The Current - How deep does extremism run in Canada’s Armed Forces?

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Two members of the Canadian Armed Forces are among four men facing charges over a plot to violently seize land in Quebec. The RCMP has laid terrorism-related charges alleging that the men amassed a large cache of weapons, motivated by anti-government ideology. We speak to Jessica Davis, a former CSIS analyst, about what we know so far — and what questions remain. Then, researcher Amarnath Amarasingam discusses what this case reveals about ideological extremism in Canada’s military, and how experts say the Armed Forces should respond.

Welcome to the Dudes Club, a brotherhood supporting men's health and wellness. Established in the Vancouver downtown Eastside in 2010, the Dudes Club is a community-based organization that focuses on indigenous men's health, many of whom are struggling with intergenerational trauma, addiction, poverty, homelessness, and chronic diseases. The aim is to reduce isolation and loneliness and for the men to regain a sense of pride and purpose in their lives. As a global health care company, Novo Nordisk is dedicated to driving change for a healthy world. It's what we've been doing since 1923. It also takes the strength and determination of the communities around us, whether it's through disease

awareness, fighting stigmas and loneliness, education, or empowering people to become more active. Novo Nordisk is supporting local changemakers because it takes more than medicine to live a healthy life. Leave your armor at the door. Watch this paid content on CBC Gem. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway and this is the current podcast. A giant trove of weapons, a plan to seize land in Quebec, a recruitment drive on social media. That's all part of what the RCMP alleges is an ideologically motivated plot. Earlier this week, police charged four Quebec men with being part of a plan to form an anti-government militia.

Two were active Canadian Armed Forces members. Another had retired from the military. The fourth is a former civilian instructor with the Royal Canadian Air Cadets. The RCMP Staff Sergeant Camille Abel talked about the possible motivation of the group. Quite often we would see a desire to create a new society, a desire to live by different values and wanting to change or create some kind of chaos so that they could take over society to create it and live it the way that they want. In a moment, we're going to talk more about concerns around extremism in the Canadian military. But first, I'm joined by Jessica Davis.

She's a former Canadian Security Intelligence Services Analyst and studies terrorism. She's also the president and principal consultant at Insight Threat Intelligence. Good morning. Good morning, Megan. What stands out to you about this case? There were really two things that stood out to me when I first heard about this case. The first, of course, is the fact that these are charges against serving military members. To the best of my recollection, that's the first time that we've ever seen this in Canada.

We've certainly seen charges against reservists, former reservists, retired military members, or even just links to extremism, but this is the first time that active members have been charged. The second piece of that, of course, is the size of the weapons cache. It is astonishing, if I can be frank about that. It's the largest weapons cache in a terrorism incident in Canadian history. Do we know what's in that cache? We've gotten some information.

So the cache was originally seized back in January, 2024. And I remember this was in the media and obviously raised a lot of eyebrows in my circles, people who study terrorism and extremism, because there was a lot of questions about what was this related to? This wasn't a few firearms. It was something like over 80 firearms,

11,000 rounds of ammunition, some military equipment. So just a pretty substantial arsenal. Nicole Sade 12 Wow. And do we know where they got all of that? Heather Tickle Details on that so far are really slim. There has been a statement from the military saying that some of the material was quote unquote diverted diverted from the military. So, you know, appropriated, stolen, however you want to call it, but we don't know how much and what. So looking at some of the photographs that I've seen of the seizure, you know, some of it looks to be some military equipment, but to date, you know, we don't have a full accounting of what was actually diverted from the military. Right. And I mean, what kind of damage could that hardware do to, you know, if they were to use it? I mean, there's really no understating how much damage that could do. I do want to emphasize,

though, that this incident was never described, has never been described by the RCMP as an attempted terrorist attack, per se. It wasn't like they were going to go and didn't seem like they were planning to kill a bunch of civilians. It was more about seizure of land, which of course can be violent and can have cost and human life involved in it. But if we were talking about a normal terrorist attack, this would be well in excess of anything that they would need or what we've seen in other terrorist attacks. And then for the purposes of seizing land, this is a substantial arsenal that probably could have created a fairly enduring siege.

