An exploration of right-wing extremist incidents in Atlantic Canada

ABSTRACT

The study of Canadian right-wing extremism from a security context is in its infancy, with only a handful of empirical and theoretical studies emerging on the topic within the last decade. With the increase of right-wing extremism violence in Canada such as the 2014 Moncton shooting and the 2017 Quebec City mosque attack, there is a pressing need to better understand the breadth, depth, and extent of Canadian right-wing extremism. The current paper presents the preliminary findings from a larger cross-Canadian research project on right-wing extremism and focuses exclusively on Atlantic Canada (New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland & Labrador, and Prince Edward Island). A comprehensive scoping of open-source documents of right-wing extremist incidents in Atlantic Canada from January 2000 to December 2019 and their related attributes were compiled into a dataset, and then used to explore the distribution, breadth, type, and extent of right-wing extremist activity in the Maritime provinces. Given the focus of previous research upon urban aspects of Canadian right-wing extremism, and that Atlantic Canada is more rural in comparison to the rest of Canada, the breakdown of occurrences of different types of right-wing extremist activities based upon rurality are also examined.

KEYWORDS:

• Right-wing extremism
• Atlantic Canada
• violence
• extreme far-right
• ideology
• rurality

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. It is important to note that the motivations, actions, and beliefs of right-wing extremists are not entirely homogenous. The linguistic barriers and dominant Francophone culture in Quebecois society has led to a number of unique differences in the causes, growth and emergence of far-right and hate movements in Québec. Therefore, the scholarship on Quebecois far-right movements is somewhat different and divergent from other Canadian groups.

2. For example, Canada has largely avoided the same levels of right-wing violence due to the fact that traditionally, American-style paramilitary and militia movements have not had success in setting up chapters north of the border (Levitas, 2002; Parent & Ellis, 2014; Perry et al., 2017). However, as of 2016, Canadian branches of militia movements such as the III%ers (“threepers”) have found root in Alberta, and have created chapters across most of the provinces, including New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (Allard, 2018; Hutter, 2018).

3. It is important to note, however, the incredible value that these pre-2016 studies offer for comparative purposes.

4. We purposefully chose not to make the hallmarks listed below ideological-centric, given that many contemporary right-wing groups in Canada attempt to occlude the more virulent aspects of their ideologies from broader society in order to construct a veneer of legitimacy (e.g., Soldiers of Odin engaging in street clean ups and feeding the poor initiatives). As a result, the hallmarks focus more upon actions and associations, rather than core ideological components.

5. We measure the potential threat of violence using a basic reasonability litmus test: a person who holds far-right extremist views, but who does not act upon them in overt ways is unlikely to present a real-world or immediate threat for psychological or physical violence.

6. It is worth noting that the most current research on RWE in Canada concentrated mostly on the urban areas of larger provinces, and therefore cannot accurately measure the extent of RWE activity in more rural areas of Canada.

7. It is worth noting, however, that this study measured immigrant attitudes and not actual incidents of hate crimes.

8. Space constraints limit a fulsome discussion of the coding criteria and procedures. Please contact the primary author via email to request a copy of the coding manual, list of search keywords, or any other related documentation for study replication purposes.

9. In a feedback session for an earlier version of this paper, a workshop participant suggested that we examine linguistic (French vs. English) tensions as a possible source or motivation for far-right activity, particularly within New Brunswick, which is Canada’s only bilingual province and which has the largest Acadian French population.

10. Given the limitations of relying on open-source data for this research, we cannot state with any authority that right-wing extremism does not pose an active threat to public security in Atlantic Canada. The gaps in available data means that there may be non-publicized events or plans that law enforcement and security agencies have thwarted, and other similar plots that were not detected during data collection.

11. The use of secondary and open-source data is quite common in terrorism studies, where access to quality primary data on extremists, terrorists, and violent individuals is often extremely difficult, if not outright impossible at times (see, Schuurman & Eijkman, 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant provided by Public Safety Canada.

Notes on contributors

David C. Hofmann

David C. Hofmann is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Brunswick. His research primarily focuses on right-wing extremism in Canada, terrorism and political violence, charismatic leadership, and criminal networks.

Brynn Trofimuk

Brynn Trofimuk is an M.A. Candidate in the Sociology Department at the University of New Brunswick. Her thesis research focuses on defining and understanding Misogynist Terrorism.

Shayna Perry

Shayna Perry is an M.A. Candidate  at the University of New Brunswick. Her thesis research focuses on right-wing extremism in the Canadian Armed Forces.

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison

Caitlin Hyslop-Margison is a Research Assistant in the Sociology Department at the University of New Brunswick.