes threats and attacks from both sides of the political spectrum and can involve a variety of motivating factors.

“I would suggest that one of the reasons for that was that in the US there was a renewed focus on what they called right-wing terrorism or what is characterized as domestic terrorism because you had a lot of shootings by lone wolves or self-radicalized individuals,” said Gilmore. “They were ideologically-based, not Jiahdist-based.”

Over that period there was a spike in domestic attacks rooted in xenophobic, racist and anti-government perspectives that outnumbered those which were religiously motivated. 

Gilmore thinks the events south of the border shifted the narrative in Canada as well over fears that such attacks could become a problem domestically.  

“Whether that was the case or not,” said Gilmore. “Obviously Canada does not have the same cultural history or background to support that kind of activity because we’ve never had militias. We’ve never had the bifurcation of political ideology in Canada the way it’s evolving in the US.”

“But the thing is, if you look at the Jihadist-based terrorism, it never went away. It didn’t receive the same high-profile attention of any sort of right-wing attack or any ideologically motivated attack that took place” over that period. 

The definitions play a role as well. 

While Nathanial Veltman, the man behind the London truck attack in 2021 clearly acted from an ideologically-motivated place, the same is predominantly thought of Alek Minassian, who drove a van through a crowd in Toronto, killing 11 people in 2018. 

While many thought Minassian’s actions to be motivated by incel ideology, an online community of young men who consider themselves unable to attract women sexually and thus hold hostile views towards them, it was actually rooted in a grotesque form of narcissism. 

“Interestingly enough, when you look at the court proceedings for Minassian, he said ‘I never really was an incel-motivated individual, I just wanted my 15 minutes of fame,’” said Gilmore.

He believes the reason for such a spike in threats of terrorism from 2023 onward is that both the ideologically motivated terrorism and the religiously motivated terrorism are increasing in parallel. 

“Why is that? That’s up for discussion,” said Gilmore. “A lot of people are pointing to the conflict in Gaza. People are pointing to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the reemergence of terrorist groups there. Recently, they’re looking to the collapse in Syria where there’s an opportunity for ISIL to regenerate itself based on the power vacuum there.”

Gilmore noted that ISIL has “spread its affiliate network significantly around the world primarily through the Khorasan group,” which was responsible for a terrorist attack in Moscow last March.  

“If you look at things grosso modo, the level of religiously-motivated or Jihadist-motivated terrorism from a global perspective, that has always been the number one threat in terms of numbers, attacks and lethality,” he added.

Gilmore said that while one could look at the increase in charges reflected in the study as the result of very diligent work from law enforcement and national security agencies, the majority of attacks were undertaken by individuals unknown to authorities.

“That kind of undermines that particular argument,” he said, adding that the bulk of tips that Canadian authorities do receive in advance primarily come from their US counterparts as well as those in Europe. 

While Canada may not be as prepared as it should, partially because it’s not clear as to where resources would best be placed, Gilmore said that the “senior leaders of the FBI, CIA, MI6 have said that the red lights are blinking again when it comes to the religiously motivated stuff.”

“The threat environment that they are facing right now has never been more complicated or more complex than anything they’ve seen over the past 70 or 80 years,” explained Gilmore, emphasizing that you can never completely get rid of terrorism.

“It’s just risk management really,” he said.