Executive Director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), Evan Balgord, told CBC in an article from early March 2026 that Canadian nationalist groups like Second Sons Canada should be proscribed as terrorist groups. “I believe that designating [specific groups as terrorist entities] is justified, and it would be effective in disrupting white nationalism in Canada significantly.”
A group being proscribed as a terrorist entity would basically cripple the group’s functions and would make it criminal in many situations to even associate with said group. Terrorist designations are generally reserved for groups that are committing actual terrorism, domestically or abroad, with terrorist activities such as assassinations, mass shootings, kidnappings and bombing attacks.
So-called “Active Clubs” in Canada and groups like Second Sons Canada have done no such things, let alone been convicted of any violent conduct. So one must ask, has Evan Balgord and the Canadian Anti-Hate Network lost their collective minds?
It appears that the Canadian government has emboldened them to demonize their political enemies. The Canadian government recently released an internal report that states White nationalist organizing in Canada poses a risk for violence. Free Speech Watch investigates the validity of these claims and explains how these narratives are not only false but are designed to stifle freedom of speech and association in Canada.
This CBC article, released on March 3, 2026, is the first mention in the media of the existence of a Public Safety Canada brief from December 2025. Balgord was interviewed as an “expert” to further comment on this report’s contents, where he stated his opinion quoted above. The next day, CAHN-adjacent social media influencer Rachel Gilmore posted a video where she states she was given privileged access to this report as well. Behind her in the video, an image is displayed of the report titled “Active Clubs and Second Sons in Canada”. Free Speech Watch reconstructed the document’s contents that were visible in Gilmore’s video, with as much of her head removed as possible to obstruct the text.
Why is the government exclusively sharing this document, meant for internal circulation, with media propagandists like CBC and Rachel Gilmore? This comes weeks after Gilmore states in a video how a “government source” physically handed her an envelope with private information of a Canadian citizen in order to publish hit pieces on them with the intent of terminating their employment and putting political pressure on local businesses.
It appears the government is laundering dubious smears against Canadian citizens to preferred propagandists who will support its claims uncritically, and add their own layers of bias, deceit and persecution to it. Free Speech Watch will debunk the claims put forth from what was publicly viewable in this report, as well as the additional claims made by the likes of CAHN, CBC and Rachel Gilmore.
An excerpt from the “executive summary” of this report states: “‘Active Clubs’ (specifically chapters of the Active Club movement) engage in group activities meant to prepare the movement for a ‘race war’, but these vary across chapters. Some engage in street violence towards targeted groups, while others focus on physical recruitment and combat training in preparation for eventual violent confrontation.”
All claims from this quote are demonstrably false within the Canadian context. There have been no recorded accounts of street violence towards “targeted groups” in Canada from so-called “Active Clubs”. “Active Clubs” is used as a catch-all term for groups of presumably White men with pro-White worldviews organizing together to train physically and network amongst each other, circa 2021. The claim that all these groups are preparing for a “race war” is not based in fact, but a conspiratorial claim pushed by various media organizations like CBC, and non-governmental organizations using taxpayers’ money, like the Canadian Anti-Hate Network.
There are no official statements from any of the listed Canadian “Active Club” groups where they claim to be preparing for a “race war”, and there is no evidence that any of these groups are targeting or plotting to target “protected groups” with violence. In the case of the group Second Sons Canada (SSC), which constitutes at least a third of the Active Club chapters listed from Canada, there is a code of conduct which forbids violent criminality from members of the group. Vice President of Second Sons Canada, Alex Vriend, told Free Speech Watch that there is a clause in the Members’ Code of Conduct that states, “The endorsement of promotion of violence and/or terrorism is strictly forbidden.”
The report states there are around 200 known Active Club chapters worldwide, with over 30 of them located in Canada, and over a third of them are supposedly chapters of SSC. These numbers are inflated by dubious methodology, admittedly using unverifiable open source social media posts. Even with this inflation of numbers, it only shows that there is a larger ratio of group activity compared to violence, which is still none.
Organizations like CAHN, CBC and the government’s Public Safety Canada are using the term “race war” to give the impression that these Active Club groups are targeting minorities with violence. The evidence that they provide in order to claim this, and even write headlines with this claim, are often just podcast clips where leaders of these groups state how racial tensions are rising in Canada, and that there is an increasing need to collectivize by race, and potentially use self defense if a situation arose where they or their loved ones were to be attacked by any assailant in an increasingly dangerous society.
