Government of Canada announces more than $25 million for projects to counter radicalization to violence

Overview

On May 3, 2023, Public Safety Canada announced more than $25 million to fund new projects under the Community Resilience Fund (CRF). These projects include:

Recipient: The Government of British Columbia; Ministry of Public Safety & Solicitor General

Project title: Shift BC

Total funding amount: $3,191,504.65

This is a five-year intervention-based project designed to reduce violent extremism in British Columbia. They will work with individuals who may be at-risk of or involved in violent extremism activities. The intent of the Shift BC program is to address the risk of Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism (IMVE) events and to promote public safety by providing vulnerable individuals with multi-sectoral interventions, thereby countering the root process of radicalization-to-violence at the individual level. The project aims to address grievances, remove risk factors, add protective factors, promote societal integration, provide pro-social alternatives to violence, and connect participants with tailored services and supports.

Recipient: Living Skies Centre for Social Inquiry

Project title: Partnership Enhancement: Identifying Opportunities and Removing Barriers to Multi-Sector Collaboration in the Prevention and Intervention of Violent Extremism

Total funding amount: $99,250.00

This is a two-year research project that aims to help prevent and counter violent extremism by building the capacities of stakeholders in prevention/countering violent extremism (P/CVE) who work with vulnerable individuals to better formulate partnerships with human service providers. Over a two-year period, the project will work to identify evidence-based and experience-driven solutions to common pitfalls and promising opportunities in multi-sector collaborative efforts to prevent/counter violent extremism, as well as to better equip frontline practitioners and support more effective collaboration between sectors. The project’s main goal is to identify lessons learned, develop resources, and share knowledge that helps P/CVE stakeholders build effective, lasting relationships with human service providers.

Recipient: Yorktown Family Services

Project title: Estimated Time of Arrival

Total funding amount: $3,279,188.00

The project is a mobile, interdisciplinary model that helps young adults and adults through engaging and redirecting people that are on the pathway to grievance-based violence related to violent extremism. The program deploys rapid, mobile mental health and integrated care for people at-risk of radicalization to violence. The project aims to support participants in reconnecting with their communities in a positive way by providing social and emotional support and connecting them to a variety of services. The project will expand the model to additional communities in southern Ontario, to engage with individuals between the ages of 12 to 35 who might be involved with, at-risk of, or in the early stages of violent extremist activity.

Recipient: Digital Public Square

Project title: Community Trust and Strengthening IMVE Interventions by Countering Misinformation

Total funding amount: $1,380,073.00

The project will engage the general Canadian public with a particular focus on subsets of the population disproportionately impacted by relevant mis- and disinformation based on initial research and literature reviews. The project aims to engage a range of participants over 21 months by surveying opinions on distrust in institutions and their connection to xenophobic, anti-authority, gender-driven, and other ideologically-motivated forms of radicalization. A digital intervention tool will be developed based on the research findings and promoted through digital channels to reach affected communities. Actionable data will be produced allowing for further refinements to the intervention tool.

Recipient: Online Harms Foundation

Project title: Terrorist Content Analytics Platform (TCAP) Phase 2

Total funding amount: $1,945,904.00

The TCAP is a centralized platform aimed at facilitating tech company moderation of terrorist content and improving quantitative analysis of terrorists’ use of the Internet. The TCAP has become the world’s largest database of verified terrorist content, shared for free with companies around the world. Funding for Phase 2 of TCAP (approximately $2 million over three years) will create a large-scale, protected data archive to enable evidence-driven research, policy and prevention programming, as well as expanded capabilities to identify and assess more types of content, across a wider range of platforms. It will also will focus on developing a technical content moderation tool to assist smaller tech companies in managing their workflows to make swift and proportionate content moderation decisions.

Recipient: Moonshot CVE

Project title: Expanding online support pathways for Canadians at-risk of ideologically motivated violent extremism and enhancing multi-sectoral interventions

Total funding amount: $1,291,347.00

The goal of the project is to develop an innovative, expanded, and scalable multi-sectoral interventions approach to safeguard against the spread of violent extremism online, through the provision of targeted, tailored support to violent far-right (VFR) and incel audiences across five Canadian provinces (Ontario, Québec, Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan). The project will primarily serve Canadian Internet users who indicate risk by engaging with VFR and/or incel ideologies online, by advertising and making connections to specialized local offline psychosocial support services, in line with relevant privacy legislation in each jurisdiction.

Recipient: MUFLEHUN

Project title: Community Resilience Early Warning System Canada (CREWS- Canada)

Total funding amount: up to $710,475.00

Muflehun will work with local governments in selected pilot locations in Canada to help identify and prioritize local primary/early prevention needs. The project will use data-driven methods to identify and prioritize relevant risk and protective factors specific to the selected locations. Then, based on the results, Muflehun will work with local government staff to develop recommendations for primary prevention programs that address each location's specific needs using a public health primary prevention approach. The project will co-design comprehensive resilience frameworks for each location, with the goal of better investing limited resources towards reducing local vulnerabilities towards violent extremism.

Recipient: White Ribbon

Project title: Professionalizing the Practice: An Incel Radicalization Prevention Program

Total funding amount: up to $2,540,290.00

This initiative will raise awareness and equip frontline practitioners with evidence-based training, tools and collaboration opportunities to stop incel violence before it begins; intervene when there are risk factors and warning signs; and support male youth to get the help they need to not be drawn into and/or to disengage from the incel movement. Representatives from professional bodies in the education, community child and youth services as well as mental health sectors will be engaged over the five years of the project to guide the strategic approach, provide input, arrange testing, review results and promote the program.

Recipient: The Students Commission of Canada

Project title: Stories and Legacy -  Turning unheard moments into generative tools for thwarting violent extremist recruitment

Total funding amount: up to $200,000.00

This project is a pilot program that builds on previous CRF-funded research on violent extremism, which identifies generativity – the desire to serve future generations – as a contributing driver for some youth to enter and exit violent extremism (VE) movements. The project aims to create educational materials that share stories of individuals who have been involved in VE, in order to prevent youth from being recruited and/or engaged in VE and to promote diversity. The project will use comedy, drama, and storytelling to provide insight into the exclusion process that leads to polarization and "us and them" identity choices, with the objective to interrupt narratives fostering violent extremism and enhance programming for preventing and countering radicalization to violence.

Recipient: Peel Regional Police

Project title: Building Organizational and Community Capacity for Countering Hate and Violent Extremism

Total funding amount: up to $101 719, 00

The Building Organizational and Community Capacity for Countering Hate and Violent Extremism project will strengthen the awareness, knowledge and capacity of Peel Regional Police, service providers and community members to identify, prevent and respond to incidents of hate and extremist violence. This twelve-month initiative directly supports the National Strategy on Countering Radicalization to Violence by building the capacity of front-line workers and practitioners, as well as supporting the development of training and information. The resources will be disseminated through community training workshops to assist in identifying and appropriately responding to concerns about hate and extremism in the Regional Municipality of Peel.