Seeding Terroristic Jihad

"Two or three years!?" [Senator Lang]
"Yes, unfortunately."
Cathy Hawara, director general, Canada Revenue Agency
"We've been told privately by some people within the intelligence service that there's millions of dollars coming into this country. It's a very legitimate question for the public and all agencies within the government to find out what's going on. I would ask that we try to speed it up."
Senator Daniel Lang, chair, National Security and Defence Committee

"A lot of these funds, I think, are directed to religious institutions or quasi-religious institutions. It's very difficult in this country to start poking about, if you'll forgive my English, religious institutions because of the respect that we have for freedom of religion."
"I think it's fair to say, without commenting on the particular country of origin, there are moneys coming into this country which are advocating this kind of approach to life."
Richard Fadden, National Security Adviser

"It tends not to be funds directly sent to support overt acts of terrorism in large volumes (here). If we had that happening, terrorist groups in Canada would be more powerful and already causing damage to critical infrastructure."
"Yet, there is funding for so-called extremist purposes, including for terrorist propaganda."
Christine Duhaime, expert, terrorist financing, money laundering

In the 2014 federal budget there was a commitment to expend $23-million over five years for the purpose of modernizing the IT system at the Canada Revenue Agency's charities directorate. It is the agency's hope that an upgraded system will make it possible for charities to provide annual, and more detailed reporting requirements. Which would include specific activities meant to benefit by foreign donations.

At the present time, however, Canada Revenue Agency is not capable of tracking money received by Canada-based charities from foreign donors ostensibly for religious and educational work. The suspicion is there that millions ultimately go to fund Islamist terrorist recruiting and propaganda. But, according to Cathy Hawara speaking for the CRA, two or three years is what it will take to provide that kind of data.

Canada's intelligence agencies have suspected for years that the wealth in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar has been bankrolling fundamentalist Wahhabi and Salafist institutions in western countries. Better yet, it is widely acknowledged within the Western intelligence sector that this is precisely what has been occurring, and it's no different in Canada.

Wealthy oil-rich Arabs have been lavishing funding on madrassas, and these are the breeding grounds for present and future jihadists.

Security experts feel the conservative ideologies of Salafist and Wahhabi Islam represent the fertile soil from which springs individuals geared toward jihad. It is, after all, a fundamental and obligatory aspect of Islamist values. Money arriving in Canada for the promotion of extremist Islamism goes to religious institutions, according to Richard Fadden, testifying before the Senate committee in April.

His testimony was a repeat of very similar testimony heard by the committee which was delivered by a Canadian imam who manages 13 mosques across the country. Non-resident charitable donations coming into Canada face no restrictions as long as they are not coming from a banned terrorist organization. Instead, wealthy individuals send the money for the purpose of achieving the groundwork leading to terrorist militias.

Most of these donations arrive by bank wires and the CRA is unable to track them because it has no access to banking transactional records or money services business records. Non-resident gifts of over $10,000 are meant to be disclosed by the charities themselves. If they fail to report those gifts CRA has no method of ascertaining how much of that funding is directed to Islamic religious and educational programs.

"We know that that's (not) ideal and we want to be able to collect better information and we're looking at that actively now", Ms. Hawara informed the Senate committee. But it is theorized that the millions arriving in Canada from Persian Gulf States include the support of organizations that may be determined to be fronts for terrorist organizations, or those affiliated with them, said Christine Duhaime.