Tracking Terror, Tackling Terror

"What more do we have to do to be able to lay charges? That's the question that has to be asked."
"We have laws on the books. Why are we not at least charging a number of these individuals who obviously have a very, very serious agenda? There has to be a consequence to this. What's the point of Parliament passing these laws if we're not going to enforce them?"
"If you're raising money for the purpose of terrorism, isn't that as heinous a crime as going out and actually fighting? It's all premeditated: you know you're going to kill innocent people."
"The law enforcement agencies up to now have, overall, done the best they can with what they have. I know there are a lot of hard-working people out there who are doing everything they can to keep the peace and security in Canada."
"It's a month ago now when we had this tragedy happen [October 22 attack by Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a Muslim convert who killed Cpl. Nathan Cirillo, a Canadian Military reservist then stormed Parliament Hill with a rifle and a killing intent]. We could just become quite satisfied with ourselves again and think that everything is fine, when it really isn't fine."
"It [forcefully react to the presence of terror groups and their funding in Canada] can obviously be done fairly easily if one wants to do it, if we don't do everything we can do to prevent it. And I'm not convinced that we've done that yet."
Senator Daniel Lang, Chair, Senate National Security and Defence Committee

Emergency crews attend to a soldier who was shot while standing guard at Ottawa's War Memorial near Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday Oct. 22, 2014. Jon Willing/Ottawa Sun/QMI Agency

This was from an interview with Senator Lang, published in the Ottawa Citizen on December 5, 2014. Reports have been coming out piecemeal of interviews that the committee has been engaged in, with ranking members of Canada's security establishment and others involved in keeping Canada and Canadians safe from harm. There have been certain assurances expressed, and there have been certain concerns expressed as well. In total, reassurance is a dry well from which the liquid of fact has dried up entirely.

It has been well established that groups held to be terrorist in nature and placed on a terrorist list by Canada (as well as other Western nations) such as the Muslim Brotherhood, Islamic Jihad, Hamas, Hezbollah, al-Qaeda and scores of others including Islamic State, have a presence within Canada. They make use of Canadian laws to shield themselves from scrutiny, and make use of Canadian public conscience to exert the influence of moral judgement, claiming to be misunderstood, but for the most part acting furtively, as an underground swamp of thuggish anti-Democratic activity.

Fundraising in Canada from among expatriates, immigrants hailing from Muslim-majority countries in North Africa, the Middle East and southeast Asia are swift to give generously to the humanitarian aid agencies which pretend to fund aid to victims of civil war and other calamities, man-made and natural, but which have become skilled at diverting the funds to terrorist causes. The terror groups acting covertly link up with Mexican drug cartels and other illegal resources in the smuggling of arms, drugs, tobacco and people, deriving income from those sources as well.

There is nothing new about all of this. Investigative reporter Stewart Bell who writes now of the present situation of global terrorism and its presence in Canada, for the Postmedia group, investigated all of these charges a decade and more ago, recounting his on-site-abroad and Canadian investigative experiences in his book Cold Terror; How Canada Nurtures and Exports Terrorism Around the World, published in 2004. It has a forward written by David B. Harris, then-Director, INSIGNIS [International and Terrorist Intelligence Program], Canada.

 Senator Lang points out that over a five-year period there has been a steep rise of 220% in funding of terrorist causes through Canadian donations to groups given charitable organization status in Canada posing as humanitarian entities, using titles that appeal to the heartstrings of donors, but siphoning funding off to terror, not healing the plight of Muslim orphans. His committee has invited the heads of the RCMP and CSIS, politicians, prosecutors and federal bureaucrats to speak, yet, he says, "no one actually, directly answers the question: 'Why aren't charges being laid'?"

In the United Kingdom, as an example of a state taking direct action, 753 people have been arrested in the last four years, 212 charged; 148 successfully prosecuted; 138 now in prison; 27 stripped of citizenship; 29 passports cancelled to foil planned travel to take part in jihad. In the United States over 300 people have been convicted on terrorism charges. While a hefty fifty-three international terrorist groups have been outlawed by the Canadian federal government and many within Canada are suspected of operating there in some capacity and dozens of suspected terrorist activities and plots disrupted, there are few charges and arrests.

Registered charities suspected of funnelling funding to such groups have been stripped of charitable status and outlawed in Canada. Hundreds of thousands of dollars seized en route to leaving the country for overseas terrorist operations. Domestic financing involving terrorism and other threats to national security were uncovered in their hundreds in 2013-14 and turned over to police by the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Centre of Canada (FinTRAC). Representing an 450 percent increase from 2008.

Yet there has been a mere 17 convictions of terrorism and related offences since 2001, in Canada. The International Relief Fund for the Afflicted and Needy - Canada (IRFAN-Canada), according to federal officials, forwarded close to $15-million out of Canada to organizations affiliated with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Under scrutiny by Canada Revenue Agency auditors for ten years -- and even though Hamas is listed as a terrorist group -- no criminal charges were laid. The most unbelievable part of that little story is that IRFAN-Canada has righteously appealed its blacklisted status to the Federal Court of Canada.

Police block off access to Parliament Hill after shots were fired on Wednesday Oct. 22, 2014 in Ottawa. Matt Usherwood/QMI Agency

As Mr. Bell wrote a decade ago: "Counterterrorism may be distasteful to some, and it will rightly set off debate about the balance between civil liberties and state security, but so be it. If that debate is fairly argued, the lies and exaggerations -- and sometimes the outright naivete -- of interest groups opposed to antiterror measures will lose out and the security argument will prevail because the state's primary function is the protection of its citizens, and there is just no rational defense for the kind of random violence directed at noncombatants that is the essence of terror."

Sounds good. Why isn't it happening?