When RCMP Supt. Jean-Guy Isaya first started as a police officer 20 years ago, school outreach involved drug safety programs.
Now the Mountie says there’s a growing need to talk to kids about violent extremism.
“We believe that young people and minors pose the same threat as adults,” said Isaya, who works in the RCMP’s national security team.
“This trend is certainly continuing and it doesn’t seem to want to disappear.”
It’s why the RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, along with other Five Eyes intelligence and law enforcement agencies, put out a report earlier this month warning about the rising prominence of young people who are attracted to violent ideologies.
The Five Eyes alliance, which includes Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States, warns that minors are particularly vulnerable to online radicalization. Extremist recruiters can turn innocuous social media and gaming platforms like Discord, Instagram, Roblox and TikTok into breeding grounds of hate.
Isaya said kids as young as 12 are being drawn to a “buffet of ideology” including religious fundamentalism and white supremacy.
The alliance said it was putting out the report in the hope younger people can be diverted before the threat becomes so grave that law enforcement and security agencies need to act. The report is meant as an SOS to governments, social services, health-care workers and educators.
Police have already had to intervene.
A year ago, the RCMP charged a 15-year-old Ottawa boy for allegedly plotting a terrorist attack against Jewish people. Another young person has been charged as a co-conspirator in that case.
In August, Mounties charged a youth from the Greater Toronto Area with alleged ties to a terrorist group. Police provided no details of what the accused was trying to do.
Mental health worker sees ‘worrisome’ increase
David O’Brien, director of mental health at Yorktown Family Services, is working to stop headlines like that.
He said his clinic is dealing with a “significant” and “worrisome” increase in the number of tweens, teens and young adults who are harbouring hateful views — some even plotting attacks.
“Especially coming out of the pandemic, where lots of children and youth spent most of their time online,” he said. “I think we’re seeing the consequences of that.”
Since 2020, the midtown Toronto clinic‘s Estimated Time of Arrival (ETA) program — a dedicated service to handle the uptick in radicalization.
O’Brien stressed younger peoples’ grievances tend to be fluid, but said neo-Nazi, antisemitic, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic sympathies are common among the youth in the program.
The team has uncovered some underlying commonalities, too: depression, anxiety, PTSD and, for many of their male clients, exposure to intimate partner violence.
While some self-radicalize, O’Brien said others are sought out by recruiters.
He said those recruiters set up online spaces that give kids “a false sense of a safe space to talk about global issues, world issues, their mental health issues.”
“People are vulnerable and they’re being weaponized,” O’Brien said.
He said the clinic’s strategy to counter that is relatively simple: build relationships and address why young people are radicalized in the first place.
“We’ve pushed them away and arrested them, or suspended them from school, expelled them. So we’ve excluded them, when actually what they need is inclusion,” he said.
His team gives youth the recognition and support they’ve been craving — without a violent ideology attached. And it’s proving successful.
Of its 250 clients to date, about 30 per cent came to ETA because they were planning to commit an attack.
O’Brien said only one person has been arrested after entering the program.
“That’s a humongous and amazing stat,” he said.
Mountie says police can’t tackle issue alone
The Five Eyes report calls for a “whole-of-society response” to deal with the radicalization of young people.
Isaya said while police and intelligence agencies play a role in combatting this, there’s a growing need for parents, guardians, teachers, schools, social services and mental health professionals to help intervene.
He said by the time a case comes to the attention of law enforcement or intelligence agencies, “often it’s too late for the youth to turn the clock back.”
O’Brien said that would require training mental health and health–care workers across the country — and stable funding from the federal government.
The ETA program is supported by Public Safety Canada’s Community Resilience Fund — but its grant only lasts until the end of the year.
O’Brien said without renewed funding, the program won’t be able to take on as many high-risk cases.
“We are part of helping to reduce violence in Canada and helping young people get back on track and move away from this,” he said.
“This trend isn’t going away for a long time.”
