Secure Line Podcast Episode 5 - Terrorism Threat Medium
In this episode of Secure Line, hosts Leah West and Jessica Davis examine the evolving terrorism landscape in Canada.
Today’s discussion is driven by recent terrorist attacks in the United States at the start of 2025, which reignited concerns about domestic threats. While some have suggested that ISIS is “back,” others argue it never really disappeared. At the same time, ideologically motivated violent extremism—ranging from ultraright nationalists to accelerationists—continues to expand its influence. Award-winning investigative journalist Stewart Bell joins the conversation to analyze the findings of a new Insight Threat Intelligence report that tracks terrorism charges, incidents, and financing in Canada. The data shows a significant increase in terrorist attacks and arrests over the last decade, raising critical questions about whether Canada’s counterterrorism efforts are keeping pace with the threat. Despite these trends, the country’s official terrorism threat level has remained unchanged for over 15 years. The episode explores several key issues, including the cost of terrorist attacks in Canada, the difficulties in prosecuting terrorism cases, and the continued influence of ISIS in recruiting young people. The discussion also looks at Canada’s reliance on intelligence sharing with the United States, particularly as the FBI undergoes major internal changes that could impact future counterterrorism cooperation. The broader implications of economic instability and shifting U.S. foreign policy are also considered. Reductions in international aid, trade restrictions, and diplomatic shifts could create conditions that extremist groups exploit for recruitment and influence. The conversation highlights the risks of underestimating these factors and the challenges of countering extremist financing networks that remain largely intact. The episode closes with a look ahead at future discussions on the global terrorism threat. In the next installment, Colin Clarke will join to provide insight into how these issues fit into the broader international security landscape. This episode offers a data-driven perspective on Canada’s terrorism threat, revealing gaps in official assessments and raising important questions about the country’s counterterrorism approach.
Listen now, follow the podcast, and share widely.
See the full transcript below!
Intro: Steph? Leah? Jess? Is this line secure?
Hello, and welcome to Secure Line. I'm Leah West. I'm Jessica Davis. We're here today to talk about terrorism in Canada. While it seems like a lifetime ago, 2025 started out with two highly visible terrorist attacks in the United States. A truck ramming attack along New Orleans Bourbon Street, on January 1st, that killed 14 people and injured dozens, and the detonation of a cyber truck outside of the Trump International Hotel that injured seven and killed the attacker.
These incidents reignited the discussion about terrorism in the United States and, by extension, in Canada. While some media outlets have talked about the return, and I use bunny quotes there, of ISIS, most informed experts say they never really went away. Other terrorist threats like those affiliated with xenophobic, ultraright nationalists, accelerationists, and even Satanist ideologies simply stepped into the limelight.
To unpack what the terrorism landscape in Canada really looks like, Jess and I are joined by Stewart Bell, an award winning investigative journalist from Global News, who has sat down with Canadian ISIS members, had tea with the Taliban, and I'm sure has recorded the most hours logged reading and attending terrorism proceedings in this country, far outpacing me, even. Stu, thanks for joining us.
Stewart: Thanks for having me.
Leah: I'm also excited to talk to Jess about a report that her team at Insight Threat Intelligence put out last month that looks at the data on terrorism charges in Canada, which complements some of your team's previous reports on terrorist incidents and financing methods.
So Jess let's start there with your report. How did you pull the data together? Why did you do that? And what did you learn?
Jessica: The motivation for me in trying to figure out what's actually happening in terms of terrorism in Canada is driven in part by the terrorism threat level in Canada, which is set by the Integrated Threat Assessment Center (ITAC), and it's been at Medium for the last 10 or 15 years. Now, this is an assessment body that is domiciled in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, but functions as a separate entity and sets that threat level independently, and because it's been at Medium for the last, you know, as long as I can remember, and I'm pretty sure as long as most people here can remember, it really seems to me that it isn't really telling Canadians very much. So my team and I set about to unpack what's actually been happening in terrorism in Canada over the last, you know, 10 or 15 years. And we did it with three different datasets because none of these things are on their own or a complete measure of terrorism in a country; and even these three are not sufficient to fully explain the terrorism activity that we have in this country.
