The panel of government representatives from various branches of Public Safety Canada, RCMP, FINTRAC, and Justice Canada indicated their interest in a broad set of potential data with various units of analysis incidents, groups, individuals, court cases, etc.). However, the primary purpose of the workshop and related solicitation focused squarely on the creation of a Canadian Incident Database (CIDB), encompassing terrorism and possibly a wider set of hate crimes or violent extremism. The government representatives urged that data collection efforts hew closely to the Canadian Criminal Code.

The remaining panelists described various research efforts and information resources in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Legal and privacy issues were also broached, though most of the concerns were beyond the scope of basic incident data collection and publication.

Dr. Lorne Dawson, TSAS Co-director, described the evolution and current state of TSAS, and he indicated that TSAS could help to establish a publicly accessible database. He suggested the potential of further funding through TSAS, and he noted the research network could help improve cost-effectiveness, streamline administrative aspects, and save time.

Dr. Morris stressed that a CIDB would ideally come from a collaborative effort between scholars and grad students as part of a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, multinational effort. The CIDB would be at arm’s-length from the government, and the intellectual property would be vested in the developing institution(s). Dr. Marika urged that the CIDB should be free and open to the public and that it should ideally accommodate both national languages. Attendees urged that the CIDB developers collaborate with START’s Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to ensure comparability. Stay tuned for further developments on this valuable initiative.