Phil Gurski on Terrorism, National Security, and Canada’s Shifting Counterterrorism Priorities

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/04/02

Phil Gurski is the President and CEO of Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting. He worked as a senior strategic analyst at CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) from 2001-2013, specializing in Al Qaeda/Islamic State-inspired violent extremism and radicalization.  From 1983 to 2001, he was employed as a senior multilingual analyst at Communications Security Establishment specializing in the Middle East.  He also served as senior special advisor in the National Security Directorate at Public Safety Canada from 2013 until he retired from the civil service in May 2015 and as a consultant for the Ontario Provincial Police’s Anti-Terrorism Section (PATS) in 2015.  Mr. Gurski has presented on Al Qaeda/Islamic State-inspired violent extremism and radicalization across Canada and around the world.  He is the author of “The Threat from Within: Recognizing Al Qaeda-inspired Radicalization and Terrorism in the West” (Rowman and Littlefield) and “Western Foreign Fighters: The Threat to Homeland and International Security” (Rowman and Littlefield).  He regularly blogs (Terrorism in Canada and the West – available on his Web site) and tweets on terrorism. Gurski critiques efforts to explain away terrorism, highlighting the New Orleans attack, where an ISIS-inspired perpetrator killed 15 and injured 57. He warns against narratives that absolve attackers of responsibility. Comparing lone-wolf attacks to large-scale warfare, he emphasizes their devastating impact. Gurski discusses Canada’s shift in counterterrorism focus from Islamist extremism to the far right, questioning its justification given the lack of foiled plots. He criticizes political correctness for skewing national security priorities and warns that intelligence agencies are being sidelined. He calls for a government that takes intelligence seriously to ensure effective security measures.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: In science, explaining something does not mean explaining it away. A phenomenon still exists, but having a framework helps us understand it.

Similarly, in discussing tragic personal stories—understanding a perpetrator’s background does not excuse their actions. They still made a choice.

Phil Gurski: That’s right. And that’s a good segue into the New Orleans attack. That was the attack that happened after midnight in New Orleans—15 people were killed when the perpetrator ran over pedestrians on Bourbon Street, injuring another dozen. He then engaged in a firefight with police and was killed.

In the aftermath, there was a whole narrative about his background—he was a former U.S. military, his marriage had failed, he was in debt, he had personal struggles, blah blah blah.

It was almost as if the media was trying to explain away what he did.

However, that background does not explain why he carried out the attack. He did it because he pledged allegiance to ISIS. And this is what ISIS does.

As I said earlier, it’s the Nike form of terrorism—just do it. Get in your car, drive down the street, and kill people. People are always searching for easy answers to complicated questions.

The old phrase dead men tell no lies is true. But dead men also tell no tales. We can’t ask this guy why he did it. What we can do is analyze his online activity, computer files, and other digital footprints.

We know he did surveillance in New Orleans. He knew where he was going, and he knew there would be crowds at 3 a.m. He knew New Orleans would be packed on New Year’s Eve. That’s a simple formula for most people.

He knew the crowds would be there. He knew it would be an easy target. He scouted the best route to get the truck through—no bollards, no barriers, nothing in his way. But at the end of the day, why did he do it? Who knows? Ask him. You can’t—he’s dead.

I don’t like this effort to explain things away with a narrative of circumstances beyond his control, as if it wasn’t his fault. Yes. It was his fault. He made a choice, as you said. No one put a gun to his head and told him to drive down Bourbon Street. He did it of his own accord.

So, let’s not create backstories that absolve these people of responsibility for their decisions.

Jacobsen: I checked: Fifteen people were killed. Fifty-seven were injured. And of those fifty-seven, five were shot. This reminds me of when I was in Ukraine on my second trip.

I was there just shy of a month. Poltava happened—one of the largest biggest mass killings in a single strike with two explosions there. An education or training facility and then a hospital.

Poltava is south of Sumy and west of Kharkiv. We arrived three or four hours after the attack. 

The final numbers: ~58 dead and three hundred seventy were injured.

Gurski: Wow.

Jacobsen: This is modern industrial warfare. Two missiles and those were the numbers.

Now compare that to a single individual without industrial military equipment—just a truck and a gun. With that, he injured 57 people, including five who were shot and killed 15. It’s a perverse form of “achievement.”

Gurski: Yep. Exactly. Which is why ISIS made such a big propaganda push around it.

Jacobsen: And something that isn’t talked about as much but is equally important—

Fifteen dead, plus the 57 injured. That’s 72 people. And then their families. Now, you’re looking at hundreds of people dealing with emotional trauma for a lifetime.

