According to doomsayer David Harris, the former chief of strategic planning for CSIS, Canada faces a dire threat to its existence from radical Islam. Canadians are ignoring the severity of the threat from both domestic terrorists and hostile states, he warned on Monday in a speech titled “Radicalism Hits Home.”
Harris emphasized a close link between the security of Israel and that of the West. The threat to Canada, he said, is the same as the one faced by Israel from Iran.
Harris claimed that up to fifty terrorist groups were active in Canada, a problem he attributed to immigration policies.
“We bring in so many people that we can not reliably assess who they are,” he blustered.
The problem is compounded, he said, by prominent Muslim and Arab lobby groups that he linked to extremism. Among those he fingered were the Canadian Arab Federation and the Canadian Islamic Congress.
Asked about the incongruity between the gravity of threat he discussed and the absence of terrorism in Canada, Harris was evasive.
“It all depends how you define attacks,” he said, adding that “the more effective security agencies are, the less of a threat it seems.”
-Adeel Ahmad
