The Hamilton Spectator’s May 22, 2026, article headline reads like a straightforward public safety announcement: Hamilton Police Service (HPS) is seconding an Intelligence Unit officer to the Ontario Provincial Police’s Provincial Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) for three years to tackle a “sharp rise in hate-related incidents” and “extremist group activities in public spaces.” The board report explicitly flags Nationalist-13 — described as “an active club associated with white nationalism and neo-Nazi movement” — alongside their public workouts and demonstrations as a key local concern.
But a closer look at the data, the law, and the broader pattern reveals a different story. The real driver of rising hate crimes in Hamilton and across Canada is geopolitical conflict spilling over from immigrant communities, not domestic “white nationalist” fitness groups. None of the named organizations — Nationalist-13, Second Sons, or the recently active Dominion Society — is listed as a terrorist entity. None have been linked to real-world violence or terrorism plots. And while ethnonationalism is openly practiced and often celebrated by Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu communities, Canada’s IMVE (Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism) framework and the pending Bill C-9 appear engineered to treat European-heritage advocacy as uniquely dangerous.
This is not neutral policing. It is a direct attack on Heritage Canadians exercising their Charter rights to peaceful assembly, expression, and national identity.
The Real Source of Rising Hate Crimes: Geopolitical Spillover, Not Local Nationalists
Hamilton Police reported 297 hate/bias incidents in 2024 — a 35% jump from the prior year. Nationally, Statistics Canada recorded 4,882 police-reported hate crimes in 2024, a slight 1% increase from 2023 but part of a multi-year surge that began after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel.
These figures require heavy caveats. They represent police-reported incidents only — not necessarily proven hate crimes in court. In Hamilton, just 106 were actual criminal offences; the remaining 191 were non-criminal “hate/bias incidents” or actions with hateful “overtones” that don’t meet the legal threshold for a Criminal Code violation. Classification often hinges on subjective complainant perception, officer discretion, and heightened community awareness campaigns. Many reported incidents are never charged, let alone convicted.
Even taking the raw numbers at face value, hate crimes are a statistical drop in the bucket compared to the real public safety pressures facing Canadians. Canada’s overall police-reported crime rate (excluding traffic offences) stood at 5,672 incidents per 100,000 population in 2024 — roughly 2.3 million total incidents nationwide. Hate crimes accounted for less than 0.2% of that total.
More importantly, the real crime trends that have strained communities align far more closely with Canada’s record mass immigration from third-world and conflict-affected countries than with any local nationalist groups. During the peak immigration years (2022–early 2025), when population growth was driven almost entirely by non-Western inflows and temporary residents, police services documented sharp rises in far more serious offences like sexual assaults, fraud, and extortion. Organized fraud rings, sextortion networks, and related crimes have been repeatedly traced by police to specific foreign criminal networks operating within recent immigrant communities. These are the crimes that directly erode quality of life, cost Canadians hundreds of millions annually, and correlate tightly with the demographic transformation — not with a handful of masked men doing group workouts in Hamilton parks.
Toronto Police Service’s own 2024 hate crime report is blunt: “There is a notable correlation between geopolitical events and increased hate crime reporting. … The ongoing Middle East crisis is believed to have been a significant factor in the sustained increase in hate crime reporting.” Antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents dominate the spikes. Religion remains the top motivation, followed by race/ethnicity. Public Safety Canada and multiple police services have repeatedly tied these numbers to foreign conflicts playing out on Canadian streets — not to masked men doing push-ups in parks or holding “Mass Deportations Now” banners.
Yet the Hamilton Police board report and the Spectator article spotlight Nationalist-13’s public demonstrations and workouts as justification for dedicating anti-terrorism resources. This is a deliberate misdirection. There is zero evidence linking these non-violent Canadian nationalist groups to the reported hate crime surge — or to any broader violent crime wave. The institutional focus on them reveals more about selective policing priorities than it does about actual threats to public safety.
Nationalist-13, Second Sons, and Dominion Society: Not Terrorists, Not Violent — Yet Targeted by a Selective IMVE Framework
None of these organizations — Nationalist-13, Second Sons, or Dominion Society — appear on Canada’s official list of terrorist entities maintained by Public Safety Canada. That list includes Atomwaffen Division, The Base, ISIS affiliates, and other groups with documented plots or attacks.
Extensive reviews of public records, news archives, court documents, and police reports reveal zero convictions or incidents of real-world violence linked to them. Their activities consist of peaceful rallies, banner drops, fitness sessions under the “Active Club” model, and public demonstrations.
On May 18, 2026, the Dominion Society held a lawful gathering in Hamilton’s Victoria Park and Gore Park, calling for the restoration of the Sir John A. Macdonald statue torn down in 2021. No arrests, no violence — simply Heritage Canadians asserting their history and cultural continuity. Critics instantly branded it a “white nationalist” event tied to Second Sons, but the facts show otherwise.
