In the last few years, as more and more young Canadians have been involved in terrorist attacks on home soil, or travelled abroad to join foreign fighters, it's become increasingly clear that violent extremism is a growing concern.
And as the national police force, the RCMP has a role to play in not just fighting terrorism, but preventing it.
Need for information
Supt. Shirley Cuillierrier, the Director General for Partnerships and External Relations of the RCMP's Federal Policing section, says they began that preventative work last year with a national conference for 125 front-line and middle management police officers.
"The message we received was loud and clear — police officers need to understand what radicalization to violence is, how to recognize it when they see it and what to do about it if they get a call from a family member or friend concerned about their loved one," says Cuillierrier.
National security investigations are the responsibility of the Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams (INSETs). But front-line officers from local police forces aren't always aware of key behavioural indicators that a person may be becoming radicalized to violence.
Cuillierrier says officers at the conference were starving for information, so she and her team developed several tools for police.
One of those tools is the Terrorism Prevention Program (TPP). The program's goal is to help prevent radicalization to violence by training front-line police to better identify at-risk individuals and provide communities with guidance and support to intervene and divert a person away from violent ideologies.
"We've found that all these young people we've heard about were vulnerable," says Cuillierrier. "If you happen to be in a vulnerable place in your life, it's easy to be captured by this kind of sense of a higher calling in life."
To find and disengage individuals who haven't yet committed a crime, the RCMP needs to work with its communities and partners. That's where the outreach teams come in.
Connecting with communities
The INSET team's community outreach units are the face of the TPP for the public.
Sgt. Derek McDonald, the Community Outreach/Counter Terrorism Information Officer for one of Ontario's two INSET teams, says his work is essentially community policing, but within a national security context.
"I've been on the job 28 years now and I remember my trainer telling me when I started, 'The police don't solve crimes, people tell them who did it'," says McDonald. "When it comes to terrorism, we need all Canadians, not just law enforcement, to be on the lookout and providing assistance."
Sgt. Hakim Bellal, McDonald's counterpart in Quebec, agrees.
He says the key to success with prevention is getting the community engaged. Community outreach officers attend local community events, slowly introducing information about national security concerns.
"When you have trust built, people put faith in your ideas, they listen to you and they give you a chance," says Bellal.
For the Quebec INSET, prevention is a priority. They now have a policy that for every enforcement file they open, they must also look for complementary intervention opportunities.
"Most of these youth have parents, brothers, sisters and friends — they're victims, too," he says. "And they might be taking the same path — instead of losing one, we might lose others, too. We have to focus on helping them."
Cuillierrier says once you earn the community's trust, amazing things can happen. In the few short years since public outreach has become a priority, both Bellal and McDonald have noticed a huge change in their interactions with the communities they work with.
And while with prevention it's hard to measure effectiveness in quantifiable numbers, just the fact that INSET members are now getting calls from parents and friends about concerning behaviour — something unheard of until recently — is a good sign they're headed in the right direction.
"Certainly it's a case where an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure," says McDonald. "Youth are often tricky to make a connection with. But if they've spent some time with an officer in any setting, they might be more comfortable and trusting. They might reach out."