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Tackling Terrorism, the Alternative to Draconian Laws

Fighting extremism like battling gangs, police chief says.

Jeremy Nuttall 8 Dec 2014TheTyee.ca

Jeremy J. Nuttall is The Tyee's Parliament Hill reporter in Ottawa. Find his previous stories here.

This coverage of Canadian national issues is made possible because of generous financial support from our Tyee Builders.

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Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht says best way to fight terrorism is prevention. Photo Credit: Alberta Association of Chiefs of Police.

Community outreach rather than heavy-handed legislation is the best way to prevent violent attacks from ideological radicals, a Senate committee on national security has heard.

"I think our best tool is prevention," Edmonton Police Chief Rod Knecht told the committee. "Our ability to have a robust outreach program in this country and every community would be essential from a prevention perspective."

Knecht compared terrorist recruitment to gang recruitment and said police need to better engage with the community and work more with youth. Knecht also suggested that police establish outreach offices in elementary schools.

The Standing Committee on National Security and Defence is currently studying security threats to Canada, specifically homegrown terrorism.

The committee is made up of six Conservative and three Liberal senators and their findings will be written in a report to be presented to the Senate Dec. 31, 2015 with an interim report expected to be delivered before summer.

The findings could be used in the creation of legislation meant to combat threats or in consideration of legislation working its way through the House, such as the controversial Protection of Canada from Terrorists Act, if it is not passed by the time the interim report is released.

Critics have taken aim at parts of that act such as the blanket identity protection of Canadian Security Intelligence Service sources and the ability to monitor Canadians abroad.

In recent weeks, the Senate committee has heard from law enforcement officials, security experts and community leaders who said prosecution requirements for terrorism suspects are acceptable.

That is in contrast to one suggestion to lower the threshold for prosecution, which would make it easier for police to detain terror suspects, charge them or search their belongings.

Previously, RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson told the committee that the legal threshold for obtaining peace bonds should be lowered to a "reasonable suspicion" from "reasonable belief."

But other police said prosecution requirements are fine.

Last Monday, the committee heard from police officials from Montreal, Edmonton and Peel Region, west of Toronto, about their tactics fighting radicalization.

At one point, Conservative Sen. Carolyn Stewart Olsen asked Knecht if he believed the threshold for evidence required to charge suspects was too high. Knecht replied that the standards for charging suspects are the same for terror suspects as they are for other criminal suspects.

Committee members asked the same question to each police chief and all said the current bar for charging suspects is at an acceptable level.

Former Ottawa Police chief and Conservative senator Vernon White also weighed in on the issue.

"Some would argue that realistically the Canadian public don't want more terrorists arrested. They want less terrorism to occur in the first place," White said.

New officers neeeded

Knecht told the committee that constraints on resources have left a gap in his department's ability to conduct effective outreach, calling his two-member counter-terrorism team "woefully under-resourced."

Knecht also urged police departments to recruit officers from communities whose youths may be at risk of becoming radicalized. If youths can see officers of the same ethnic background, it would build trust in the police.

According to Knecht, many people in some ethnic communities don't want their children to be police officers because in their home countries, police are often viewed as corrupt.

Knecht also would like to see law enforcement officials have easier access to information devices such as suspects' phones, with proper judicial oversight of warrants.

Another witness criticized the effectiveness of dismantling websites that promote terror.

Rafal Rohozinski, CEO of an online analysis organization SecDev Group, explained three times to three different Conservative senators why dismantling these sites doesn't prevent terrorism.

Rohozinski said people who are determined to view a radical website will do so even if the site is blocked.

Rohozinski also said it's not useful to ask foreign governments to take down offending sites from their respective countries. That would likely prompt those countries to urge Canada to block sites they might not like. For example Russians might ask Canadian authorities to dismantle a Chechen website if it operated from Canada, he said.

"The one thing we can say is that most states that attempt to block sites fail miserably," he said.

Rather, it's better to identify publicly available descriptions of extremists online, gather that material, then determine if authorities need to intervene. This method could strike the right balance between the public's concern about privacy and concerns about terrorist activity, he said.

Few attend mosque

However, some Muslim community leaders who testified said community outreach is not adequate.

Syed Raza, of Muslims Facing Tomorrow -- a group dedicated to eliminating extremism from Islam -- said part of the problem with current outreach efforts is police often do it through mosques. Raza said only 20 per cent of Muslims even attend mosque and such a strategy misses out on the other 80 per cent.

"The mosque is a place of worship. It is not a place to propagate politics," Raza said in an interview after his presentation.

He said using a mosque for anything other than worship or teaching religion politicizes it, which opens the door for those wanting to pervert religion to further hatred and their own political goals.

Raza said his organization promotes the separation of mosque and state through free speech and information sharing.

In one program in Bangladesh villages, it provided secular books to youths. The program was successful in preventing radicalization of those youths. The villages have declared themselves "radical free," and posted signs boasting it.

"In the village, we provided them with enough literature, both audio and visual." Raza said. "We changed the curriculum of the school from totally religious to a secular-cum-religious, so this way they felt empowered that they're doing it themselves," he told the committee last week. "There's no one person telling them what to do."  [Tyee]

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