Expression of anti-government views on the internet may pose a terrorist threat, the director of a federal security agency said last night, according to Blacklock's Reporter..“We are seeing that kind of narrative, very anti-authority, anti-government,” said Marie-Helen Chayer, executive director of the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre..Testifying at the Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency, Chayer said social media posts were closely monitored during the Freedom Convoy. The national terrorist threat assessment was not upgraded during the protests outside Parliament..“Ever since the beginning of the pandemic really we’ve seen a marked increase in ideologically motivated violent extremist rhetoric online, in social media,” said Chayer. “The challenge with that is the people who actually disseminate the propaganda are not necessarily the people who would actually mobilize to violence and conduct an act of terrorism.”.Chayer did not name the Freedom Convoy as a terrorist threat. However, Chayer said the Terrorism Assessment Centre was concerned anti-government Facebook and Twitter messages would provoke violence..“What we have seen happening is the consumers of that rhetoric, of that propaganda, slowly or sometimes very quickly radicalizing and mobilizing to violence and then conducting an act of terrorism,” said Chayer. “During the convoy, during the whole pandemic and still, we are seeing that kind of narrative, very like anti-authority.”.“From the Centre perspective the most likely scenario involving a terrorism-like threat is caused by a lone actor being influenced or radicalized to violence by ideologically motivated violent extremist rhetoric,” said Chayer..Police monitoring the Freedom Convoy suggested it was not a security threat. “It is not an ‘extremist’ movement,” Superintendent Patrick Morris, commander of the Ontario Provincial Police Intelligence Bureau, wrote in a February 22 assessment. “It is not comprised of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The actual leaders are not violent extremists with histories of violent criminal acts.”.“There are significant differences between seeing political dissent or opponents as ‘extreme,’ a highly subjective measure, and the legal connotations of ideologically motivated violent extremism or terrorism,” wrote Morris..Jody Thomas, national security advisor to the prime minister, last night testified the Emergencies Act was too narrow in defining security threats. Cabinet in invoking the Act claimed the convoy represented a “threat or use of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious or ideological objective within Canada.”.“When the Emergencies Act was written the presumption of threat and the understanding of threat at that time was something manifesting probably overseas as a threat against Canada, hopefully never to the extent of but more along the lines of what we saw in 9/11 rather than what we saw on January 6th,” said Thomas. The January 6 reference was to a 2021 riot at the US Capitol..Thomas said she was concerned by “people with views, generally awful but lawful as the Canadian Security Intelligence Service says, who can use social media to bring other people into those views using misinformation and disinformation and that motivates people to act.”
