Servicemen arrested in Canada over 'terrorist' plot
Canadian police have detained two active servicemen and two other individuals with links to the country's military as part of an anti-terrorism case. The suspects allegedly sought to establish an "anti-government militia" and were in possession of a sizable arsenal of weapons.
In a press release on Tuesday, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) announced the arrest of four men, "including active members of the Canadian Armed Forces," who are suspected of having plotted to "forcibly take possession of land in the Quebec City area."
In a separate statement cited by the media, the Canadian Armed Forces confirmed that two of the suspects were active-duty corporals, another one was a former member of the military, and the fourth man previously served as a civilian instructor with the Royal Canadian Air Cadets.
According to the authorities, the group "took concrete actions to facilitate terrorist activity," and participated in "military-style training." During raids on the suspects' homes in January 2024, arms caches were uncovered, containing a total of 83 firearms, including those prohibited under Canadian law, as well as ammunition, 16 explosive devices, and tactical equipment.
According to media reports, citing the police, the investigation was originally launched in 2023, with the cell having supposedly been active since 2021.
The authorities stated that the suspects used a private Instagram group to recruit people to join an anti-government uprising.
The RCMP's Erique Gasse characterized the case as "ideologically motivated violent extremism," as quoted by the Associated Press.
As a Francophone region in predominantly English-speaking Canada, Quebec has a decades-long history of separatist and secessionist movements, with some groups having resorted to violence in the past, particularly in the 1960s and early 1970s.
In May, authorities in Germany banned an extremist group known as the "Kingdom of Germany" and arrested four of its top members, including the group's self-declared "king," Peter Fitzek.
The group had allegedly established a "counter-state," operated unlicensed banking services and set up its own parallel legal system.
The "kingdom" was believed to be affiliated with the so-called Reichsburger (Reich Citizens) movement - a far-right conspiracy-driven network that denies the legitimacy of the modern German state.
In December 2022, German police detained two dozen suspects linked to a supposed "Reich Citizens" plot to overthrow the German government and restore the monarchy.
The suspects, including former military, police, and commando personnel, had been amassing weapons and trying to recruit supporters in the police and the military, according to the authorities.
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Montreal Gazette
38 minutes ago
- Montreal Gazette
Libman: No vacation from language law excesses in Quebec
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Calgary Herald
38 minutes ago
- Calgary Herald
Why Canada's civil service needs more 'plumbers' and fewer 'poets'
This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. 'No country in the western world has concentrated as many (government) employees in the national capital region as has Canada,' says Donald Savoie. Photo by Alan Cochrane/Postmedia/File Donald J. Savoie has spent decades studying the inner workings of Canada's federal bureaucracy. He's watched Ottawa grow more centralized and more crowded with what he calls 'poets,' policy thinkers and advisers, while the 'plumbers,' the front-line workers delivering services to Canadians, have not been prioritized. In an interview with National Post about the concept, as discussed in his recent book Speaking Truth to Canadians About Their Public Service, Savoie explains why that imbalance matters. Savoie is Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance at Université de Moncton. THIS CONTENT IS RESERVED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Calgary Herald ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. SUBSCRIBE TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Subscribe now to read the latest news in your city and across Canada. Unlimited online access to articles from across Canada with one account. Get exclusive access to the Calgary Herald ePaper, an electronic replica of the print edition that you can share, download and comment on. Enjoy insights and behind-the-scenes analysis from our award-winning journalists. Support local journalists and the next generation of journalists. Daily puzzles including the New York Times Crossword. REGISTER / SIGN IN TO UNLOCK MORE ARTICLES Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account. Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments. Enjoy additional articles per month. Get email updates from your favourite authors. THIS ARTICLE IS FREE TO READ REGISTER TO UNLOCK. Create an account or sign in to continue with your reading experience. Access articles from across Canada with one account Share your thoughts and join the conversation in the comments Enjoy additional articles per month Get email updates from your favourite authors Your weekday lunchtime roundup of curated links, news highlights, analysis and features. By signing up you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. Please try again Thank you for the question, that's a good one. A lot of times I've been interviewed about the book, and not many have caught on to the poets and the plumbers, and I think it's key. Poets are people mostly in Ottawa, that are part of the government who work on policy issues, who work on liaison, on coordination or dealing with media or dealing with ministers so they define policy. Plumbers are the ones delivering services to Canadians. Plumbers are the ones you applied to for a passport, plumbers are the ones you applied to for old age pension or whatever program that you want to access; they're the ones that deliver programs and services to Canadians. So the differences between poets to plumbers is fairly pronounced. It's grown by leaps and bounds over the past 10 years. In 2014 it was 340,000, in 2025 we're up to 445,000, so you can see the difference there. It's over 100,000 more. The growth has clearly favoured the poets. And the reason I say that is just the sheer numbers of public servants in Ottawa — the number has grown. And it has not grown anywhere near the same amount in local and regional offices. What's the right number? What's the right percentage? Frankly, it's difficult to answer that. I would remind you that 40 years ago about 25 per cent of federal public servants were in Ottawa, and 75 per cent out in the regions, and that sounded like a proper number. So my view is that we should strive towards that. I can tell you that in France, England, and the United States, the number of public servants in the national capital, whether in London, or Washington, or Paris, is nowhere near the percentage we have in Canada. In the U.K. for example, I'm taking a stab here, but like 75 per cent of public servants are outside of London, and the government over the past several years has made a deliberate attempt to move more and more public servants outside of London. This advertisement has not loaded yet. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. No country in the western world has concentrated as many employees in the national capital region as has Canada. There's no shortage of people in Ottawa trying to think big thoughts. I think if there's a problem it's at the service delivery. It's people trying to call Revenue Canada to get answers about income tax, and it's having issues with supplying passports. So, big thoughts, there's thousands of them in Ottawa paid to have big thoughts. I don't think there's a lack of big thoughts, there's a lack of people delivering services to Canadians. You don't need an army of people to come up with big thoughts. I think the private sector has no choice (but) to get it right, has no choice to strike a proper balance, because if a large private-sector firm doesn't strike a proper balance, the market will tell it to strike the proper balance. The competition will tell it to strike the proper balance. There is a natural equilibrium in the private sector that happens just because there's competition, there's market forces, there's all kinds of forces that dictate how important it is to run an efficient operation; those forces are not present in the public sector. What I can say is that I wish them well. I think a better solution would be, we have nearly 300 federal organizations, we have 100 federal government programs, I think a better solution would be for the federal government to take a strong look at all its organizations and all its programs and see which ones have long passed their best-by date. See which programs no longer resonate like they did when they were first established. I think there's a lot of pruning of organizations and programs that could take place. The 15 per cent cuts sends a message that every program, every organization holds the same priority, just squeeze 15 per cent. I would've thought a better solution was to see that we have programs that don't fit our agenda. We have organizations that don't serve the purpose that they were initially set up for so why don't we look at that once we've cleaned that up then maybe we can look at the 15 per cent. There are some, not many, I'll give you an example. If you hire an auditor at Revenue Canada, every auditor you hire can generate X amount of revenue. So you hire an auditor and you can expect a return. But for most cases, at least for poets, how do you assess the performance of a poet? That's in the eye of the beholder. The poet can have 101 reasons why things don't work. Fault the politicians, it's the media, not enough resources, there's all kinds of reasons you can grab. You can find markers that work on the delivery side, you don't find markers that work on the poet side. This is the latest in a National Post series on How Canada Wins. Read earlier instalments here. Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark and sign up for our politics newsletter, First Reading, here.
CBC
3 hours ago
- CBC
Can Mark Carney move fast and not break things?
