(Winnipeg, Manitoba) The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 acted as a “catalyst” for hatred in Canada, where individuals of various allegiances are radicalizing and raising fears of a terrorist attack, worries the head of the Canadian intelligence services, in his very first interview with a French-speaking media.
“We are seeing an increase in hatred in Canada,” says David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), bluntly. On the sidelines of a speech Monday at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Canada’s spy chief agreed to sit down with The Press to discuss the seriousness of the situation. He had never granted an official interview before that day as part of his duties.
“The Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was a catalytic event,” he explains. People who direct their anger at one side or the other in this conflict are suddenly appearing on CSIS radar across the country, because authorities fear they will use violence on Canadian soil.
“The terrorist threat concerns us greatly, with what is happening at the moment,” continues the director.
“People see it clearly, the hatred, the rise of anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” he said. For its agents, the challenge is to identify individuals who could put their words into action. And above all, to spot them in time.
“With the limits of what I can say publicly, we have concerns about what is happening in Canada. The terrorist threat level is still maintained at the “Medium” level, but this is reviewed daily. We’re in a situation where we could wake up tomorrow morning and…” He stops, without finishing his sentence.
I must say that we are in a period where we are looking at this in a very intense way. We see people, including young people, very young people, who are of great concern to us as an intelligence service. Who are radicalized online and who become very important areas of concern.
David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
“The phenomenon had a certain resurgence before October 7, but we have seen it in a more specific way since,” says the man who has led SCRS since 2017.
Special climate
David Vigneault is cautious when asked about Montreal imam Adil Charkaoui, one of CSIS’s bêtes noire, who has recently returned to the news.
Canadian intelligence services had designated Mr. Charkaoui as a sleeper agent of the Al-Qaeda terrorist network, prompting former Immigration Minister Denis Coderre to have him imprisoned under a security certificate in 2003. The Supreme Court had, however, judged that Mr. Charkaoui must have access to CSIS evidence in order to defend himself, and the organization preferred to throw in the towel rather than reveal its investigative secrets. Mr. Charkaoui has been suing the Canadian government for 13 years and has forced CSIS to spend an enormous amount of time on legal proceedings.
Afterwards, The Press revealed that several followers of Mr. Charkaoui left Canada to join the Islamic State terrorist group or attempted to do so.
Recently, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) opened an investigation into a speech by the imam at a demonstration in Montreal, where he spoke of exterminating the “enemies of the people of Gaza.”
“Based on what is available in the media, this is an individual who apparently had a very significant influence on young people who tried to leave Montreal to join Daesh, some who left, and who engaged with a terrorist group abroad,” recalls Mr. Vigneault.
PHOTO JOHN WOODS, WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
For his public statements [d’Adil Charkaoui] in the recent demonstration: we, as an intelligence service, do not investigate hateful comments. There were comments that the police were investigating. They have to do their job.
David Vigneault, Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service
However, he seized the opportunity. Without commenting on a specific case, “there is a climate that exists and hateful comments, or comments that could be interpreted by some as a call to violence – and I am not passing judgment here – are very dangerous , especially in the context in which we live,” he recognizes.
No room for error
He emphasizes that his organization has worked very hard in recent years to rebuild bridges with Muslim Canadians who may have felt unfairly targeted by CSIS on the basis of prejudices and conflations after September 11, 2001. He acknowledges that he there were errors in this sense.
Now, half of CSIS’s counterterrorism resources are devoted to monitoring far-right or related movements. Last week, RCMP arrested two Ontarians accused of producing propaganda for neo-Nazi terrorist groups. The police took care to thank CSIS, which helped them in the investigation.
But the limited resources of the service do not allow us to do everything. Between the foreign interference that has made headlines this year, espionage, the theft of technological secrets and the extremist threat, agents sometimes have to make “difficult choices,” he said. “We have to prioritize. »
“The threat to Canadians, the threat to Canada’s interests, it’s increasing. It increases in complexity and intensity,” says David Vigneault.
And monitoring these threats does not allow room for error, explained the director in his public speech Monday.
“It’s complex, it’s relentless, and you only have to make a mistake once to get a catastrophic result,” he said.