Public Safety’s Kanishka Project

Encouraging development of safety & security initiatives

Upon taking the helm as the new executive editor of FrontLine Safety & Security, I let readers know that I would be seeking out examples of best practices in safety and security – success stories. I am pleased in this article to report on new safety and security tools, materials and knowledge, all ­arising from investments made through Public Safety Canada’s Kanishka program.

Established in 2011, the Kanishka project provides money to fund research largely on terrorism-related issues. Since its inception, Kanishka has funded almost 70 projects which have resulted in the development of a significant number of new tools, materials and learning about preventing and countering terrorism. A list of the projects funded and those receiving the funds are available on the project website. The various projects will no doubt provide important materials that may help address some of the issues around countering and dealing with terrorism.
 

A significant portion of the funding has gone to Canadian academic institutions and, in fact, one of the first projects to be approved was the establishment of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society. The network, which can be found at tsas.ca, serves as a gathering point both for those studying terrorism, security and society from a Canadian perspective. The site (and the network) has a wealth of information, including an online library and dozens of working papers on a broad range of topics ­– some of which have been funded by the Kanishka project. For example, a paper about Personality Traits and Terrorism. The network was started with the University of British Columbia in partnership with Simon Fraser University and the University of Waterloo.

The funding of academic research and networks in Canada is seen by many as being critical for the development of a solid base of Canadian knowledge in these areas. Martin Rudner, a world renowned scholar in intelligence studies and a Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at Carleton University, has published and talked about the need for investment in academic research in intelligence in Canada as being important for both the development of human resources that are needed for Canadian security and intelligence needs and the development of the scholarship required to address Canadian intelligence needs. The Kanishka program has provided important funding towards this objective and has funded both research and training programs at over a dozen Canadian Universities.

But the program has funded more than just academe and even the non-academic funding has resulted in the development of an impressive array of tools and materials to help in both the fight against terrorism and addressing the problems created from terrorist activities.  One such program was the development of an internet-based repository of best practices in responding to victims and survivors of terrorist acts. The project was the brainchild of Heidi Illingworth from the Canadian Resource Centre for Victims of Crime. Heidi has developed an impressive program and resources around helping those affected by violent crime (including their families) cope with the impact of violent crime. As a result of her organizations growing reputation in the area of helping those impacted from violent crimes, Heidi and her organization were sought out to help out those impacted from the Air India bombing, Heidi recognized both the similarity and differences between those impacted by violent crime and those impacted by terrorism and realized the need to develop new materials and programs to assist those affected by terrorism. Given her extensive knowledge in the area Heidi and her organization worked towards developing resources that would help victims of terrorism. Through the research and experience developed helping those affected by terrorism, Heidi became aware of the need to help communities develop the capability to address and prepare for the impacts of terrorism. With the assistance of a grant from Kanishka Heidi and her organization created http://terrorvictimresponse.ca/ , a website with practical information to assist emergency response personal address terrorism events. The vision and objective of the project and the ensuing website is “To provide a checklist of lessons learned from international responses to terrorist events for use in community emergency response planning in order to facilitate recovery for healing for victims and survivors”.  The easy to use checklist provides information and links to resources to assist with pre-incident preparation, time of incident management, technology, media, donations and volunteers, trauma response, mental health, longer term needs and memorials. The resources are meant to be used by law enforcement officials, emergency management personnel and government official so the coverage and materials are purposely broad and as a result many of our readers should find materials of interest on the website.

Kanishka has also provided funding to foundations with terrorism related mandates. One example of this is the SecDev project for detecting online signals of radicalization. The website for this project is at https://preventviolentextremism.info. The SecDev Foundation is a Canadian think tank that focuses on security, development and new technologies. The portal developed through the project compiles research on violent extremism and social media. “This portal is to help CVE (Canadian violent extremism) researchers to quickly find recent research on the threats and potential of social media in the fight against violent extremism.”

Kanishka has funded other online initiatives as well. With violent extremist content growing in online sources, many have been concerned about how to effectively address this. Given how poorly censorship works in this case, creating a counter-narrative has been an area of growing interest. This led Kanishka to fund an initiative with the Trialogue Educational Trust (in the UK) focused on addressing this need. The result was the development of an online tool – the counter-narrative toolkit (http://www.counternarratives.org). The organization reports that its “handbook and website help to proactively respond to extremist propaganda with counter-­narrative campaigns, and is intended as a beginner’s guide for those with little or no previous experience of counter-narrative campaigning. It takes readers through the main stages of creating, launching and evaluating an effective counter-narrative campaign.”

Another UK-based defence and security organization, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) was awarded a Kanishka grant based on a proposal focused on helping policy-makers and practitioners in the counter violent extremism area manage their programs. The result was a handbook available to practitioners for free download called Learning and Adapting – The use of monitoring and evaluation in countering violent extremism. As of the writing of this article, the book was available for free download from Public Safety.

Kanishka grants have resulted in the development of many other materials and programs, and readers are encouraged to visit the Kanishka website and to also check out the materials from the list of funded initiatives in the text box. Collectively, these studies, networks, websites, tools and materials will be valuable to FrontLine Safety and Security readers, as they represent free resources to assist our readers in enhancing both their understanding of, and ability to address, violent extremism.

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Jonathan Calof is the executive editor of Frontline Safety and Security.