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Results: 16 - 30 of 38
View Damien Kurek Profile
CPC (AB)
It's tough to ask a question after that, but if you could define “violent extremism”, what would that definition be?
Phil Gurski
View Phil Gurski Profile
Phil Gurski
2021-05-31 17:24
Most people will see violent extremism and terrorism as synonymous. I tend to lean in that direction and, to be perfectly honest, Mr. Kurek, I don't have the time to split hairs on whether there's a different between the two. They are virtually synonymous.
Kathy AuCoin
View Kathy AuCoin Profile
Kathy AuCoin
2021-05-25 12:30
Madam Chair and members of the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to present our most recent statistics on senior abuse in Canada.
Much of the information I'll be focusing on this afternoon is available in the publication “Family violence in Canada: A statistical profile”. A link to the report and a series of custom tabulations have been provided to the clerk for your reference.
It's important to note that the data from this report highlight those forms of abuse that meet the criminal threshold and that were reported to the police. As a result, it does not provide a complete picture of the overall prevalence of senior abuse as it does not capture emotional, psychological and financial abuse. Also note that Statistics Canada is working towards collecting disaggregated data, that is, by ethnicity, life stages and gender, which will give us a better understanding of which seniors are most at risk of abuse.
Also note that I'll be referring to the most recent police data, which is from 2019. The 2020 data will be released at the end of July. This information will be critical to our understanding of the impact of COVID restrictions on seniors and whether or not they were more at risk of being a victim.
In 2019, there were more than 14,000 senior victims of police-reported violence in Canada. By senior victims, I mean those individuals who are 65 years of age and older. Of these victims, 55% were men, while 45% were women. This translates into a rate of 227 seniors per 100,000.
Since 2014, there has been a steady increase in police-reported violence perpetrated against seniors. Specifically, we've noted a 29% increase in victimization rates between 2014 and 2019. Over the same time period, the rate of violence increased more for senior women than for senior men. We also noted that there were increases in violence against other age groups—that is, people between 0 and 17, or 18 to 64—but it was only an increase of 16%.
Based on the police data, the highest rates of senior victimization were noted in the three territories, as well as Manitoba and New Brunswick, while Nova Scotia reported the lowest.
According to the 2016 census, 7% of all seniors lived in shared dwellings such as senior resident nursing homes. From police-reported data, we were able to get a glimpse of the violence committed against seniors in these environments. In 2019, just over one in 10 senior victims of police-reported violence were residing in a nursing or retirement home at the time of the incident. Two-thirds of these victims were senior women. Most of these seniors who experienced violence experienced physical assault, while one in seven were sexually assaulted.
Within the nursing and retirement home environment, the perpetrators of this violence were most often seniors themselves. They were a casual acquaintance of the victim, a neighbour within the retirement home or.... We can't tell from the data whether these individuals were suffering from some sort of cognitive impairment or dementia, which could have explained the reason for the violence. Further to that, the police-reported data noted very few cases where the perpetrator of the violence was a staff member of the residence.
Another source of data for senior abuse is the general social survey on victimization, which measures three types of violence—sexual assault, robbery and physical assault—as well as five forms of non-violent crime. These data are critical to our understanding as they capture victimization whether it was reported to the police or not.
According to the 2019 GSS, one in 10 seniors self-reported being a victim of household or violent crime in the previous 12 months and 84,000 seniors were victims of a violent crime. Through the GSS, we are also able to capture experiences of emotional and financial abuse of older adults by a family member or caregiver. Recent results found that approximately 2% of seniors reported experiencing financial or emotional abuse over the past five years. Finally, the GSS also noted that 14% of seniors experienced fraud over the previous five years.
There are challenges in collecting data on elder and senior abuse. Specifically, to obtain robust data, there must be an agreed-upon definition of “senior”, an agreed-upon definition of “abuse” and a sound method on how to capture this information from those living in an institution.
Thank you to the chair and members for their attention this afternoon.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-05-12 17:06
Yes, it does. Thank you.
It's illuminating, and it makes sense, then, that the definition also has been adapted to move away from what could be perceived to be partisan or political definitions. Also, I think it's instructive that there probably is a thread of these actors through ideologically motivated violent extremism, as well as religious and politically motivated violent extremism, if I've got you right.
I wonder if you're able to give us a sense of what the attacks were that caused the deaths of the 21 individuals, as cited in the 2020 report. I'm not sure what can be discussed in terms of investigations or which agencies might be involved to some degree—probably all—but can you give Canadians a sense of exactly what caused those deaths and which attacks they were?
Timothy Hahlweg
View Timothy Hahlweg Profile
Timothy Hahlweg
2021-05-12 17:07
I absolutely can.
Starting in 2014, we have the Moncton shooting perpetrated by Justin Bourque. In that shooting, three were killed and two were wounded. In 2015, we have the Halifax mall plot. That plot was disrupted and there were no casualties. In 2016, we have the Edmonton stomping attack. One individual was killed. In 2017, we have the Alexandre Bissonnette attack on the Quebec City mosque. Six individuals were killed and 19 were wounded in that attack.
In 2018, we have the Toronto van attack by Alek Minassian. Ten people were killed and 16 were wounded in that attack. In 2019, we have the Sudbury knife attack, and two people were wounded in that attack. Finally, in 2020, we have the Toronto spa attack, where one person was killed and one person was wounded.
