Counting Terrorism Charges and Prosecutions in Canada Part 2: Trends in Terrorism Charges

The Anti-Terrorism Act 2001 brought Part II.1 of the Criminal Code into being and with it, Canada’s terrorism offences. In the twenty years since that time, 62 individuals have been charged with terrorism offences by our counting. This blog post is not meant to be a comprehensive overview of the field. Instead, we set out merely to remind the reader of what constitutes a terrorism offence in Canada and then review some of the trends that we can see from the prosecuting and charging numbers to date.

Counting Terrorism Charges and Prosecutions in Canada Part 1: What does the data say?

This blog post is a medium for providing a series of tables that provide information on all terrorism cases and charges to date—a public release of information collected over the past five years that, I hope, will be of interest to students, lawyers, national security practitioners and academics. The tables strive to provide further information related to each of these cases, such as the specific offences charged, whether individuals were convicted or not, their sentences, and so on.

The Seven Year ISIS Investigation

This week, Hussein Borhot was charged with terrorism offences for allegedly travelling to Syria in 2013. He has been charged with four offences, with the kidnapping offence being a first in Canadian history. These charges demonstrate that the RCMP is willing and able to press forward with charges based on events that largely transpired overseas and even after nearly a decade has elapsed. Foreign fighters should take note.

Justice is Served…a Mandate Letter: Terrorism Priorities

Intrepid Blog will be releasing a series of posts on the Mandate Letters over the next two weeks, starting today with the Minister of Justice and Attorney General’s Mandate Letter. The Honourable David Lametti’s Letter is a broad one; it includes twenty-one bulleted “deliverables” that the Minister is expected to work on as top priorities, though the Minister is also “encouraged…to identify additional priorities”.

The Five Myths of the ISIS Repatriation Debate

The conventional wisdom about repatriating and prosecuting foreign fighters is wrong. Amar Amarasingam and Leah West explain why Canada has a moral duty to prosecute our foreign fighters, and why it is a realistic policy that Canada should pursue.

Proscribing Far Right Terrorism: Canada's new terrorist listing of two far right extremist groups

Last week Canada added five new groups to Canada’s terrorist entities list, but the big news was that two of these groups were far right terrorist groups. Why is this a big deal? Leah West walks through the implications of terrorist entity listing under Canada’s criminal law.

Criminalizing Terrorist Babble: The Debate

Part of the focus during senate hearings on bill C-59 has been on the speech crime created by bill C-51 in 2015. Debate centers on whether the roll-back of this crime in C-59 is a good thing or not. This post provides an overview of the issues, and a discussion of alternatives.

toppostCraig ForceseApril 29, 2019Free expression, Criminal law, Terrorism offences, Bill C-59

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