Canada’s Spy Agency Warns of ‘Violent Threat’ by ‘Anti-Gender Movement’ in Annual Report

A sign for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Ottawa, in a file photo. Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service warns that some Canadians in the “anti-gender movement” will continue to pose a “violent threat” within the next year, according to its newly tabled annual report.

“CSIS assesses that exposure to entities espousing anti-gender extremist rhetoric could inspire and encourage serious violence against the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, or against those who are viewed as supporters of pro-gender ideology policies and events,” the agency said in the report released on May 7.

The CSIS report identified the “anti-gender movement” as one defined by ideological opposition to the “socio-cultural shifts that are represented by the integration and acceptance of gender theory, including acceptance of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community.”

Gender theory is a critical postmodern ideology which argues that gender is not tied to biology.

CSIS said that individuals who become involved in the “anti-gender movement” may do so because of beliefs related to misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia.

The spy agency also listed “religious interpretations, conspiracy theories, or a generalized fear of sociocultural change” as factors.

CSIS raised the example of Geovanny Villalba-Aleman as being linked to the phenomena. The former student from the University of Waterloo entered a Gender Studies class on campus and stabbed a professor and two students in June 2023. He was charged with 11 offences, including attempted murder, and the Crown seeks to prosecute him as a terrorist.

CSIS says that while the “anti-gender movement” may hold “extreme views,” only a small portion of members are willing to engage in serious violence. But it said the ecosystem of “violent rhetoric” within the movement, along with other extreme views, could lead to violence.

CSIS said the “anti-gender movement” is one of four types of Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremism (IMVE), with the other three being anti-authority violence, xenophobic violence, and other grievance-driven and ideologically motivated violence. It said violent extremism at large continues to pose a “significant threat to Canada’s national security,” and that the agency is prioritizing monitoring and investigating such threats.

A number of protests last year were organized against “gender ideology” being taught in schools, including the “1 Million March for Children” in cities across Canada. Several provinces like New Brunswick and Alberta have also brought forth legislation requiring parental consent for children to change their names and pronouns in schools.

A Nanos poll from March 2024 found that most Canadians had some level of concern with gender ideology policies in schools, with 64 percent having some discomfort with students changing their names or pronouns at school without their parents’ knowledge.

CSIS Resources

Phil Gurski, who spent 30 years with CSIS and the Communications Security Establishment, told The Epoch Times that he was surprised by the report’s focus on IMVE and threats to gender ideology. He said that section was focusing on specific instances of hate crimes, which are not a part of CSIS’s mandate.

“It’s not part of the CSIS mandate because it’s not political, it’s not ideological, it’s not religious; it’s a hate crime,” Mr. Gurski said.

“It really makes me wonder if someone’s dictating to the service, ‘we want you to highlight this stuff,’ which I don’t think historically we used to do... To me, there’s an agenda being set here,” he added.

Mr. Gurski, who currently runs Borealis Threat and Risk Consulting and writes columns for The Epoch Times, also raised concerns that by focusing on gender ideology, CSIS is shifting resources away from other threats to Canada such as foreign interference and Islamic terrorism.

“You can’t be all things to all people, and if the government’s trying to push this agenda that this is the number one threat, then it has serious consequences for investigative resources, which means you’re going to start overlooking things.”

CSIS has been splitting its counterterrorism investigative resources 50/50 between what it calls IMVE and Religiously Motivated Violent Extremism (RMVE), which it defines as using violence as part of a “spiritual struggle against a perceived immoral system.” CSIS says that threat increased in 2023, with the number of arrests in Canada rising from six the previous year to 16 in 2023, according to the report.

Domestic RMVE actors include groups or individuals inspired by Al Qaeda, Daesh or the Israel-Hamas conflict, according to CSIS.

“These RMVE actors prefer to use low-sophisticated means against soft targets: a person or group, place, or thing that is easily accessible to the public and generally left unprotected,” it added.

The Epoch Times asked CSIS whether it recalibrated its counterterrorism resources following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack against Israel and the subsequent conflict and wave of antisemitic violence.

“I can confirm that the 50/50 ratio between IMVE and RMVE remains current,“ said spokesman Eric Balsam. ”The threat environment facing Canada is in a constant state of evolution; I can assure you that CSIS is committed to protecting Canada and Canadians from national security threats.”

Mr. Gurski remarked that since Hamas’ attack against Israeli, “we know that the threat from Islamist extremism is off the scale right now in Canada” with Jewish communities being increasingly targeted. He added that some of the anti-Semitic violence also falls within the definition of a hate crime and does not rise to the level of terrorism.

According to Jewish advocacy group B'nai Brith’s latest report on anti-Semitism, incidents of violence, harassment and vandalism towards Jews have more than doubled since 2022.