Right. I noticed in your newsletter, you said that this is probably in the top 2% of terrorist-related seizures in Europe and even in the US. That's right. There's only a handful of other cases that I can remember that had seizures of this magnitude. One of them was the Anders Breivik attack in Norway. He had quite a number of firearms, explosive devices, all these different components that he had acquired for the preparation. And that was, of course, a very deadly attack. Yeah. Yeah. So what do we know about this group? I mean, in terms of what they were trying to accomplish, or at least what the RCMP alleges they were trying to accomplish?

We know very, again, we know very little about what they were trying to accomplish. We do know that they were anti-government, that they were trying to establish a militia, which really echoes language that we see in the United States, sort of anti-government militias, and create a new society. But we have no details in terms of what they wanted from that society. When I look at that, there's often similar kinds of languages used in groups that are anti-authoritarian, anti-government, often have racist undertones, neo-Nazi undertones, but to date we don't have any further information on that. Okay. Now you wrote about how these charges are in your words part of an ongoing trend

of rising ideologically motivated violent extremism in Canada. What rise in this kind of violent extremism are we seeing in this country? LESLIE KENDRICK This is such an interesting issue. So just for a bit of context, I spent a lot of time looking at every terrorist attack that has taken place in Canada over the last 18 years, looking at how much they cost, how they were perpetrated, who was involved, what charges, if any, were laid, and what kind of ideology motivated them. Over three quarters of those terrorist attacks were motivated

by ideologically motivated violent extremists. So this means anti-government, anti-authority, and incel, anti-Muslim, all these different types of ideology that fit within that ideologically motivated violent extremist bucket. So that's a pretty significant number, and that has been increasing over the last five to 10 years. But at the same time, we haven't actually seen a proportionate number of charges. So only about 20% of terrorism charges, which is the main way that terrorist plots and activities and incidents get disrupted in this country, only 20% of those have been against ideologically motivated violent extremism.

So there's a gap there in terms of what's happening and what's being done about it. Well, this particular investigation began in the spring of 2023, which I think I gather was a couple of years after they allegedly started. So, I mean, why do these investigations take so long? Terrorism investigations are generally very complicated. I've seen and been involved in some that have lasted years, better parts of decades. There is this high threshold for proof, which is really important. You know. You don't want to just be labeling anyone with a terrorism offense. But it's about proving the intent, what they were planning on doing, that they actually were taking steps to do that, making sure that all of the material will stand up in court. Sometimes some of the evidence, quote unquote, evidence comes from Security

Intelligence Service, which collects intelligence, not evidence, which is a whole other issue and has been an issue in Canadian law. But there's a lot of complexities. In other cases, and I don't necessarily think this is true here, but in other cases, we also get information from partners. And so having to make sure that we can use that foreign information in Canadian courts also takes time. Now, we just heard RCMP Staff Sergeant Camilla Bell talking about the desire in some of

these extremists to create a new society. How prevalent is that idea in term in with these extremist circles? I would say that that's a fairly common objective, and it's kind of an underlying thread in a lot of terrorist ideologies. So not necessarily just anti-government or anti-authority extremists, but even your al-Qaeda and Islamic State and religiously motivated terrorists also kind of have this underpinning of sort of pushing back against society and wanting to establish their own. In this context, we're really seeing it within the boundaries of our own territory, which is maybe a bit different than what we've seen with other kinds of terrorism. But it's also

very, it really echoes some of the activity that we see in the United States around this as well. Right. Well, we'll be following this and I'm sure more information will be revealed in coming months. Jessica, thanks so much for speaking with us this morning. It was my pleasure. Thank you. Jessica Davis is a former CSIS analyst and the president and principal consultant at Inside Threat Intelligence. Welcome to the Dudes Club, a brotherhood supporting men's health and wellness. Established in the Vancouver downtown Eastside in 2010, the Dudes Club is a community-based

organization that focuses on indigenous men's health, many of whom are struggling with intergenerational trauma, addiction, poverty, homelessness, and chronic diseases. The aim is to reduce isolation and loneliness, and for the men to regain a sense of pride and purpose in their lives. As a global health care company, Novo Nordisk is dedicated to driving change for a healthy world. It's what we've been doing since 1923. It also takes the strength and determination of the communities around us, whether it's through disease awareness, fighting stigmas and loneliness, education, or empowering people to become more active.