The first one is actually attacks, because this is a very concrete way to understand terrorism. So we looked at this over the last 12, 15 years and found that there have been an increasing number of terrorist attacks since 2004. And this is a bit confusing because we've actually been doing more to counter terrorism in this time, and yet the numbers are still increasing; and so are the number of people who are killed and injured in attacks. Now, to be clear, these are all small numbers of terrorist attacks every year, but the fact that it's increasing raises a few questions in my mind. Then I looked at what's actually happening in terms of the financing of attacks in Canada, because part of the whole motivation to combat the financing of terrorism, which I've talked about at length and will continue to talk about at length, I'm sure, is that these efforts are meant to drive down the cost or make terrorism more expensive for terrorists to conduct attacks, make it harder for them to get access to weapons components and devices, make it more difficult for them to conduct complex, costly attacks. And when we priced out all of the attacks that have happened over the last 15 years, we actually found that the cost of these attacks has increased because attackers are using more sophisticated and more complex attack modalities. And this isn't to say we're talking about like really complex things here in Canada, most attacks are still costing well under $10,000. But the fact that this is increasing is still confusing to me as well. And the last one that we most recently looked at was the terrorism arrests and charges in this country. And again, we found a statistically significant increase in the number of people who have been charged with terrorism offenses over the last decade.
So all of these things taken together tell me that terrorism is actually increasing in this country, which is not illustrated by the ITAC threat assessment.
Leah: Could an alternative explanation simply be we're being at least in terms of the prosecutions, that we're getting better at detecting it and arresting people for it?
Jessica: Yeah, certainly if we're talking just about the prosecutions, I would say that that's a good story. And if it wasn't accompanied by an increase in attacks as well, I'd say like, this is demonstrating some pretty significant counterterrorism success. We want to see that. That's the whole point of our terrorism legislation is to get in front of attacks. But the fact that we're also seeing more attacks across a broader spectrum of ideological, political, or religious motivations, tells me that there's still a few things that aren't quite working well in our counterterrorism efforts.
Leah: And Stew, you reported on the findings. As someone who follows the terrorism landscape in terms of attacks, but also in arrests and prosecutions as well as actually investigating the underlying groups. Was this a surprising finding to you? How did you respond when you saw the numbers?
Stewart: No, it wasn't really surprising. I mean, we did a similar exercise last year particularly focused on ISIS. It had been 10 years since ISIS arose and, at the same time, there had been some very high profile arrests last year. So I tried to figure out what are the numbers, like how many people have we charged, how many we peace bonded. And unfortunately it's not something that our government was really too helpful with. I went to Justice, I went to Public Safety, I went to the RCMP, I went to the Crown prosecution service and none of them would release any figures. They either said they didn't have them or that they weren't allowed to release them. So we did, I think what Jess did probably a lot less scientifically but just basically went through news items, press releases by the RCMP releases by the public prosecution service and tried to come up with a list of how many people had been charged. So we also found a pretty significant spike, especially over the last couple of years, related to ISIS anyway. But it's, it's a really challenging thing. I don't think it should be this difficult to come up with those basic numbers, but you can certainly see how many people are charged, but there's some challenges with that. Like, as we know, some terrorists don't get charged with terrorism offences is in Canada. The Quebec mosque attack was not terrorism charges, the chicken land mass shooting was not charged with terrorism. So that makes it a little more challenging. And then of course, some terrorists don't get charged at all. We've had all the women who had joined ISIS have returned, almost all of them, but very few have actually been charged. Some of them have been put on peace bonds, so that's another item to look at, and Jess also looked at that as well, is how many peace bonds do we have? So, I think your question's a good one, do the increasing number of arrests or charges mean that terrorism is worse? Or that we're better at enforcing it or catching people? There's some other issues too, they're kind of complicated; for example, I think about nine ISIS women have come back to Canada in the last couple of years, so that kind of loaded the stats up a little bit during that time period. I mean, their offenses were largely in 2014, 2015 up in that area, but because they've just come back, all of a sudden they're charging on peace bonds. So it's a challenging thing to look at, but I think what we found by looking at the numbers specifically about ISIS was that there had been a really significant increase in charges and cases, and that in particular, the age of those involved had gone down. Like there was a lot of minors and youths. And that's consistent with what we were hearing from sources as well. Our sources in national security were also highlighting that there had been, I think the term, I don't, they had a number, it was some hundreds of percentage increase in arrests related to terrorism offenses in the last couple of years. So all that to say that I was pleased to see Jess had done a scientific job of it, I wasn't surprised by the results. I guess the question from there, and this is where Jess's expertise comes in is what that means and her report that she co wrote had come to conclusions that seemed to make a lot of sense. But I think as we may discuss later, the intelligence community pushed back on.