Gurski: Yep. Sandy Hook wasn’t a terrorist attack, but it’s similar in terms of lasting impact. What was it—twenty-two kids died, plus a couple of teachers? Then, the families. And then all the aftershocks, as you alluded to. It’s much, much bigger than just the immediate casualties.

Gurski: Yep.

A Further Inquiry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Jacobsen: How has the government shifted its focus?

Gurski: It’s nice and clean. No worries.

As I noted, I retired from CSIS in 2015 after spending fifteen years working in counterterrorism. At that time, 99.5% of our investigations were focused on Islamist extremism.

We still had a small Sikh terrorism desk—very, very small—and an even smaller far-right desk. I don’t recall if we had a far-left desk at all. The simple reason was that every single plot forwarded to the RCMP for investigation involved jihadists.

Jacobsen: You’re making an important distinction that isn’t usually discussed. People talk about attacks, but you’re talking about plots. So, while attacks may come from different sources, the majority of plots were Islamist.

Gurski: No—all of them were.

And this will tie back in. Let me explain.

Think of the Toronto 18. Think of the Via Rail plot. Think of the Victoria plot. All of these were significant terror plots that, had they been successful, would have killed dozens, if not hundreds.

The Toronto 18 had three tons of fertilizer. Three one-ton trucks. Do the math. That’s not good. I left in 2015. That was after the two attacks—one in Ottawa, the other outside Montreal—that killed two soldiers.

Then we had Aaron Driver in Stratford, Ontario, who was about to get into a taxi with two homemade bombs. He was shot dead by the RCMP. We had the Edmonton attack. The Scarborough attack. The Markham attack.

And that’s not even mentioning the Canadians who left to commit acts of terrorism abroad. I wrote an entire book on this—The Peaceable Kingdom? A History of Terrorism in Canada—which covers Canadians who have been killed overseas. After the election, you started to see a shift—in two ways.

First, the terminology changed.

We could no longer call it “Islamist terrorism.” The government decided to label it “Religiously Motivated Violent Extremism”—or RMVE for short.

This is both inaccurate and an extreme example of political correctness.

Yes, religion is one of the three motivators for terrorism under the Canadian Criminal Code. But to call something religiously motivated, you need to know two things:

1. That religion was a factor.
2. What the specific religion was.

Otherwise, you wouldn’t call it religious. Are we talking about Mennonites? Seventh-day Adventists? Presbyterians? No. We’re talking about Islamist extremists. In Canada, they are the only religious group that has carried out planned acts of terrorism.

We know what the religion is. But the government refuses to call it that because it’s politically uncomfortable. They don’t want to “target” an entire community—blah, blah, blah. The second shift happened with resource allocation.

In the decade leading up to 2015, CSIS began shifting resources—publicly, I might add—away from investigating jihadists and toward investigating the far right.

Now, according to CSIS, it’s an even split—50% of resources go to far-right extremism, 50% to Islamist extremism. That’s a massive shift. We went from 0.5% of investigations on the far right to 50%.

And my question is: Was that a justified move? Now, here’s the problem. We talked earlier about foiled plots. From 2000 to 2015, my entire focus at CSIS was on jihadist terrorism. We disrupted four plots and carried out numerous investigations.

If other extremist groups were planning attacks but weren’t being investigated, their chances of success would logically be higher.

Think about it like this: If the police stopped investigating Jamaican street gangs in Toronto tomorrow, what would happen? More gang activity. More shootings. More killings. Now, in my entire 15 years at CSIS—when the far right was not being actively investigated—how many successful far-right terrorist attacks occurred?

None.

How many foiled far-right terrorist plots were there?

None.

And now, you’re telling me that warrants 50% of our investigative resources?

Let me go one step further.

Since around 2017, when the 50/50 split in counterterrorism investigations fully took effect, how many foiled far-right terrorist plots have there been in Canada?

None.

How many successful far-right attacks?

Well, arguably four—although I would classify three of them as hate crimes rather than terrorism. I’m in the minority on that, but that’s my stance.

So, we’ve had four successful attacks but zero foiled plots.

Where are all the foiled plots if the far right is such a serious threat that we’re allocating 50% of resources to it? Where are people on the verge of committing attacks arrested?

When the Toronto 18 was arrested on June 2, 2006—a case I worked on from Day 1—they were unloading three tons of what they thought was ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a storage shed in Toronto. They were loading it into trucks to build bombs to blow up multiple targets.

That’s how close they were.

When the father and son ISIS team was arrested—was it in North York or Scarborough? I forget—last year, the RCMP said they were this close to carrying out an attack.

They had weapons.

They had a strategy.

They had guns.

They had a plan.

Now compare that to the far right—how many far-right attacks in Canada have been foiled to that extent in the past ten years?

Zero.

