In his first annual public address as Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Dan Rogers delivered a sobering assessment of Canada’s national security landscape, highlighting the rapid radicalization of Canadian teenagers and persistent foreign intimidation campaigns as two of the most urgent threats facing Canadians.
Most alarming for parents and communities was Rogers’ disclosure that nearly one in ten active CSIS terrorism investigations now involves a subject under the age of 18. He cited multiple 2025 cases: a Montreal minor arrested in August for allegedly planning a Daesh-inspired attack; a 15-year-old in the Edmonton area detained in May over ties to an online network that grooms youth; and two Ottawa 15-year-olds arrested in 2023–2024 for allegedly plotting a mass-casualty attack targeting the Jewish community.
“Radicalized youth can cause the same harms as radicalized adults,” Rogers warned, noting that many young people now self-radicalize entirely online, fuelled by xenophobia, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and nihilistic ideologies amplified on widely accessible platforms.
The Director also revealed that Iran has joined China and India as a major practitioner of “transnational repression” on Canadian soil. Iranian intelligence services and proxies have mounted surveillance, threats, and in several cases potentially lethal plots against Iranian-Canadians and others perceived as regime opponents.
Rogers stressed that CSIS, working with the RCMP and international partners, disrupted 24 violent extremist plots since 2022 and countered multiple foreign espionage and intimidation campaigns. Despite these successes, he described a national security environment more complex and fast-moving than at any time in recent memory, with polarization and online radicalization creating fertile ground for violence.
“Eroding social cohesion provides the spark,” Rogers said. “Canadians need to understand these threats to stay resilient.”
The full speech underscored that, forty years after the Air India bombing, the danger of ideologically motivated violence remains very real—and increasingly comes from within Canada’s own communities and homes.