Jessica: Yeah, I just want to jump in there because of course this isn't going to come as a surprise to Stu. You know, his, his reporting is in many, many of the sources that are in this data set. But I think the thing that's important to note here is that both things can be true. The terrorism problem in Canada can be getting worse and we can be getting better at countering it. I think the problem here is that we're getting better in some places, like, I think we're actually pretty good at countering Islamic State and religiously motivated violent extremism, and that's something that we seem to have a pretty good grasp on. But I don't think we're there yet with ideologically motivated violent extremism. That's where we sort of see that delta. You know, we can, we can talk about all the different reasons for that. It's not really a new problem per se, you know, Stew talked about the 2017 Quebec mosque attack so we've had almost a decade to really get our heads around this, but both of those things can be true and we can still have a lot of room for improvement.
Stewart: Having said that though, I mean, we did have the Incels were charged with terrorism. The guy they call the salad bar extremist who attacked Edmonton City Hall last year, that was a terrorism offense. And, I mean, it's not my area, but as you well know, they've begun the last couple of years to do this new tactic of instead of charging with a terrorism offense, they charge with a murder or attempted murder with some kind of added terrorist purpose.
Leah: Terrorism bonus, if you will.
Stewart: Yeah, that's the sentencing in the end, but we've seen some of that, but Jess is right. There's still, I guess, kind of an inconsistent results that we're seeing in terms of offenses and who's getting charged.
Leah: If we think back to the reporting after the, or the New Orleans attack and this claim that ISIS is back, is that true? Did ISIS go away and come back in Canada? Has it always been here? What should we take from that? And who is still joining ISIS in 2025?
Stewart: Well, it's amazing that people are. I mean, no, ISIS, ISIS never went away, but they did have a pretty crushing loss in 2019 when they lost their territory. They lost their so called Islamic state in Syria, and it took them a little while to recover from that. But this is part of the reporting we did last year as well, there seems to be a consensus that they have rebuilt. Obviously they've scattered geographically to Africa and particularly South Asia and Khorasan is now the kind of the hub. But, they seem to have recovered with their messaging and particularly successful at targeting young people and sometimes very young people. We interviewed the RCMP assistant commissioner last year in charge of federal policing and national security, she was even raising the issue of ISIS using even things like gaming platforms to reach young people, which actually bears out in a couple of the cases that we found. I think one in Calgary, one in Montreal, where in fact they were using game platforms I'd never heard of to, to communicate, to sort of exchange ideological messaging. And even in the case of Calgary to talk about planning an attack in that case, they were targeting a pride month celebration. So yeah, I mean, they didn't go away, but they have come back pretty strong. And it is hard to imagine this day and age why somebody would go off and join ISIS; but as we've seen the charges and peace bonds in the last year or so, people are actually doing it. I think there were just some cases in the U. S. very recently, people that were intercepted on their way out. Uh, there was a peace bond case here in Toronto just mid December, where somebody, again, was apparently on their way at the airport, intercepted on their way to join ISIS.
Jessica: I think the narrative around the return of ISIS is possibly one of the most infuriating things for me right now. For the last couple of years, I've done a lot of work on ISIS in Africa, and they've been very busy, very active conducting a lot of attacks and setting up really sophisticated finance networks throughout Nigeria, and particularly in Somalia, into Afghanistan, like Stew mentioned. So, the whole narrative around is ISIS back, it's just you know, nothing winds me up quite like that. They've also been really active too on the propaganda front. And so these are all things that are contributing to the ongoing recruitment and the ongoing motivation for lone actor terrorists, people who seek to engage in violence on ISIS's behalf. So I think those are really important things to talk about as well, you know, just like these finance networks have gone basically undisrupted for the last six years, and they're pretty resilient at this point in time.
Leah: There seems to be a really big delta between the reality of the threat of ISIS, both abroad and as you both reported here in Canada, and how much we talk about the threat of ISIS. It's not something that we see regularly in the news. There's not even a lot of coverage when there are arrests. I think, Stew, you might be the only person on that beat anymore. The average Canadian would probably be pretty surprised to hear what you have both been saying. Why do you think that is?