This is where the selective nature of Canada’s security framework becomes clear. CSIS and Public Safety Canada funnel European-descended ethnonationalism into the IMVE category — specifically the “xenophobic violence” subcategory — where it is automatically framed as inherently tied to “white supremacy” or neo-Nazism. The result is that even non-violent, Charter-protected expression is treated as a potential extremism risk warranting anti-terrorism resources.
Contrast this with the tolerance granted to parallel ethnonationalist movements in Canada like Hindu advocacy, Zionist Jewish organizations openly defending Israel as a Jewish state, Sikh separatism, or certain Islamist cultural and religious assertions. These groups operate openly, often receive public funding, and face institutional scrutiny only when they cross into documented and legitimate terrorism. Peaceful identity-based advocacy by non-European communities is routinely protected as multiculturalism, decolonization, or religious freedom.
This asymmetry is not accidental. Post-WWII norms and Canada’s official multiculturalism policy have entrenched the idea that “whiteness” or European heritage is the one identity that must be deconstructed rather than defended. Peaceful calls to preserve Canada’s founding European character are investigated as potential extremism, while actual spikes in hate crimes driven by imported geopolitical grievances are dismissed as unfortunate but unrelated side effects.
The leap from edgy slogans and masked marches by these groups to “terrorism” exists only in threat assessments and media framing — not in criminal charges or court findings. By spotlighting them as justification for Hamilton Police’s move into the Provincial Anti-Terrorism Section, authorities reveal the true priority is to police one specific form of nationalism while granting others a free pass.
Bill C-9: Weaponizing “Community Feelings” to Criminalize Lawful Protest
Compounding the selective targeting of Heritage Canadian groups is Bill C-9, the so-called Combating Hate Act. The legislation passed third reading in the House of Commons on March 25, 2026, and is currently before the Senate Standing Committee on Human Rights, where it underwent witness testimony on May 20–21, 2026.
During those hearings, Toronto Police Service representatives testified in support of the bill’s new enforcement tools. While they acknowledged that the legislation is framed to protect peaceful protest in principle, they confirmed that police will now have expanded authority to assess whether a demonstration crosses into unlawful territory if it involves certain symbols or rhetoric that “foments hate.” Crucially, that assessment will heavily weigh how affected communities perceive and react to the message.
While the government’s Charter Statement insists these measures do not criminalize “awful but lawful” speech or peaceful assembly, the language is deliberately broad and subjective. Determining “wilful promotion of hatred” depends on context, complainant perception, officer discretion, and — as the Toronto Police testimony made clear — community impact and feelings of fear or offence.
For groups like Nationalist-13, Second Sons, and even the Dominion Society, the implications are immediate and chilling. Their public rallies, banner drops, fitness sessions, and historical advocacy (such as the Dominion Society’s May 18, 2026, demonstration in Hamilton calling for the return of the Sir John A. Macdonald statue) are already monitored and classified as “hate incidents.” Once Bill C-9 becomes law, a single complaint from an activist organization, religious advocacy group, or affected community — often amplified by sympathetic media — could be enough to trigger charges for “wilful promotion of hatred.” What is currently protected, Charter expression and peaceful assembly, could be transformed into a criminal act overnight.
This represents a dangerous shift from policing actual violence, threats, or criminal conduct to policing feelings and perceptions. Charter-protected rights to freedom of expression (s. 2(b)) and peaceful assembly (s. 2(c)) are being steadily hollowed out, particularly when the expression involves European-descended Canadians asserting their cultural identity and legitimate concerns over mass immigration and demographic change.
The double standard is glaring. Parallel identity-based advocacy or strong rhetoric from other ethno-religious communities rarely faces this level of preemptive scrutiny or new legislative tools. Bill C-9 does not create neutral, even-handed rules — it provides expanded enforcement tools that, in practice, will be aimed squarely at Heritage Canadian nationalists who dare to speak publicly about preserving Canada’s founding European character.
This Is Not About Public Safety — It Is About Suppressing Heritage Canadian Nationalism
Hamilton Police are not joining PATS because Nationalist-13 is plotting bombings. They are doing so because a small number of organized European-descended Canadians are visibly rejecting mass immigration’s cultural and demographic transformation — and doing so without apology.
Heritage Canadians have every right to advocate for their people’s continuity, just as every other group does in their own country. The data shows the real hate crime problem lies elsewhere. The institutional response — selective IMVE labelling, anti-terrorism resources for non-violent demonstrators, and pending speech-policing legislation — reveals the true target, which is any form of white/European ethnonationalism that dares to say Canada should remain a country for its founding people.
This is not counter-extremism. It is cultural replacement enforcement disguised as public safety. Heritage Canadians are watching. And they are not backing down.