Those who have been doubly hurt by the Boston bombing and the recent arrest of the two alleged Canadian terrorists on Monday, are the vast majority of hard-working, law-abiding Muslim Canadians. Because once again, Canadian Muslim men, or Canadian converts to Islam, are seen to be planning, organizing or actively engaging in terrorist activities.
Personal learnings from the Countering Violent Extremism portfolio echoed the sentiments that Justin Trudeau expressed following the Boston Bombings -- to get to the root cause to prevent future attacks. Last year I had the chance to work with the Department of Public Safety on National Security Policy, and if there's one thing that you need to focus on in preventing any kind of violence from happening -- whether it be localized gun violence or terrorism -- it's the root cause. Mind you, gun violence and extremism are two very different animals, but what they do share in common is an immature and ridiculous sense of expression through violence.
The Canadian government has recently announced a plan to establish grants of $1 million to academic institutions to "study" terrorist threats to Canada. Twenty-seven years after the worst attack on Canadian interests -- the Air India bombing -- and more than a decade after 9/11, the best this government has been able to come up with is $10 million to fund academics to study what we already know?
It's good that the Ministry of Public Safety has decided to introduce amendments to the existing Anti-Terrorism Act of Canada. Even so, such measures may engender considerable controversy under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Among the many global trends are the two Big Nasty Elephants of modernity -- terrorism and pandemic spread. These two challenges to mankind share a common set of unassailable facts: they will both kill on a wide scale; and, for reasons I do not understand, the public is naïve as to the inevitability of such events.