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I imagine many Canadians have never heard of the “terrorist entity” listings. This is a tool developed by Public Safety Canada in 2002 in lockstep with what Canada’s allies were doing at the time after 9/11. On its website, Public Safety Canada notes that it is “a public means of identifying a group or individual as being associated with terrorism.”
It is also a highly political process that does little to aid in Canada’s counterterrorism efforts (full disclosure: I worked on the first version of listings in 2002 while at CSIS and actually wrote the first al-Qaida listing). It is neither a very useful nor necessary tool and could disappear tomorrow, leaving little to no effect on the agencies tasked with preventing terrorism.
The listings suffer from several shortcomings. Determining “membership” in a terrorist group is next to impossible (the word “member” is actually next to meaningless in this regard). Groups change names often, requiring the department to keep revising its master list in what becomes a version of Whack-a-Mole.
Most importantly, the process is highly political. Is it a coincidence that the government is looking into listing the Proud Boys three days after the Senate siege? The group could have been listed at any point over the past four or five years.
Our U.S. allies have recently demonstrated just how political the whole listing regime is. The outgoing Donald Trump administration has just listed the Houthis, a Yemeni Shia group, as terrorists; observers say this move will exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen. U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also announced that Cuba will be added as a “state sponsor” of terrorism. Still not convinced this is all political?