I think I've covered that. If I've missed anything in that depiction, I will defer to my colleagues in the RCMP.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-05-12 17:08
Thank you.
Can you give us a sense of how many plots were foiled last year that would have been planned ideologically motivated extremist acts?
Timothy Hahlweg
View Timothy Hahlweg Profile
Timothy Hahlweg
2021-05-12 17:08
Unfortunately, given the nature of this call, I won't be able to get into the specifics of those investigative activities, specifically on the foiled plots. Some of those investigations are still ongoing.
I can assure you that your colleagues in NSICOP and the service meet regularly to discuss those classified discussions.
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
CPC (AB)
View Shannon Stubbs Profile
2021-05-12 17:09
Can you give us a general sense in terms of scale or scope? Dozens or hundreds or thousands...?
Timothy Hahlweg
View Timothy Hahlweg Profile
Timothy Hahlweg
2021-05-12 17:09
I can say generally that because we take the threat activity very seriously and we have a lot of assets at play in the organization.... We have regions across the country, as you know, and we have stations abroad. All these employees of our organization are working in concert with their law enforcement partners and other members in the S and I community to identify and disrupt this activity.
You will know that we have a threat reduction mandate as well in the service, so we actively take measures to try to disrupt plots. Given the fact that the activity has increased, our disruption activity, in correlation, has increased as well.
View Tako Van Popta Profile
CPC (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to all of the witnesses for being with us here today and enlightening us on this very important topic.
I'm just going to follow the previous line of questioning with Mr. Hahlweg, if you don't mind.
There's been quite a bit of talk today about the three different categories of motivation for violent extremism. I wonder how important it is to define those different categories. For example, one of the witnesses mentioned the 21 deaths that occurred at the hands of ideologically motivated extreme actors, one of them being the Quebec mosque shooting. I would have thought that maybe that falls within the religiously motivated.
How important is it, Mr. Hahlweg, to get those categorizations right? How is that a tool for CSIS to keep Canadians safe and for prosecutions?
Timothy Hahlweg
View Timothy Hahlweg Profile
Timothy Hahlweg
2021-05-12 17:30
I think it's an outstanding question. Thank you.
The way we look at this is from a service lens. I can articulate that the mosque shooting.... We look at things that trigger our act. In section 2 of our act, paragraph (c) is what defines whether or not we get involved from a service perspective—the serious acts of violence. Whether that falls into the RMVE space, the religiously motivated, or the IMVE space, that is actually where we mobilize and prioritize our investigative activity from an internal perspective. It is the trigger of our paragraph 2(c) threshold in our mandate that dictates whether or not we're going to go into that space.
I think it is very important to really articulate—and it's why we chose to do so in 2019 in the IMVE space—the complexity of this investigation so that we can actively portray what is going on and can actively decide when our threshold and our mandate is triggered. Otherwise, that deconfliction with the RCMP and others in the community is crucial. At the end of the day, we're all looking to prevent threats of violence.
View Kristina Michaud Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
We understand that religiously motivated violent extremism that relies on social networks is an extremely modern threat, and it becomes difficult to legislate against it. As you were saying, Mr. Duheme, people will likely find a way around these new laws, quickly rendering them obsolete.
You are probably all aware of the Christchurch massacre, which the Prime Minister of New Zealand called an act intended to be broadcast on the Internet. As a result of this event, Australia passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Act 2019, which amends the Australian Criminal Code by adding as an offence the act of hosting or disseminating violent content on social networks or on any sites.
In your opinion, should Canada adopt similar legislation?
Michael Duheme
View Michael Duheme Profile
Michael Duheme
2021-05-12 18:09
I'm going to ask Mr. Rochon to talk about what's being done right now and the issue you raised.
Dominic Rochon
View Dominic Rochon Profile
Dominic Rochon
2021-05-12 18:09
Thank you.
As it happens, I don't feel like continuing to pass the torch.
However, I'm wondering whether Jill Wherrett might want to step in from a Public Safety perspective, in terms of Canada's participation in the Christchurch call. We certainly have been supportive, standing shoulder to shoulder with our New Zealand colleagues. There's a two-year anniversary event coming up later this week.
Jill, would you care to weigh in on Madame Michaud's question?
Jill Wherrett
View Jill Wherrett Profile
Jill Wherrett
2021-05-12 18:10
Thank you.
Thank you for the question.
I won't comment on government policy in terms of legislation, but I would say that, as my colleagues have described, there really are a variety of tools that can be brought to bear, whether they're legislative tools, working with civil society organizations or voluntary work that can be done between governments and social media platforms and the digital industry. That's certainly a big focus, in fact, of the Christchurch call that my colleague was just speaking about, where there's a series of commitments for governments, commitments for technology companies and shared commitments.
One of the elements—and something that we've been working on here—is that there's the legislative aspect, but there's also the crisis protocols that can be put into place, so that when there are streaming activities happening, as in the case of Christchurch, we can mobilize quickly to work with companies to make sure that content is no longer disseminated. That's another tool that we can use. Legislation, I think, is one part of the picture.
Results: 16 - 30 of 38 | Page: 2 of 3

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