It's easy to move fast if you're not worried about breaking things. The greater challenge is moving fast while fixing, improving and building things. On the day, two months ago, that his new cabinet was appointed, Carney boasted that it was "among the fastest" swearings-in after an election and that the return of Parliament would be "one of the most rapid" in Canadian history. The government, he said, was "starting as we aim to go on." "Our government will deliver its mandate for change with urgency and determination," he said. "We've been elected to do a job. We intend to do it quickly and forcefully." That followed from Carney's earlier insistence that Canada needed "big changes" and that responding to the threat posed by Donald Trump would require doing "things that we haven't imagined before, at speeds we didn't think possible." On a number of fronts, Carney's government is moving quickly toward those goals. The government's first major legislation — Bill C-5, the One Canadian Economy Act, which allows for the expedited approval of large infrastructure projects — was tabled in the House of Commons just 19 days after the cabinet was sworn in. Twenty days after that the bill had passed both the House and Senate — a breathtakingly quick passage for legislation of such potential significance. A few days after that bill was tabled, Carney announced the federal government would significantly accelerate its plan to spend more on national defence. During the campaign, the Liberals promised to exceed the NATO target of two per cent of GDP "before" 2030. In June, Carney said the government would hit that mark in the current fiscal year. WATCH | What critics are saying about Carney's 'move fast' approach: Prime Minister Mark Carney's need for speed 16 days ago With the defence budget now slated to rapidly grow — and with Carney having promised to impose new discipline on overall federal spending — the prime minister has given ministers until the end of the summer to complete a federal program review aimed at finding billions of dollars in cuts or savings. Federal departments have also been given 60 days to identify federal regulations that can be eliminated. Meanwhile, Carney has appointed a new clerk of the Privy Council and seemingly given him a mandate to make government itself move faster. "Our internal processes have become quite complicated. When that happens, there is always the risk that following the process is so time-consuming that everything slows down — at a time when we need to speed up because the world is moving as fast as it is," Michael Sabia wrote in a note to public servants soon after his appointment. "Windows of opportunity open and close. The world waits for no one." The case for moving fast Beyond the world's general state of impatience, there are a number of reasons why Carney might want or need to move fast. The first and most obvious — the overarching challenge that Carney has framed his government within — is the economic and political crisis posed by Donald Trump. And to that one could add a housing crisis and a climate crisis. As a newly elected prime minister — and one whose initial actions seem to be impressing a sizable number of voters — Carney will likely never have more political capital than he has right now. But having fallen short of winning a majority in the House, he also can't be sure of exactly how much time he'll have before facing voters again. Moving fast might also be one way to demonstrate change — both in substance and style. The Trudeau Liberals came to office promising a more active government, but also a more consultative government — a reaction to the idea that the previous Conservative government had been too heavy handed. And while Justin Trudeau has an incautious streak, his government could be methodical and tentative. The government was also dogged by criticism that its ambitions exceeded its execution. And by the end of Trudeau's time in office, there was a new desire for action — particularly on housing. Even without the crisis posed by Trump, Carney might have come to office with a need to get things built and improve state capacity. WATCH | First Nations leaders meet with PM: Chiefs voice unhappiness with Carney's First Nations summit | Power & Politics 8 days ago The Power Panel discusses Prime Minister Mark Carney's summit on the new major projects law with First Nations leaders. Some chiefs are calling it a 'disaster.' "Focus, change, action" is apparently something of a mantra in Carney's office. Purportedly a demanding boss, Carney comes to the job having spent significant time working in both the private sector and in and around government (the latter of which may have left him with a view about how governments work and how they don't). But for the sake of both making the case for active government and rebutting the populist challenge, Liberals — and progressives in general — might also have a special interest in wanting to see government moving and acting as quickly and efficiently as possible. In the American context, consider the regrets expressed by some of former president Joe Biden's advisers and the calls for an " abundance agenda." The challenges of moving fast While officials in Ottawa are scrambling this summer to complete a spending review and stand up a new major projects office, there might be at least one noticeable gap in the government's rush to action. If there was one way for the government to show that it was making a tangible difference in the lives of Canadians, it would be by attacking the housing crisis. And during the campaign Carney promised his government would help build new homes at "a pace not seen since the Second World War." But while the government has been demonstrably busy negotiating with Washington and pushing C-5, tangible movement on housing is so far less obvious. There are also signs of potential danger ahead. Policy analysts and public sector unions are already expressing concern about the potential consequences of the program review — and how quickly the government is moving to find cuts. However necessary it might be to increase spending on national defence or other areas, and whatever the public's general desire for greater fiscal discipline in Ottawa, the results of this spending review could expose some painful trade-offs — or at least compel Carney and his cabinet to defend some significant sacrifices. C-5 may have also shown that there are real risks governments run when they try to move fast — at least when the rights of Indigenous Peoples are involved. The sheer speed of the bill's passage seemed to feed suspicions. "I think the main issue I'm hearing about this bill is that it's being rammed through without consultation or first nations' free, prior and informed consent," Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, told a House of Commons committee in June. The summits convened with First Nations leaders since C-5 received royal assent might have helped to address some concerns — and much will really depend on how the government makes use of C-5. But the lesson of C-5's initial reception might be that moving fast requires even greater effort than moving slow.
