A similar ratio was reported in the United States. According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Centre on Extremism, right-wing extremists and white nationalists were responsible for 59 per cent of all extremist-related fatalities last year. The number of killings at the hands of white supremacists more than doubled compared to 2016, the report noted.

From the fringes to mainstream

Researchers also warn that extremist groups are infiltrating mainstream institutions, particularly law enforcement and military.

In 2015, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned that white supremacists and other domestic extremists had infiltrated U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. The FBI’s report, obtained and published by The Intercept, noted that “militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers.”

Researchers have warned a similar dynamic might exist in Canada, with far-right groups joining law enforcement or the Canadian Forces to gain access to training and weaponry.

The Star requested an interview with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in July. That interview request was declined, as was a followup request sent in September. The Star sent a detailed list of questions to the spy agency, including whether or not it has conducted a threat assessment of the far-right infiltrating Canadian law enforcement.

The agency did not directly address the question.

“I cannot go into specifics regarding how or at what level CSIS resources investigations and threats,” wrote Tahera Mufti, a spokesperson for the agency.

According to a report from the spy agency’s watchdog released earlier this year, CSIS abandoned an ongoing investigation into Canada’s far-right in 2016. According to the agency, the far-right no longer constituted a national security threat — instead, it was a “public order threat” best left to individual police forces.

Perry disagrees with that determination.

“Look at the example of Justin Bourque, killing RCMP officers ... If that isn’t a threat to national security … If attacking community members (in the 2017 Québec mosque shooting), killing six people because of their faith is not a threat to national security, to the extent that it ruptures our values, it ruptures our sense of who we are, it ruptures our sense of identity?” Perry said.

“For me that’s a national security risk, as well.”

Unlike in some European countries, Canada’s extreme right has failed to find a comfortable home within traditional federal political parties.

Incidents involving right-wing extremist groups

Even Maxime Bernier, whose new People’s Party, which has focused on criticizing “extreme multiculturalism” and immigration, explicitly said xenophobia has no place in his political venture. At least for now, the far right seems to remain largely recognized as toxic to mainstream electoral politics.

An evolving response for an evolving threat?

As evidence of the increasing number and coordination of extreme right-wing groups in Canada mounts, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which there is any concerted national response from police and security agencies.

CSIS reopened its investigation into Canada’s far right after Alexandre Bissonnette killed six Muslim men worshipping in their Quebec City mosque. But the agency has provided little explanation why it considers right-wing extremism part of its mandate now, when it didn’t consider the phenomenon a national security issue in 2016.

Mufti, the agency’s spokesperson, said CSIS is now working “extensively” with the RCMP and local law enforcement “to investigate the threat posed by right-wing extremism as it falls under the CSIS mandate.”

While the RCMP and the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police (CACP) provide some national coordination on terrorism and extremist violence issues, investigations into right-wing extremism are largely left to a patchwork of individual local police forces and hate crime units.

For Bernie Farber, who has been chronicling and combating Canadian hate groups for more than three decades, federal agencies’ slow realization of the threat right-wing extremists pose is frustratingly predictable. Farber, who now leads the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, said when the hate group Heritage Front was active in the 1980s and 1990s, police initially dismissed the threat.

“Nothing ever changes, right?” Farber said.

“We used to hear the same thing from the Toronto police, the RCMP, the OPP and CSIS, that the threat isn’t coming from the far right ... What troubles me the most is that I just don’t understand how we don’t learn from our own past experiences. We know how dangerous these people can be. And to pooh-pooh it and say this is not an issue for authorities is at best wilful blindness.”

Malizia said CACP has been encouraging smaller communities, as well as territorial and provincial governments, to develop concrete plans to address a sudden attack.

“It just won’t happen in major centres,” Malizia said.

“We know that from terrorism, we know that from any type of extreme ideology that is violent, that it can happen anywhere.”

But Malizia acknowledged that the public conversation around right-wing extremism is very different from other types of terrorism and crime.

“Is it the media reporting that way? Is it a perception? Could we be doing a better job at bringing clarity to the issue? I think we all probably have a role to play in that,” Malizia said.

“Why don’t we talk about this?” asked Peter Singer, a political scientist and strategist at the New America think tank, which researches security and extremism.

“One reason we avoid talking about it is to avoid appearing too partisan, a desire to be even-handed. But there’s an irony that, in trying to appear unbiased, we actually show bias in not talking about it.”

Singer, the author of a new book on the “weaponization” of social media, pointed to traditional media’s search for false balance in reporting on the Charlottesville rally in 2017.

“We had open, outright white supremacists, nationalists, neo-Nazis, the horrible imagery of marching with torches. But then, more importantly, the killing of a young woman not by (anti-fascists) but a young man who was a white nationalist,” Singer said.

“Afterwards in the United States, major U.S. newspapers ran more op-eds condemning the counter-protesters … than those who had just committed the crime of the killing … It’s a strange thing.”

Part of the problem in speaking about extreme-right violence as a symptom of a larger issue, Malizia said, is that right-wing extremism is not seen as a coherent movement.

Seemingly disparate attacks — like Justin Bourque’s killing of three Mounties in Moncton in 2014, or Alexandre Bissonette’s slaying of six worshippers at the Centre culturelle Islamique due Québec in 2017, or the Toronto van rampage that killed 10 people earlier this year — are not connected to the larger discussion of far-right extremism in Canada.

“The violence tends to be spontaneous and opportunistic, and difficult to detect,” Malizia said.

“When we look at those, it’s difficult sometimes because there may not be that clear trigger that allows us to then prevent. … Those that are closest to the individuals are usually best placed to notice those changes and to flag them.”

Perry told the Star that there has been a “dramatic” change in the willingness for law enforcement and intelligence agencies to discuss right-wing extremism, but she has seen little in terms of plans to address it.

As the movement evolves, the question remains: is the status quo sufficient?

In the coming days, the Star will examine the question from three different angles: how right-wing extremism is finding a foothold in Canada’s military, how different police forces address the growing threat of right-wing extremism, and how the movement is organizing online — and what might be done about it.

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