A Racist Group Is Trying to Gain Legitimacy in Canadian Politics

As Pierre Poilievre stepped onto the stage to address the Canada Strong and Free Network conference in early May, some of the most prominent and important establishment conservatives in Canada were looking on.

So too was an increasingly notorious “Canadian nationalist” who advocates for the mass deportation of those he deems “foreigners” — which includes permanent residents and birthright citizens — from the country: Daniel Tyrie.

For Tyrie, attending the conference was part of “an important strategy”: one of humanizing his organization — and its ideas — in the eyes of some of the most powerful right-wingers in Canada.

Tyrie is the executive director of the Dominion Society of Canada, a group that advocates for a far-right policy known as “remigration.” The Dominion Society is proposing to remove up to nine million people — as much as 21 per cent of Canada’s current population — by deporting immigrants as well as revoking birthright citizenship.

The racist idea has become increasingly mainstream around the world in recent years, thanks to far-right European politicians and U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House. The concept has gained enough international support that its far-right proponents gathered in Porto, Portugal, in late May for a “Remigration Summit.”

Hundreds, including Tyrie, attended.

Researchers have called the remigration movement a form of ethnic cleansing, a parallel Tyrie denies. He’s also denied being a white nationalist. Despite his protestations, however, Tyrie has said in interviews that he’s “very clear about what a Canadian is.”

“All these groups that established Canada, this ethnic continuity that we’re talking about, these people can be called white people,” he said in a February interview with Candice Malcolm of Juno News.

Now, Tyrie says he’s hoping to use events like the Canada Strong and Free Network conference to normalize his ideas in Canadian politics.

“I’m just going to take a chance to get to talk to these people, to humanize the organization, because so many of these people, they think we’re, like, radical, unreasonable,” he told supporters on a May 7 livestream, the day he saw Poilievre speak at the conference.

Tyrie grinned as he acknowledged some of his online followers can be “feral,” which has led some to be “apprehensive” of him in these rooms.

“But it’s good to show up and be there in person, show face, have conversations with people and show them that we’re serious, we’re professional, we’re reasonable, we’re not going to back down on our ideas but we can actually work collaboratively with people, that we’re not just hateful, radical bigots,” he said.

“That we understand how the process works and our role in the greater system.”

According to Tyrie’s telling of the conference, some conservatives were buying what he was selling.

“But there have been some interesting people — some interesting, very nice people in and around political parties and other groups, media and so on — that have taken some time to talk with me, get to know me, get to know our ideas,” Tyrie boasted.

“In that sense, I think it’s been rather productive.”

That’s exactly why researchers who study the far right are voicing their concern that Tyrie was allowed to be in such a powerful room.

“The inclusion of remigration activists such as Daniel Tyrie into mainstream conservative spaces is unacceptable,” said Wendy Via, CEO and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism.

What is remigration?

“Remigration is at its core a call for ethnic cleansing of non-white people from a country,” Via told The Tyee in a statement.

The term was popularized by Martin Sellner, whom Via described as a “European former neo-Nazi” and the “de facto leader of the white nationalist Identitarian movement.” Austrian author Natascha Strobl, who wrote a book about Sellner’s Generation Identity movement, researched Sellner’s background and has said he was part of the “neo-Nazi scene” as a teenager.

On its website, the Dominion Society tells the public that to understand remigration, “you must first understand the great replacement.”

That is the baseless theory that white people are being deliberately “replaced” by a cabal through migration and growing minority communities. While different adherents to this racist conspiracy theory pin the blame on different groups for supposedly spearheading this “replacement,” Jewish people are often blamed for the supposed “plot.”

While the Dominion Society website makes no mention of Jewish people, it does assert that “the great replacement” is “not a conspiracy theory.”

“Heritage Canadians are being replaced — and it’s happening all over the world,” its website reads.

The solution to this, according to the group, is “remigration.”

Remigration, as a concept, is packaged to appear “reasonable to the average person,” the Canadian Anti-Hate Network wrote in an explainer piece on the issue.