Which leads me to ask a very simple question: How serious is the far-right terrorist threat if no attacks are being foiled? We have a government that has decided it’s too uncomfortable to talk about Islamist extremism.

We can’t use the term. I’ve been called a racist for using the term Islamist extremism—even though the entire world uses it. Academics use it. Counterterrorism practitioners use it. Governments use it. But we can’t use it in Canada—because it’s “embarrassing.”

If the far right is so dangerous, then why aren’t we seeing more action? I haven’t seen an answer to that question yet. Now, maybe investigations are happening in the background that I don’t have access to—fine. But if serious arrests were happening—if people on the verge of killing others were being caught, and they belonged to neo-Nazi, white supremacist, or white nationalist groups—then show me the evidence.

I read the news every single day. If you have a single example of a foiled far-right terrorist attack in Canada in the past ten years, send it to me—because I haven’t seen it.

Jacobsen: Are you suggesting the government has prioritized investigations based on political sensitivities rather than actual security threats?

Gurski: Yes. The government has decided on the priority—not based on threat assessments but on political sensitivities. This is a problem in a democracy. Security services must be free to investigate real threats based on intelligence and capabilities. The government must not tell them. what to investigate and what not to investigate. That’s what happens in autocracies.

Jacobsen: Has CSIS funding gone down?

Gurski: No—it’s gone up. But here’s the thing.

CSIS has four major investigative priorities under Section 2 of the CSIS Act:

1. Foreign espionage (spying).
2. Foreign interference (think China, election meddling, intimidation of diaspora communities).
3. Terrorism (which includes Islamist extremism and far-right extremism).
4. Subversion (which CSIS hasn’t actively investigated since the 1980s).

CSIS mostly focuses on counterintelligence (spying), foreign interference, and counterterrorism.

And CSIS has received a lot more money because threats have multiplied.

Just think about China’s activities over the past twenty years:

• Illegal police stations in Canada.
• Election interference.
• Harassment of Uyghur Canadians, Tibetan Canadians, and Chinese dissidents.
• Espionage operations against Canadian businesses and universities.

And that’s just China. Now, think about Russia’s operations in Western Europe. You can bet it isn’t good here in Canada—we don’t talk about it enough. China has been stealing technology—take the Level 4 lab in Winnipeg, for example. They sent PLA (People’s Liberation Army) personnel to learn about our virus technology. And let’s be clear—they weren’t doing that to save the planet.

They were doing it to weaponize it. And that was yet another government failure. We warned them, saying, “By the way, these people aren’t who they claim to be.” And the government’s response? Oh no, they’re fine. We’ll clear them. So yes, CSIS has received more resources and funding, but the threats have also multiplied.

In the post-Cold War period, we assumed the Soviet Union—and later, Russia—was no longer a serious threat. Well, that was the wrong conclusion. They are a huge threat. And a growing one. And China has always been a threat—and always will be. So, intelligence agencies now have more issues to deal with than ever before.

Jacobsen: What are the political and social barriers to accurately identifying a terrorist act? You’ve consistently pointed out that if someone labels Islamist terrorism as Islamist terrorism, they risk being branded a racist—even though it’s an academic term referring to an ideology, not an ethnic group.

Gurski: I’d say this government has been brilliant at political correctness and wokeism—and as a result, they’ve skewed the dialogue. And it is having an effect. I know it’s affecting morale within law enforcement and security intelligence agencies. Because they’re being told what to do—and, more importantly, what not to do.

These agencies are not being allowed to set their priorities. Intelligence exists to inform the government. CSIS is an advisory organization with no power to arrest or prosecute anyone. CSIS investigates. CSIS reports its findings up the chain. CSIS shares minimal intelligence with the RCMP due to Canada’s intelligence-to-evidence restrictions. CSIS tells the government: This is what we see. This is what worries us. That’s the role of a security intelligence agency. But here’s the problem: If intelligence isn’t being read, it doesn’t matter. We also saw that in the foreign interference inquiry. The Prime Minister wasn’t reading his intelligence reports. The PMO staff were blocking or filtering intelligence before it even reached him. Or, when he did see intelligence, he dismissed it as—and I quote—”suspicion,” not important enough to worry about. That’s a problem.

So you have to ask: Why even bother having a security intelligence agency if no one is reading the intelligence? And if it is read but then rejected as “not important enough” or “not accurate enough” to inform policy decisions—what’s the point? That’s the problem we’re facing in Canada right now.

License & Copyright

In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. ©Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing 2012-Present. Unauthorized use or duplication of material without express permission from Scott Douglas Jacobsen strictly prohibited, excerpts and links must use full credit to Scott Douglas Jacobsen and In-Sight Publishing with direction to the original content.