Stewart: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, people have a lot of issues to deal with on their plates, so maybe this isn't one of them. But, I can't account for that, I just try and keep a spotlight on it as much as I can. I think we've also come into an age where it's seen, and the New Orleans attack is maybe part of this as well, where type of terrorism that we're confronting is not necessarily the same kind it was a decade ago when ISIS was first emerging and before that, when Al Qaeda was an issue. The old model of terrorist groups that sort of go overseas and train and come back and plot and, and they all meet and they conspire and they build bombs together ; it just doesn't seem to be what's happening anymore. The trend seems to be largely individuals who have radicalized, perhaps online, maybe by talking to people online through messaging, they've learned that they don't need to build a bomb, they can use a car, they can use readily available objects as weapons. The Canadian Tire attacker in Toronto, she just went into Canadian Tire, tried to get a, you know, whatever she could, a hammer, weapons. So that's kind of the trend and it's kind of a less conspiratorial kind of terrorism. It's absolutely must be a lot harder to stop because there aren't those kind of secret meetings and groups that intelligence people can infiltrate and keep watch on. And it does seem like in some of these cases, the length of time between somebody adopting radical ideas and going in and doing something could be quite short in some cases. And then of course, we've had also to keep in mind in many of these cases, some of these cases, anyway, there seems to be a mental health factor. There was I think two years ago, a stabbing on a bus in Surrey, BC, where the person did it and then phoned 9 1 1 and said he'd done it for ISIS. He was charged with terrorism for that, but I think there's some mental health issues there that are coming into play. So all these things make it a very complicated thing, maybe more difficult to understand, more difficult to report on and to make sense of.
Jessica: Yeah. I don't think much has changed though over the last 15 years. Like these are very similar concerns and narratives that we were talking about when I worked at the intelligence service. One of the things that I would point out though, is there does seem to be a bit of an issue in terms of how terrorism is reported on, and part of that is because I think law enforcement is hesitant to call something terrorism until they're really sure, and in some cases they never do call it terrorism; like Stu mentioned, the Quebec mosque shooting. Another really interesting example is the Auchterlonie brothers and the bank shootout in BC in Saanich. This is such an interesting case because these guys, it turns out, are like, were big time anti authority extremists. And it was not a simple attack, these guys had so many firearms, so many improvised explosive devices, they were really intending to go in and try to shoot as many cops as they possibly could during this process.
And so, on one hand, yes, we do have some of these fairly low sophistication mobilizations with pretty quick processes; but on the other hand, we do have people who are engaging in pretty sophisticated and large scale plots and plans and ultimately attacks in this case that have taken like a year, year and a half to come to fruition. So it's a really mixed bag in terms of what law enforcement and security services are dealing with today.
Leah: So if we go back to that body we talked about, ITAC, that has a responsibility to assess the threat and warn Canadians about what that threat level is. Stu, you mentioned that they disagreed with some of the reporting. , do you want to talk a bit about that?
Stewart: Well, after Jess's report came out and after I wrote about it, I was contacted by the intelligence community who wanted to, even though I had actually contacted them beforehand to ask them to comment -to be fair, they didn't have a lot of time and maybe more time would have helped-, but after the fact they decided they did want to weigh in and share information about how they assess the threat and how they interpret the data differently than Jess did. Obviously there's some level of self interest here because their job is to protect Canadians from national security threats. They don't like the suggestion that they might not be on top of things or doing things as well as they might. So as a result of that, they did release some information, they didn't release any data, I asked for it but they didn't, just on how they view the threat a little bit differently. They don't believe that it's as dire as we might think. You know, another thing to keep in mind too, is that these days, a lot of this activity, and this is just the sign of our times, but it's happening online. The old days of meeting somebody and going to a group meeting and maybe going and having a little training camp and all those things seem to have been replaced to some extent by online communication, which on the one hand makes it a lot easier for young people to be exposed, any people to be exposed to this messaging to fall victim to this kind of brainwashing and to receive instructions and to share instructions on how to do attacks. On the other hand, it also makes them really vulnerable to being intercepted. We've seen a lot of cases in the last little bit of people who were plotting and conspiring, not knowing that the person they were talking to was an undercover, often FBI officer, who was on the other end or had somehow infiltrated the group. So that, I mean, that is something that they clearly have figured out how to do pretty successfully. We've seen a lot of these things where tips have come in, I think the Eldidi case last year seems to be one where foreign intelligence had somehow infiltrated a group or picked up some kind of messaging and pass it on to the RCMP and CSIS. So that's another issue. And I guess the question from that is, I wonder, looking forward, how extremists are going to respond to that. If they know, how vulnerable they are to being found out using online platforms, are they going to go back to, you know, face to face communications or some other form, or are they going to just sort of increase the volume and do so much of it, we can't handle it all. Or I don't know.