It’s this packaging that makes the idea so insidious. It allows a white nationalist concept to move from the fringes into the mainstream — including into politics.

In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known by the abbreviation AfD, has embraced remigration. In November 2023, AfD politicians and aides joined neo-Nazis in a secret meeting with Sellner, in which he reportedly outlined his remigration proposal.

In early January 2025, AfD leader Alice Weidel publicly embraced the term. Speaking to a conference hall about “large-scale repatriations,” she affirmed that “if it's going to be called remigration, then that's what it's going to be: remigration.”

Meanwhile, the Trump White House is also now using the term. The Department of Homeland Security has posted the message “Remigration now” on social media. The State Department has also proposed the establishment of an “office of remigration.”

Just weeks ago, on May 12, the White House posted a graphic with a red line striking out the words “replacement migration.” Below, in larger type and notably absent any strikeout, was the word “remigration.”

Now, proponents of this racist movement want it to enter the mainstream in Canadian politics — and they’re networking domestically and internationally to work towards that goal.

Canadian group attends ‘Remigration Summit’ in Portugal

In late May, Tyrie and his fellow Dominion Society leaders travelled to Portugal to join hundreds of far-right figures and supporters attending a “Remigration Summit” — one that was co-organized by Sellner.

Smiling alongside Sellner in a photo the two took at the summit, Tyrie gushed in an X post about his admiration for the figure.

“It was a great pleasure to finally have the chance to meet [Martin Sellner] in the flesh. Martin is the Godfather of the Remigration movement. No one has done more to advance the cause not only in his home country, but across Europe and the Western world,” Tyrie wrote.

“Martin has been a key influence on me as we have built the strategy and tactics behind the [Dominion Society] in order to advance remigration in Canada. It was very motivating to hear that our young movement is measuring up to his ambitious standards.”

Sellner shared the post, adding, “The honour and pleasure was mine.”

“I've been watching your impressive work for a while, and we're looking forward to increasing the connection and collaboration with Canada's Identitarian Movement,” Sellner wrote.

Tyrie spoke at the conference, as did many international far-right figures. Wired’s David Gilbert reported also seeing members of Patriot Front, a U.S. white supremacist group, at the event.

Gregory Bovino, the U.S. Border Patrol “commander at large” who spearheaded Trump’s deadly immigration crackdown in Minneapolis and other cities, was a star speaker at the conference.

He reportedly told the crowd that remigration is “the most important topic of our lifetimes.”

“Use us. Many of you have my phone number. I am a phone call away, and I would absolutely love to ensure that those lessons are not learnt a second time,” Bovino told the crowd, according to Wired.

Tyrie is among those claiming to have Bovino’s phone number. When a user on X asked whether Tyrie met with Bovino, the Dominion Society leader replied, “Of course.”

“Have his number for when we need to start rounding them up,” Tyrie added.

Apparently for Tyrie, showing up in spaces like the Canada Strong and Free Network conference is part of how he plans to work towards that goal of “rounding them up.”

How did a ‘Canadian nationalist’ attend a conservative conference?

The Canada Strong and Free Network conference Tyrie attended featured several high-profile politicians this year, in addition to Poilievre.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith and Trump’s former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, were also speakers at the conference, alongside several former premiers, current members of Parliament and darlings of right-wing media.

But getting into that powerful room isn’t cheap — and you can’t do it anonymously. A general admission ticket will run you over $500. VIP tickets cost more than $2,000, and even a student ticket is more than $250.

The sign-up process, which The Tyee verified, requires the attendee to provide plenty of identifying information, including their full name, address, postal code and contact information.

That means the organizers, who are responsible for the safety and cohesion of a room of some of the country’s most prominent conservatives, would have the names of all attendees.

Despite this, Tyrie wasn’t prevented from attending — something that surprised him.

“I wasn’t sure if they’d even let me in,” Tyrie told his supporters on the May 7 livestream.

According to Tyrie’s telling of events, the organizers were sufficiently aware of his attendance to have him monitored — but not removed.

