Just recently, there was an anti-lockdown demonstration in front of the provincial legislation in Edmonton, Alberta. Interestingly, the province’s premier, Jason Kenney, associated several hate groups and racism to the anti-lockdown protest. Now, Alberta is politically Canada’s most conservative province, having elected a string of conservative governments in the last five decades. Nevertheless, the Premier openly declared that some prominent racists and white supremists promoted Saturday’s protest at the legislature, and individuals attended the event from known hate groups like the ‘Soldiers of Odin’ and ‘Urban Infidels’. What these groups failed to mention is that Alberta had a disproportionately high number of COVID-19 cases and deaths compared to the rest of Canada. Although somewhat late off the mark, the province eventually and somewhat reluctantly was forced to introduce lockdown measures and mandatory mask wearing, especially in its two largest cities of Calgary and Edmonton. Once again during the protest, violence broke out when the police were forced to intervene. Allegedly, several officers were punched by protesters while trying to make an arrest. Premier Kenney correctly asserted that while Albertans value freedom of speech and assembly, the event’s connection to hate groups and any violence had to be condemned.
For a number of years, studies have shown right-wing extremist groups are ‘prevalent’ across Canada, including the ‘Proud Boys’ which has recently been added to the national terrorist list in Canada. A number of Canadians supported Donald Trump when he was president and continue to support him even today. As in the U.S., one place where right-wing extremists find support is online. Sub-forums of the white supremacist website, Stormfront.org, are among the most popular. It should be remembered that the Proud Boys was origionally founded in 2016 by a Canadian, Gavin Miles McInnes, a Canadian writer and far-right political commentator at the time. Under its current American leader, Enrique Tarrio, many Proud Boys members stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th and several, including Tarrio, have since been arrested.
The fact of the matter is that Canadian authorities will have to continue to assess and investigate all extremists groups in order to prevent associated violent activities, especially against minorities. These groups have particularly emerged during this pandemic and have taken advantage of the anger, mistrust of government and general fears of some Canadians. They tend to ally themselves with anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and those opposed to government lockdowns of businesses and services. Don’t be fooled, these are not temporary movements and will be around for awhile in both Canada and the U.S. There is no invisible wall between the two countries, especially in the age of the Internet.
FROLITICKS 