Leah: You brought up the FBI. In the history of Canadian terrorism prosecutions, there is a lot of, we get a tip from the FBI and then Canadian authorities respond, or even times where there's a Canadian engaged in a plot with U. S. connections and they're apprehended in the United States by U. S. authorities. We see this time and time again. The FBI is undergoing a little bit of a reorganization right now. What do we think? Everyone's kind of laughing at that term because
Jessica: Like the understatement of the decade.
Leah: Yeah. what does the, and this is a theme that we're looking at all season of Secure Line is what does the transformation of the FBI and its priorities potentially mean for Canada's ability to detect and deter and counter and prosecute terrorism?
Jessica: There's definitely no bigger partner for Canada in terms of counter terrorism cooperation than the FBI. As you mentioned, if you look at the number of leads that come from the US, from our US partners, in terms of a variety of different types of terrorism, the FBI is a critical partner on that front. I think when I look at what's happening in the FBI, There's a couple of things that come to mind. First of all, I think counterterrorism cooperation is pretty resilient. You have a lot of pretty low working level relationships where people are going to share information on an operational level, kind of regardless of what's happening within the broader organization, as long as the people are still there to do that sharing. But if things unfold and there continues to be lot of attrition from the FBI, that kind of operational engagement becomes much more difficult. And while there could be ongoing interest and ongoing high level political will to continue sharing on counterterrorism, if there are fewer people to do that work, and if they're less inclined towards countering all the types of ideologically, politically, and religiously motivated violent extremism, then Canada's really in a bad position because so much of our counterterrorism work really relies on the United States.
Stewart: I think this is the question for the Canadian national security community right now, from what I'm hearing, is that on the one hand, publicly, they're messaging very vocally, Oh yes, we're working closely with our U. S. counterparts, look at all the great things we're doing to intercept people at the border, we're your best friend, we're your partner, let's work together. That's the public message. Privately, what I'm hearing is that currently Canada has a very open intelligence sharing operating system with the Five Eyes and the U. S. being the major member of that group. Can we continue to openly share our intelligence with not just the FBI, the CIA, the justice department, the military, the Homeland Security, ICE. Now that they are, I don't know if you can say these words in your podcast, but run by batshit conspiracy theorists and podcasters, I mean, look at the people that have been put in charge of justice. The FBI is still up in the air, but the intelligence director, the military, these raise some pretty big questions about it, and if you look at the, just the actions of these people, since they've been appointed, which is to free the January 6th insurrectionists, to turn around and target the justice and FBI officers who were involved in investigating those people, it raises some pretty big questions about that alliance. I think there are some pretty serious discussions going on right now within all of these agencies in Canada about how do we deal with this and how do we, in good conscience, continue to share very sensitive information with organizations that are going through this kind of transformation.
Jessica: I don't think that we can talk about a singular intelligence sharing relationship with the United States anymore. I think it really has to be taken more on a case by case or a file by file basis. So when you look at something like Russia, how much intelligence sharing are we doing with the FBI and CIA on Russia, given who the DNI is. I think there's probably going to be some more caveats on that intelligence sharing. I think counterterrorism though is probably the one place, particularly religiously motivated violent extremism, where that relationship will be the most robust because we see it in other contexts as well. So even between the U. S. and Russia, even very recently, there was counterterrorism intelligence sharing i n attempt to prevent the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack unsuccessfully, unfortunately. But that's one of those places that has like the most resilience. But can Canada expect a lot of help for targeting the Proud Boys going forward? Obviously not. Other kinds of ideologically motivated violent extremism? I think we're on our own on that front.
Leah: The other thing I wonder about Trump, and just using as an example, the idea that the United States will take over Gaza. What could Trump do for the religiously motivated violent extremism faction? In our first episode, we talked about right wing and ultranationalists, etc. But what could four years of a Trump administration do that the wars in the Middle East aren't already doing, for religiously motivated violent extremism like ISIS?
Stewart: My concern is that he's radicalizing a whole new generation of people that didn't have reasons to be radical before. Look, let's be plain here. Trump got elected by talking to a country that is in decline for various reasons, a great country, but one that's not doing as well as it used to. He convinced them that the reason they're not doing so well is because of them, them, them, them, and them, and he pointed fingers at different people. And he's now come to power and he is going after those people, whether it's DEI, whether it's trans, he's very obsessed with trans for whatever reason, as if that has anything to do with the problems faced by the United States. He's going after people that he believes are part of this deep state and he's targeting, you know, his enemies who went after it went after him for breaking the law, frankly. So my concern is that in doing that he's creating so many enemies, that he's radicalizing people, even within the United States, let alone abroad when he talks about taking over Gaza, when he talks about destroying Iran, for example. These are things that I think he hopes will project his strength, but that actually, as we know in Canada create profound sense of nationalism for whatever -ism it is you belong to that he is attacking. And I think, unfortunately, these are things that have the opposite impact that he might intend and that will God knows what kind of violent extremist groups we're going to see arise or reinvigorated because of the way he's behaving.