“I have been allowed to attend. I haven’t been bothered too much,” he told his livestream.

“Actually, they did have a security guard following me around and filming me and taking pictures today, so I thought that was a bit odd. But I’m just going as an attendee.”

The Tyee contacted the organizers of the Canada Strong and Free Network conference to provide comment for this story, but we did not receive a reply.

According to Via, the people who organized this conference failed when they allowed Tyrie to march through the conference venue doors.

“Mainstream conservative spaces must not fall for the white nationalist strategy of ‘humanizing’ their calls for ethnic cleansing, and instead institute proper vetting processes to filter out hate from their political discourse,” she said.

“Anything else simply normalizes a racist term and idea that has no place in serious immigration policy discussions.”

Are conservatives buying into these ideas?

Tyrie told his supporters the goal was to show attendees he — and his ideas — are reasonable. He claimed that some at the conference were “making eye contact,” then “quickly looking away, trying to avoid” him.

But others, he boasted, did hear him out.

“I won’t go and ‘out’ the people that have been nice enough to actually talk with me,” he told the livestream.

The mass deportation enthusiast has had a mixed reception in Canada’s conservative circles.

Prominent right-wing websites like Juno News have repeatedly platformed Tyrie, publishing his opinion pieces and even holding a “debate” between Tyrie and Juno News founder Candice Malcolm on the topic of immigration.

In the interview, Tyrie appeared to be using the same strategy he described deploying at the Canada Strong and Free Network conference: he watered down the true nature of his beliefs, though he still found time to make it clear he views the “ethnic continuity” of Canada to be that of “white people.”

That prompted vocal criticism from a prominent conservative: former Alberta premier Jason Kenney.

“Daniel Tyre is a racist. Racism is immoral. It is poison. It is not ‘vitality.’ It is not conservative,” Kenney wrote on X on Feb. 16.

“And what the hell does ‘remigration’ mean? Forced mass deportation of people who lawfully immigrated to Canada, and are now permanent residents or Canadian citizens? Bananas.”

Malcolm pushed back, defending the decision to platform Tyrie.

“It isn’t racist to want to end mass migration,” she responded, massively downplaying what the concept of ‘remigration’ actually calls for.

“It isn’t racist to define what it means to be Canadian. And it isn’t racist to say that those who don’t belong in Canada should be asked to leave.”

Tyrie, meanwhile, was thrilled to have defenders in the right-wing media outlet — which has also repeatedly interviewed some of the most prominent Conservative party figures, including Poilievre.

“Big ups to the team at Juno,” Tyrie said on a livestream at the time.

“That’s exactly what we need from the counter-narrative space. So I really want to give a shout out to those guys.”

Carmen Celestini is a lecturer at the University of Waterloo who studies religion, extremism, conspiracy theories and politics in North America.

She said Tyrie’s decisions to show up in right-wing spaces is indeed “an important strategy.”

“Daniel Tyrie, in one of his podcast interviews when the society first started, said their plan was metapolitics,” she told the Tyee.

“They want to infiltrate the main parties with their volunteers to make it look like this is the majority opinion. Then the parties would have to come to him for white papers on how to implement their remigration plan.”

She said their plan is to “activate the youth and force the change they want.”

Despite their big plans, it’s clear the Dominion Society’s ideas can still be staved off from truly entering mainstream political debate.

When Tyrie spoke at the “Remigration Summit,” he lamented that Canada’s “migration situation is very advanced.”

“It’s very dire. But the political situation is so far behind,” he said.

Tyrie finished his remarks on the panel with what was likely intended as a battle cry.

“All we need to do is to get organized,” Tyrie said, “and our victory is inevitable.”

For Canadians who oppose Tyrie’s cruel agenda, however, it should serve as a hopeful reminder as much as a warning: his ideology has yet to take hold in the minds of many Canadians — and that means, despite his confidence, it can be uprooted.

This article is part of The Tyee’s reader-funded Reality Check project exposing and explaining disinformation.