Good morning and thank you for inviting me here today.

My name is Sheryl Saperia, and I am the CEO of Secure Canada, a non-profit organization originally founded by Canadian victims of terror. Our mission is to combat terrorism, extremism and related threats to Canada's national security and democracy by creating innovative and transformative laws, policies and alliances. We are also a member of the informal coalition, the Alliance Against Campus Antisemitism in Canada.

Secure Canada is not a Jewish organization. Anti-Semitism is not referenced in our mandate, but it has become increasingly clear that anti-Semitism is evolving into a national and global security threat, thereby placing this issue squarely within our mandate.

Anti-Semitism is a key entry point for radicalizing, joining extremist groups and mobilizing to violence. Anti-Semitism underpins ideologically motivated violent extremism across the spectrum, from neo-Nazi and white nationalist extremism to far-left extremism, to Islamist extremism. The Jewish population may not always be the target, but anti-Semitism is used to leverage people's vulnerabilities and grievances and to bind a wide array of conspiratorial thinking.

There are different factors that can make someone more vulnerable to becoming an extremist. Sometimes there are mental health considerations, or someone may be socially disconnected, or maybe they have experienced some past domestic trauma. Then they start intersecting with the hateful ideology online, where they read that their lives are so unhappy because of the Jews. Here come the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and an us-versus-them narrative. When they read it enough times in enough different places, they think, “Jewish people have taken over. I need to be part of a movement that is going to fight back.”

For disenchanted young adults in particular, this is a template that makes their problems make sense. It has now been more than seven months since the October 7 attacks by Hamas, and there are some new radicalization trends emerging in Ontario. First, younger kids, as young as 12 and 13, are getting radicalized. Second, the extremist ideologies are fusing together, so you are now seeing Islamists who also love Hitler. Third, there is a new breed of extremist that hates five things: Jews, women, democracy, police and transgender people.

We are living in a globalized world, so it is hard to isolate homegrown Canadian variables from foreign variables that are inflaming today's anti-Semitism, but it is worth exploring both elements. A current notable area of research is the foreign funding of North American universities.

An organization called ISGAP has found that a massive influx of foreign donations to American colleges, much of it from authoritarian regimes, supports heightened levels of intolerance towards Jews, open inquiry and free expression.

One of Secure Canada's board members is the renowned UK-based counter-extremism expert, Haras Rafiq. Mr. Rafiq notes that Qatar has spent up to $1 trillion to spread soft power influence and Islamist indoctrination, which, at its very core, is anti-Semitic and the bedrock of the ideology of terrorist entities such as Hamas, ISIS and al Qaeda. Russia and China, meanwhile, appear to be manipulating public opinion by promoting [Technical difficulty—Editor].