Other supporting evidence used for this government narrative includes incidents from unrelated groups with different objectives (sometimes decades ago), most of them not based in Canada. This “race war” narrative is a rhetorical fabrication from these government and government adjacent organizations to demonize and suppress Canadians currently organizing politically with ideologies that the government opposes; In this case, Canadian nationalism. CBC admits in a broadcast from July 2025 that these Active Clubs, including Second Sons Canada, have not committed any violence. They admitted it again recently in March 2026.
by US-based Will2Rise, the company owned by Rob Rundo (who is widely credited as starting the Active Club movement), debunks the “race war” narrative that is being spun about the groups in their movement. “The media-intelligence-activist-complex would have you believe that the purpose of Active Clubs is to train for some kind of apocalyptic race war. The problem with this theory is that you don’t prepare for a modern war by training in unarmed combat, any idiot can decipher that, so why are our detractors making fools of themselves in terms of logic?”
Likewise, on the website for Second Sons Canada (SSC), there is a passage in the FAQ which states “there is no component or even discussion on firearms or adjacent training.” Preparing for an actual “race war” would likely involve firearms, explosives, and other weapons of warfare, hence the inclusion of the word “war” in “race war”. A clip from a post on the X account @Son_of_Plaid satirizes CBC’s accusations of SSC preparing for a “race war”.
An excerpt from this government report under the subheading “Why This Matters for Violence Prevention”, states: “Across all chapters, violence is incorporated into the Active Clubs’ aesthetics and plays a key role in the branding and public appeal of the movement.” If the promotion of martial arts is considered “violence”, then shouldn’t every martial arts gym be designated as violent extremists? It appears this logic only applies to groups that practice martial arts that don’t have the State’s preferred political ideologies.
In this case, there is a coordinated effort to demonize the practice of martial arts amongst politically motivated White men as some new form of “pseudo-terrorism”. In this case, the government arbitrarily labels them as IMVEs (Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremists). Other racial or religious identity groups organize and train with impunity from the persecution of the government, the media and “anti-hate” groups that the government funds.
CBC’s article “White nationalist fight clubs pose risk for ‘extreme violence,’ warns government report,” which references this government report, falls flat in proving that the groups mentioned will enact “extreme violence”. Free Speech Watch reached out to the VP of Second Sons Canada, Alex Vriend, asking about the validity of the claim made in this article from CBC. Vriend stated:
“[The report excerpt says] we’re not advocating violence… No active clubs advocate for the use of violence. The whole point of them is to provide productive outlets for the dissatisfaction that men have with the current state of society, and we do not engage in violent behaviour because that doesn’t benefit us… We do not advocate for violence because it is not necessary and it does not benefit us. The only entities that benefit from random violence are the far-left ‘academics’ and the state, who use these events to justify attacking non-violent political associations. We advocate for peaceful political association and community building, which is what these entities are truly concerned with because that is what actually is a threat to their political hegemony.”
From what is visible in this internal government report presented in Gilmore’s video, which is partially blocked by Gilmore’s head, the government lists several instances which supposedly corroborate their narrative. The examples visible in this video include: A Canadian man sentenced to 10 years in jail for making videos for a proscribed terrorist group, “Atomwaffen Division”. It is notable that this man was sentenced to this large amount of time in jail while having committed no alleged violence, which brings into question whether this sentencing was politically motivated, considering violent criminals and even child rapists often get less jail time in their sentencing. The alleged terroristic activities of the group “Atomwaffen Division” also share no overlap with groups mentioned in the government report, such as SSC, which denounce and prohibit criminally violent and terroristic conduct.
Other quotes in this report are from leadership in SSC that are taken out of context, as we will demonstrate in later parts of this article series. Evan Balgord, in his calls to designate “Active Club” groups as terrorist entities, including SSC, is using government reports in which his organization, CAHN, greatly contributed to, showing signs of impartiality, considering Balgord’s known “antifascist” bias. Meanwhile, no terrorism has occurred, yet he states that designating these groups as terrorist entities would disrupt their organizing (and likely send many people to jail). This is not what “terrorism” legislation was meant for. Terrorism legislation is meant for serious, violent, politically motivated crimes, not ideologies that the government and CBC don’t like.
This is an obvious and egregious encroachment into thwarting freedom of speech and association in Canada. The Canadian Anti-Hate Network wants to make political organizing illegal. Public Safety Canada is enabling and promoting their narratives in their “internal reports,” which were leaked to CBC and Rachel Gilmore. Thousands of Canadians could potentially be considered criminal terrorists for simply supporting narratives and communities that believe White people are being replaced, if CAHN gets their way. In Part 2 of this expose, among many other revelations, we will show you how Evan Balgord of CAHN believes you are synonymous with various mass murderers if you oppose the demographic shift of White people going towards extinction in Canada.
Stay tuned for Part 2 of this report.
Follow: Free Speech Watch