Over 11 million online users globally have been reached by more than 6,600 right-wing extremist social media pages, groups, and accounts in Canada, according to a new report by a U.K.-based think tank that studies hate and extremism.
And researchers suspect that these users have been more active during the COVID-19 lockdown and anti-Black racism protests.
“We were really struck by the high level of engagement by Canadians,” said Jacob Davey, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) senior research manager and co-author of the report. “It’s clear that Canada has a well established system of right-wing extremists very much comparable to that of the U.S. and U.K., and it’s part of a global pattern.”
“The people who step up in the midst of the most serious times to ensure that Canadians can still put food on the table, that they can get deliveries they need, that shelves are stocked, that Canadian continue to be safe and fed are heroes of this pandemic every bit as much as our front-line health workers and emergency responders,” he said at a news conference in Chelsea, Que., after being asked for his reaction to the pay clawback.
Loblaw Companies Ltd., Metro Inc. and Empire Co. announced last week they would stop paying an hourly premium to store workers starting June 13.
Loblaw and Metro both had been paying workers an extra $2 an hour since March 8, while Empire offered a weekly bonus to all employees and a $2 hourly wage bump to those working more than 20 hours a week.
The companies provided various explanations for the decision, which was slammed by two unions that represent the workers.
People walk on the words ‘defund the police’ that was painted in bright yellow letters in downtown Washington, D.C., on June 7, 2020. The death of unarmed Black man George Floyd in Minneapolis sparked worldwide protests against police brutality. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo)
The police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis set off an explosion of protests around the world. The spark that lit the fire was the video of his slaying.
Some doubt that cameras are effective in curbing police violence, as the lead officer in this case proved — he knew he was being filmed by a bystander, but he kneeled on Floyd’s neck anyway for almost nine minutes. Yet the reaction to Floyd’s death shows that cameras can make police conduct more transparent and potentially accountable — depending on how they’re used.
Chantel Moore is shown in this undated photo posted on a GoFundMe memorial page. The 26-year-old Indigenous woman was shot dead by police in Edmundston, N.B. THE CANADIAN PRESS/GoFundMe
Research into body cameras points to the need for more than policy alone. To tackle the issue effectively, Parliament should amend the Criminal Code to set out rules about how and when police should use cameras.
Without rules being codified in federal law, police across Canada will use cameras inconsistently and unpredictably — hindering their potential to make police more accountable and to curb the use of excessive force.
Cautionary tales from earlier studies
Studies support the potential benefits of using body cameras, but debate continues over how to use them effectively.
Forces across Canada have conducted several pilot programs over the past decade, but only Calgary police have formally adopted cameras. Other forces encountered two common issues.
A member of the Vancouver Police Department wears a chest mounted camera as he oversees the takedown of a tent city in downtown Vancouver in October 2014. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward
It is costly to equip officers with cameras and to store and manage the copious volume of data those recordings would generate. But equally crucial is the uncertainty over when and where police should be obliged to turn on their cameras, and what happens if they don’t.
Should police capture every encounter with civilians while on duty? Or only when questioning or detaining suspects? If they fail to do so, or make a judgment call not to record or to stop recording, do they violate a citizen’s rights to a fair trial under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms?
Trudeau’s proposal would help address the funding question, but leave considerable uncertainty around when to use body cams. To be effective, control over the use of body cameras must be taken out of the hands of individual officers, where it’s ripe for abuse. Police need to follow a uniform playbook, set out in law.
Less discretion, more consistency
Those laws can take one of two forms. States like Illinois require officers to record “at all times on duty.” This general approach would be onerous, resulting in too much data and effort to manage it.
South Carolina takes a better approach by mandating camera use in specific situations. Under their law, police must record when detaining suspects for impaired driving — from the moment a police car’s lights go on to the time a breath sample is taken.
An RCMP officer performs a breathalyzer test on a driver during a roadside check in Surrey, B.C., in September 2010. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Federal law in Canada should mandate police camera use in three cases — any time police conduct an arrest or a detention of more than a brief duration, when they carry out a residential search and when they pull a person over for impaired driving.
Privacy concerns will arise in sensitive, intrusive situations. In those cases, police should be required to seek consent and not record anything sexually invasive.
There should also be laws to address what happens to the video that police record and when they fail to record when mandated. A failure could form the basis for a challenge under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, possibly resulting in a stay of prosecution.
Body-cams as a tool of justice
As recent events in the United States and Canada have made clear, body-cam use is no guarantee against police brutality.
A body camera is seen on a Los Angeles Police Department officer in January 2015. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)
There may even be a danger that greater exposure to police violence will desensitize us to it. But as George Floyd’s death demonstrates, capturing police conduct on video can still lead to greater accountability.
Trudeau should be lauded for supporting body-cam use in Canada. Making it law would make cameras a tool of justice. Leaving it up to police would make them another weapon for potential abuse.
A report released Friday on Canadian involvement in right-wing extremism online should serve as a “wake-up call” about the widespread nature of the movement and highlights a growing shift toward the use of less regulated platforms, says an expert on the phenomenon.
The research, led by the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) think-tank, identified more than 6,600 online channels — pages, accounts or groups — where Canadians were involved in spreading white supremacist, mysogynistic or other radical views.
On some forums, Canadians were found to be “highly active,” even more, on average, than users in the U.S. and Britain.
An Indigenous person in Canada is more than 10 times more likely to have been shot and killed by a police officer in Canada since 2017 than a white person in Canada.
A CTV News analysis reveals that of the 66 people shot and killed by police in that timeframe for whom race or heritage could be identified, 25 were Indigenous.
That’s nearly 40 per cent of the total. Adjusted for population based on 2016 census data, it means 1.5 out of every 100,000 Indigenous Canadians have been shot and killed by police since 2017, versus 0.13 out of every 100,000 white Canadians.