Novo Nordisk is supporting local changemakers because it takes more than medicine to live a healthy life. Leave your armor at the door. Watch this paid content on CBC Gem. This message comes from Viking, committed to exploring the world in comfort. Journey through the heart of Europe on a Viking longship with thoughtful service, destination-focused dining and cultural enrichment on board and on shore. With a variety of voyages and sailing dates to choose from, now is the time to explore Europe's waterways.

Learn more at Viking.com. AMT – Amranath Amrasingham is an associate professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario whose research focuses on terrorism, radicalization and extremism, conspiracy theories and online communities. He's also the author of the study Run Silent, Run Deep, examining right-wing Extremism in the Military. Good morning. Good morning.

Thanks for having me. Pleasure to have you. Does the Canadian military have an extremism problem? I mean, I think I wouldn't go so far as to say it has an extremism problem. I could say that they haven't necessarily studied the problem enough to make that kind of a conclusion. I think, you know, the study that you just mentioned that we did was just an initial scoping study to kind of get a sense of the problem, get a sense of how individuals involved

in the far right, you know, joined the military, left the military, the experiences they had in the military and so on. And so even that was a very initial scoping study which, you know, piqued our interest, I guess, after January 6th insurrection in the United States, where nearly 20% of those charged in the insurrection had a military background. And then we've seen several cases in Canada, like Patrick Matthews and so on, where, you know, there have been either veterans or CAF reservists involved in far-right activity. And so it kind of piqued our interest to say, like, what is this relationship? How does

this, what does this look like in Canada? But, you know, studies of that sort are kind of scant at the moment. I want to ask you more about that. But first, in terms of this case, what stands out to you about these arrests that may be different from other extremism cases we've seen involving active or former military members? Well, I think Jess, your previous guest, noted the two main things, which is that we've never seen a plot or incident where active members have been involved. It's usually been reservists or sometimes veterans and then the size of the weapons cache as well is quite unprecedented.

The thing I might add is it does seem like there is this kind of, I guess, meshing of anti-government extremism and far-right extremism in this case, that there hasn't necessarily been RCMP statements that kind of make clear, I guess, what the ideology of some of these guys were. But the idea of seizure of land and taking of land, I think, places it quite squarely, for me at least, on speculating without them confirming it, that it kind of is in the far-right space because the seizure of land and controlling land Has very much been part of the far-right movement Going back decades this idea this idea of creating a white utopian society

That pushes back against some of the values in society that they see are corrupt. You know, they see the state as basically supporting the LGBTQ rights, promoting multiculturalism, immigration, restricting gun ownership and all these kinds of things. And so there's been a lot of conversation about anti-government and far-right as being somehow separate, but there are a lot of movements where anti-government movements are basically far-right groups and these kind of militias don't separate those two ideas in their heads. Right. Right. And so I think that's what we're kind of looking at here.

Yeah. I mean, as you say, the RCMP hasn't commented on these men's political leanings, but you've interviewed a lot of former Canadian Armed Forces members who joined far-right groups. I mean, what did you learn about their specific motivations? Well, this is what was interesting. We spoke to Canadians, Americans, Europeans, who had, you know, to be included in the study, they had to be this niche category of people who had military experience, but who were also part of the far-right or had been part of the far-right. And so that isn't a lot of people and who fit both of those categories and who are willing to talk to us. But some of our conclusions are basically that there is no single profile, right? And so we spoke to people who quite

actively saw the military as a resource for weapons training, for organizational training, for tactical training. And so there's a lot of posts on different far-right forums, for instance, that say, go out and join the military. Take advantage of what they have to offer, and then bring that education, that weapons training, all of that back to the movement, back to us. And then help us get ready for the coming anti-government revolution or race war that's around the corner.

