Researchers to probe Canada’s evolving far-right movements

OTTAWA—A new study will attempt to chart the evolution of far-right, white supremacist and right-wing extremist movements in Canada.

Barbara Perry, a researcher at the University of Ontario Technical Institute, is set to update a groundbreaking 2015 report documenting the nature and numbers of far-right extremism in Canada.

In her 2015 report, co-authored with researcher Ryan Scrivens, Perry suggested there were at least 100 white supremacist and Neo-Nazi groups active in Canada, as well as roughly 30,000 individuals involved with “sovereign citizen” philosophies that typically reject Canadian laws.

Perry told the Star last year that, between 2015 and 2018, the number of groups active across the country increased by as much as 25 per cent. But she now says that might have been an overly conservative estimate.

“Now that we’ve started to sort of list the groups and name them … we’re getting close to 300 groups,” Perry told the Star in an interview, noting that number includes multiple chapters of the same umbrella group.  (more...)

Researchers to probe Canada’s evolving far-right movements

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