In the span of just three days, Barbara Perry, director of the government-funded Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism, appeared in two major media pieces. On March 12, she gave a lengthy interview warning of a “fairly high threat level” driven almost exclusively by right-wing extremism and “Active Clubs.” On March 15, CBC Saskatchewan ran a 48-minute segment titled “Have you noticed a rise in anti-immigrant and anti-semitic sentiment?” that again spotlighted Perry alongside reporter Eric Szeto and Canadian Race Relations Foundation CEO Muhammad Hashim.
Both pieces paint the same picture: white-nationalist “Active Clubs” are the fastest-growing extremist threat in Canada, hate crimes are exploding because of them, and the solution is more government resources, early intervention programs, and equity-focused education.
But a side-by-side comparison with official CSIS Public Reports, RCMP charge documents, StatsCan hate-crime data, and Public Safety Canada’s own March 2026 Active Clubs brief reveals something else entirely: this is not journalism, and it is not academia. It is textbook activism — selective framing, outright omissions, and policy advocacy dressed up as neutral expertise.
The “High Threat Level” That Doesn’t Exist
Perry opens her March 12 interview by declaring Canada is at a “fairly high threat level,” citing five right-wing mass murders resulting in 24 deaths over the past decade. She claims the threat “continues because of the narratives” from active groups that “promote violence against targeted communities [and] the state,” and insists “even CSIS has seen that threat.”
The official CSIS National Terrorism Threat Level has remained Medium — unchanged since 2014 — meaning a violent act “could occur” but is not considered imminent or elevated. Perry’s “fairly high” assessment is her own alarmist gloss, focused solely on right-wing variants. Her Centre defines extremism broadly as anything challenging “inclusion and equity,” blurring the line between speech, protest, and actual violence from the outset.
The Fabricated “Shift” From ISIS to Far-Right
Perry repeatedly claims a post-2014 “pivot” away from Islamist threats toward ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE — i.e., far-right). She focuses heavily on the statistic that, by 2023, IMVE made up roughly 50% of CSIS counter-terrorism investigations. What she never shows viewers is the important clarification found in the same CSIS Public Report 2024:
“Violent extremism, whether it is religiously, ideologically, or politically motivated, continues to pose a significant threat to Canada’s national security. The overall violent extremist threat to Canada has remained at a heightened level, as online radicalization has contributed to an increased number of extremists mobilizing to violence, some of whom are youth. Monitoring, investigating, and mitigating these serious threats are a key priority for CSIS and its national security partners. While only a small number of Canadians are actually willing to engage in extremist violence in support of a cause, their actions continue to have devastating consequences on national security. The collective threat posed by religiously motivated violent extremism (RMVE) and ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) grew during 2024.”
Actual outcomes tell the opposite story of Perry’s narrative. On the RMVE side, there has been a clear surge in serious terrorism-related arrests. The December 2023 Ottawa youth plot — two 15-year-olds arrested for planning a mass-casualty attack with explosives and firearms at a pro-Israel rally on Parliament Hill — was explicitly confirmed by RCMP charges, ITAC assessment, and court documents as ISIS/Daesh-linked RMVE, with one teen in direct contact with Daesh operatives overseas. Additional cases include a Montreal minor arrested in August 2025 for allegedly planning a Daesh attack, Toronto-area youth charged with ISIS propaganda and firearms offences, the July 2024 Toronto arrests of Ahmed and Mostafa Eldidi (father and son) for violent attack planning, a September 2024 Quebec man arrested for plotting a firearms attack on Jewish targets in New York, and a December 2025 Toronto case involving ISIS funding and conspiracy to commit murder. Overall, there were roughly 20 ISIS-linked arrests in 2023–2024 alone, compared with just two in 2022.
In stark contrast, the five “right-wing mass murders” Perry cites to paint a picture of an exploding far-right threat — resulting in 24 deaths — have no connection whatsoever to the Active Clubs or organized white-supremacist groups she repeatedly highlights throughout the interview. Crimes associated with right-wing extremism are usually charged as hate crimes or minor infractions, and none have ever been linked to Active Clubs.
Active Clubs: Hype Without Violence
In the March 15 CBC Saskatchewan segment, reporter Eric Szeto describes Active Clubs as neo-Nazi “white nationalism 3.0” — decentralized fitness networks preparing for a “race war,” with dozens of Canadian chapters, strict ideological vetting, and leaders discussing “remigration by shooting.” Perry later supports and expands on this exact framing in her interview later in the segment, tying it into her broader narrative of rising extremist activity and calling for more government resources.
Public Safety Canada’s own brief (obtained by CBC) admits the key caveat: “despite no acts yet” in Canada. RCMP and CSIS public data through March 2026 confirm zero terrorism charges, assaults, firearms offences, or plots linked to any Canadian Active Club chapter. None. The “fastest-growing threat” label appears nowhere in official CSIS or ITAC language — it is pure media/Perry framing of a non-violent subculture.
Even the vetting process is distorted. In the March 15 segment, reporter Eric Szeto claims vetting ensures members are “aligned with their values.” The actual purpose, per Second Sons Canada’s own website and reporting on the network, is criminal background screening to keep serious offenders out.
Hate Crime Stats: Geopolitics Erased, Right-Wing Blamed
The segment leads with dramatic claims, stating that police-reported hate crimes in Canada have “jumped by more than three times” over the last decade, with Saskatchewan seeing an even more extreme rise of “ten times.” Barbara Perry directly links this increase to a “broader trend of increasing extremist activity and hateful speech” driven by Active Clubs, white nationalism, and anti-immigrant sentiment.
