OTTAWA – Canada’s Parliament yesterday unanimously passed a motion calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to designate the right-wing Proud Boys as a banned terrorist group.
The motion is purely symbolic, but the government has said authorities are monitoring the group and collecting evidence that could support the move.
Put forward by the fourth-ranked New Democrats, the motion states that the government should “use all of available tools to address the proliferation of white supremacists and hate groups, starting with the immediate designating Proud Boys as a terrorist entity”.
Members of the Proud Boys, which was started by a Canadian who has since distanced himself from the group, are among former president Donald Trump’s supporters charged over the violent assault on the US Capitol earlier this month.
Its chairman, Enrique Tarrio, was also arrested in Washington over the torching of a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a church during violent protests in December.
In Canada, they first made headlines in 2017 when five navy members of the Proud Boys were disciplined for disrupting an indigenous ceremony in Halifax.
Canada lists dozens of banned terrorist organisations including al-Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the Islamic State group. – AFP, January 26, 2021
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