So, use the military to get that training and then bring it back to the movement. Then there are others who became radicalized to the far right while in the military. And so, this was quite interesting to us. And when we talked to them about it, they basically said that there was, and I want to be careful how I say this, I don't want to say the entire military is misogynistic and racist or something, but they said there is this element of normalized misogyny and normalized racism and normalized kind of hyper-masculine culture

within the military, which for these individuals, at least kind of served as a stepping stone towards more far right ideas. And so there was that level of, you know, experience within the military, kind of normalized violence for them, normalized dehumanization for them, which allowed them to kind of go into different movements and different groups while in the military. Right. Now, there are high profile cases of Canadian military members taking part in far-right plots and in 2021 a US judge sentenced former Manitoba Army Reservist Patrick Matthews to nine years in prison for charges related to what the FBI described as a neo-Nazi plot

to instigate a race war in the United States. Do far-right extremist groups specifically look to recruit military members? Yeah, I think that kind of what I was mentioning earlier is that they do find the military or people who have military experience to be useful for the organization, right? They have weapons training, they have kind of tactical training, they can train others within the movement on all of these issues. And so they do actively look to recruit. It might be too strong of a statement, but there is a kind of desire to bring in more military trained individuals to the movement. Part of that is this larger trend, I think, in the far right, which is to kind of professionalize the movement. They're kind of

tired of being seen as these, you know, like country bumpkin people where they want, they want, there's been a large trend in the far right to kind of, you know, put away the cowboy boots and put on the suits and put on, you know, become much more professional and elite in their activity. And so that kind of follows that trend. Right. Now we asked Ed Fitch about extremism in the military. He's a retired major general and a member of the advisory panel set up to look at systemic racism and discrimination in the Canadian armed forces. That 2022 report found the number of Canadian military members belonging to

extremist groups is growing and that it's getting harder to detect them. Take a listen. We don't know that it's a rise. It's a complex problem. There are about a hundred thousand combatants in the defence department. So all these people have to receive at least basic soldier training. That's a lot of people and it's well understood in the Department of National Defence that there are people that may want to exploit the excellent training and equipment and may want that training for inappropriate purposes. Ed Fitch says it's hard to know exactly the degree of extremism in the Canadian forces. What are you seeing in terms of the instances of these kinds of extremism in Canadian military?

Yeah, I mean, he's right. It's a little bit more complicated than, say, if you find an ISIS supporter, an al-Qaeda supporter where the ideology is, number one, is a little bit more coherent and number two, it is a listed terrorist organization, so you have kind of resources that you can use against these individuals. But when we're talking about the far right, as just your previous guest mentioned, it kind of runs the gamut between someone who's looking at incel ideology to accelerationists, to old school neo-Nazis, skinheads.

And so it's a bit more complicated and we don't know where some of those lines exist between, you know, he posted a racist comment on a Facebook forum or they are actively plotting to, you know, seize land and sometimes who gets to deal with those different categories of offense. Sometimes it's dealt with internally in the military. Sometimes it gets elevated to more federal policing if it's a terrorism case. And so it just becomes a lot more sticky, I guess, where free speech ends and where some of the hate speech begins. Right. We don't have much time, but I want to read you a statement

by the Canadian Armed Forces that they released this week. They said, CAF members are prohibited from participating in an activity or being a member of a group or organization that relates to hate-related criminal activities and or promotes hatred, violence, discrimination, and harassment. Very quickly, if you can, is the Canadian military doing enough to combat extremism in its ranks? Is the Canadian military doing enough to combat extremism in its ranks? No, I think part of it is they, you know, getting some studies in play about the scope of the problem, understanding the nature of the problem, and then working with internal and outside experts to kind of come up with mechanisms by which you can root out and detect some of this stuff. I think

it's still very early, I think, for them. Okay. Thanks so much, Amara Nath. Amara Singham is an associate professor at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, whose research focuses on terrorism, radicalization and extremism, conspiracy theories and online communities. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.