This framing is highly misleading. While long-term hate crime numbers have indeed risen over the past ten years, StatsCan’s official 2024 hate-crime release (published July 2025) clearly states that the recent surge — particularly between 2023 and 2024 — is overwhelmingly driven by geopolitical events, above all the October 7 Hamas attack and the Israel-Hamas war. Jewish-targeted incidents surged by 71% in that period and accounted for 68% of all religion-motivated hate crimes, totalling 920 separate incidents.
In contrast to the alarmist presentation, the actual year-over-year change from 2023 to 2024 was minimal: just +1% nationally. Saskatchewan actually saw hate crimes decrease by 4.5%. Additionally, the vast majority of these incidents are non-violent, consisting mainly of mischief, graffiti, and online hate speech rather than physical attacks.
Despite StatsCan explicitly attributing the recent spike to geopolitical factors, both the CBC Saskatchewan segment and Perry erase this context completely. They instead re-attribute the entire rise to right-wing extremism and Active Clubs — a deliberate distortion that serves their narrow narrative while ignoring the primary documented driver.
The Outright Denial of Left-Wing Violence
The most blatant falsehood comes in Perry’s March 12 interview. She asserts that they do not see the same threat of physical violence from the far-left.
This is verifiably false. In Canada, Montreal has seen repeated black-bloc and Antifa actions, including the November 2024 anti-NATO protest where vehicles were torched and officers were assaulted, along with multiple May Day disruptions involving smoke bombs and targeted confrontations. As recently as January 2026 in Toronto, eight Antifa members were arrested during counter-protests and charged with assault on police officers and carrying concealed weapons. These incidents clearly fit CSIS’s own IMVE (anti-authority) category.
The denial becomes even harder to defend when looking south of the border. In March 2026, eight members of a North Texas Antifa cell were convicted on federal terrorism charges involving explosives and attempted murder for their armed attack on the Prairieland ICE Detention Center in July 2025 — the first federal Antifa-linked domestic terrorism prosecution under the Trump administration. In December 2025, four members of the Turtle Island Liberation Front were arrested in the Mojave Desert while constructing pipe bombs intended for coordinated New Year’s Eve mass-casualty attacks targeting infrastructure and immigration agents.
Perry’s Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism has never meaningfully addressed any of these incidents. The erasure is appears almost deliberate.
Policy Advocacy Masquerading as Expertise
In both the March 12 interview and the March 15 CBC Saskatchewan segment, Barbara Perry seamlessly pivots from “analysis” to open prescription: school curricula are failing, we need more “early intervention, disengagement programs, rural outreach, digital safety commissions,” and expanded government resources all aligned with her equity/hate-studies paradigm. Her Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism operates under an explicit mandate that defines extremism as anything challenging “inclusion and equity” — built-in activism from the start. Former senior CSIS counter-terrorism analyst Phil Gurski (2001–2015) has publicly called out exactly this pattern: the threat from far-right groups (which they call IMVE) is being “over-represented” while the threat from Islamist groups is being “under-represented,” with academics like Perry contributing to the inflation by broadly applying the IMVE label.
The result is predictable and dangerous: counter-extremism dollars and priorities are steered toward monitoring non-violent gym groups like Active Clubs and policing right-of-centre speech, while documented RMVE plots (the Ottawa ISIS youth case and roughly 20 arrests in 2023–2024 alone) and far-left terrorism convictions (Toronto Antifa assaults with concealed weapons, Texas convictions, Turtle Island pipe-bomb plot) receive far less attention.
The pattern is now impossible to ignore. Two major media pieces in three days. One government-funded professor. Zero counterpoints. Selective statistics. Omitted official caveats (“no acts yet,” “equally likely,” “geopolitical driver”). Outright denial of left-wing violence. And repeated calls for more taxpayer-funded programs that perfectly match the Centre’s ideological mandate.
This is not public-service journalism. It is not balanced academic research. It is advocacy that directly influences national policy while the full threat picture — confirmed in every CSIS Public Report, RCMP charge sheet, and StatsCan release — is airbrushed out.
Canadians deserve better. The data is public on canada.ca and csis-scrs.gc.ca. Read the primary sources yourself. The real threats are too serious to be subordinated to any activist narrative.
Sources:
TVO Today. “Is Canada Winning the Fight Against Extremism?” (Barbara Perry interview), March 12, 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8QtI6UDk5I
CBC Saskatchewan. “Have you noticed a rise in anti-immigrant and anti-semitic sentiment?” March 15, 2026.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACxTWk9G6rU
Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS). Public Report 2024. Canada.ca, released June 2025.
https://www.canada.ca/en/security-intelligence-service/corporate/publications/csis-public-report-2024.html
(Direct PDF: https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/images/2024publicreport/newest/Public_Report_2024-ENG.pdf)
Statistics Canada. “Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2024” (The Daily). Released July 22, 2025.
https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/daily-quotidien/250722/dq250722a-eng.htm
Public Safety Canada. Internal brief on Active Clubs (March 2026), obtained and referenced by CBC.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/active-clubs-report-public-safety-canada-9.7109011
Second Sons Canada (official Active Club chapter). Membership and vetting criteria page.
Referenced in reporting such as: https://www.antihate.ca/white_nationalism_in_canada_organized_emboldened_and_growing
Phil Gurski (former senior CSIS analyst). Public commentary on threat inflation.
https://borealisthreatandrisk.com/Toronto Police Service and court records. January 2026 Antifa arrests (assault and concealed weapons charges).U.S. Department of Justice. Press releases: North Texas Antifa convictions (March 2026) and Turtle Island Liberation Front arrests (December 2025).
Available on justice.gov.