Jessica: In my constant effort to make this podcast about economics, I need to raise the issue of tariffs here as well. Because everything that Stew is saying is exactly right, this is really a driving radicalizing force, one of the things that we know from all of the terrorism literature is that people really mobilize to violence when they're in periods of economic change. That could be good, but it's often bad. So when you have someone implementing really bad economic policies that will impact a lot of people around the world, that adds additional fuel to the fire that we know does contribute significantly to terrorism.
Leah: Well, even arguably, the shuttering of USAID will create so much economic instability, and it's not necessarily a primary response to then radicalize to violence, especially against the United States , but it could be significantly destabilizing in areas around the world that are already struggling with violence and terrorist groups leading people with no other options into the arms of these movements. And so there's just, to my mind, so many second and third order effects here that could have ripple effects, let alone environmental policy and what that could do for those who fall under the eco terrorism umbrella. We haven't seen a lot of that in North America, but I think time's ticking on us seeing that manifest here.
Stewart: You know how terrorist groups gain popular support? They take advantage of these types of crises and the vacuums in international support and aid. And they go into these places and they say, well, we're giving you the aid. I remember being in Pakistan in, I can't remember the year, but it was after the earthquake, and going to one of the devastated areas, and one of the hardline Islamist groups was the only organization that was providing aid to people that were suffering. This is how terrorist groups, whether it's Hezbollah or whatever, this is how they operate. They put themselves in the role of being the benefactor and supporter of the community. That's how they gain recruits and followers and just public support. The way to counter it is to have vibrant, vigorous, international aid programs. And of course, as we know, if democratic countries aren't in there supporting people in crisis, then authoritarian countries will move in as well. Whether it's China or Russia, this is a big part of their foreign policies is to move into these areas and try and supplant Western countries and the United States as the major supporters and providers of aid. So it's a devastating thing, again, that hasn't been thought through that will have, again, the exact opposite impact that Trump has promised, which is to make the United States a more secure country.
Jessica: I would add two other players to that as well, India and Turkey, both who have regional and global ambitions, understand the role of aid and foreign assistance in terms of fostering that influence. So I think that there's a lot of people who are going to fill that vacuum, or certainly a lot of people who are going to want to fill that vacuum.
Leah: Stu, before we wrap up, one of the things we're talking about here is the number of women who returned from detention camps. That was a long time coming, but there are thousands of people still in detention in Northeastern Syria. I was wondering if you could just provide an update. I know you're following what the situation is in the detention facilities in Northeastern Syria right now.
Stewart: Well, it's pretty unstable. You and I were there together in 2019. And at the time, remember, we left just as Turkey moved in across the border. Turkey is again pushing into that area. We've had the change of government recently, which has created a whole new issue and some questions around the future of extremist groups in that country. But it's not a sustainable situation there. We have a handful of Canadians that are there. We brought back the women but not the men for reasons that don't necessarily make sense. I think my understanding is that the Canadian authorities are preparing for the return of all of these Canadians that are there. Hopefully they have, I know in some cases they do have charges ready. I'm not sure about all of them, but it's just not a very sustainable, temporary solution, housing all of those people in the camps that we visited and saw. We'll have to see how the government decides to deal with it, but I think that, again, the obstacle is, especially with elections looming, that no government wants to be the government that brought home ISIS.
Leah: Well, on those happy notes, we always end on a happy note here at Secure Line, you know, come for the levity.
Stewart: Well, on a bright note, I've been doing this for a while, and when I first started doing this stuff, there were really no academics that people could go to that studied these issues, and so it was a lonely field. Now, at least we have some brilliant professors, academics who are studying these things. You guys are certainly at the forefront, and it's helpful for us too, because we're down in the weeds and we're just looking at individual stories and having folks like you to help us make sense of them is just so incredibly helpful. So thank you.
Leah: Stu, thanks, man.
Jessica: Thanks, man.
Leah: You'll definitely be invited back.
Thanks to everybody. We hope you enjoy this episode. We will be coming back with a second part with Colin Clark looking at the larger global picture of terrorism in a subsequent episode, and we hope you'll give us a like and a follow and share us widely.
Thanks.
Jessica: Thank you.