The federal government has listed the Bishnoi gang, which largely operates out of India, as a terrorist entity, saying that they engage in “murder, shootings and arson, and generates terror through extortion and intimidation.” The Conservatives blame them for the rash of extortion crimes, primarily in the lower mainland in BC, and the BC premier has called for this designation. The problem? Not only are we conflating criminal organisations with terrorism, which gets messy on a number of fronts, but this is another example of process that should be apolitical and technocratic being politicised, and we are now getting into territory where groups are being listed after a vote in the House of Commons, which is Very Bad.

Here’s Jessica Davis on why this is a problem.

Back in the day, when I worked on listings, they were a largely technocratic process. I won't say there was a solid methodology for choosing which groups would get listed, but it was a bureaucratic one, with departments and agencies contributing.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.828Z

Increasingly, we've seen groups listed after votes in the House of Commons, or campaigns to have them listed, or at the behest of our (sometimes) allies like the US.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.829Z

The listings process itself isn't particularly rigorous. A single incident can result in a group getting listed. And there is no real mechanism for challenging listings. (Yes: processes exist. In practice, it would require getting a lawyer to argue the case of a terrorist entity, likely pro bono).

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.830Z

We are overdue for listings reform. We're trying to do far too much with it. Why not create a separate criminal listings regime? Having everything lumped together as terrorist dilutes the analytic power that comes from sensical categorization, and limits our ability to identify finance mechanisms.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.831Z

Increasingly, some of our listings are also not lawful. Look at the listing for the IRGC QF, and more recently the IRGC. There's a clear carve-out that should prevent the listings of state militaries. But we don't seem to care about the lawfulness of this process anymore.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.832Z

Overall, this process is increasingly meaningless: governments press the listings button (not unlike sanctions) and then do very little to actually counter terrorism or tackle hard problems like RCMP reform that could actually result in real improvements in Canadian safety and security.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.833Z

The only way a government will be incentivized to change is to have this process challenged in court, which could actually be both really bad for Canada (undermine a huge part of our sanctions regime and throw our CTF system into turmoil), but could strengthen rule of law in Canada longer term.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.834Z

Or, you know, the Carney government could just do the right thing and fix the system itself and toughen the process so it can't be politicized. Honestly, we're a stone's throw away from listing ANTIFA as a terrorist entity if the US asks. I'm sure it's fine.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-09-29T13:46:59.835Z

The added issue here is that the RCMP already don’t have enough resources or capacity to enforce existing terrorist designations, let along the mounting sanctions, so these declarations are rapidly becoming symbolic, and that’s a very bad thing. This is one more reason why we need wholesale reform of the RCMP and most especially its federal policing responsibilities (and by wholesale reform, I generally mean disband it and stand up a new federal policing agency), but ultimately, this situation is just exacerbated by these political listings, which are about to even more problematic the more the Trump administration starts making demands, like they did with Mexican cartels.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia claims that they have taken control of two villages in the Donetsk region, as Ukraine is pushing back on other fronts in the same region. The nuclear plant in Zaporizhzhia has been without external power needed to cool its reactors for six days. Neighbouring Moldova saw the pro-EU party win the election in spite of a spate of Russian interference.

Good reads:

• Anita Anand addressed the UN General Assembly, saying Canada will work to protect multilateral institutions.
• Sean Fraser has ordered a postmortem review of a case involving an Indigenous man, now deceased, who may have bene victim of a miscarriage of justice.
• The federal government is calling on Israel to allow foreign journalists to enter Gaza, and to better protect Palestinian journalists.
• The federal and Ontario governments have offered loans to Algoma steel to help shifts its operations to domestic output; Patty Hajdu says this is about sovereignty.
• The new Major Projects Office is absorbing the Clean Growth Office launched last July, even though clean growth projects are not being prioritised.
• Trump is illegally calling for 100 percent tariffs on movies made outside of the US, which may or may not have an impact on the film industry in Canada.
• Ahead of the National Day of Truth and Reconciliation, Mary Simon says that the push to building major projects don’t have to be an impediment to reconciliation.
• New MPs have been warned by CSE that they are under threat from cyber-attacks from countries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
• Poilievre is back on the canard that Christians are the biggest targets of hate, in spite of all evidence to the contrary.
• Olivia Chow is once again making threats in order to demand more federal money for housing asylum claimants.
• It looks like purchasing agents at Alberta Health Services were also tied to companies bidding on contracts, as that scandal continues to roll along.
• There are calls for BC to stand up a permanent housing roundtable in order to help deal with confusion or delays caused by legislated attempts to build more housing.
• Some coastal BC First Nations want to meet with the prime minister about plans to revive wild salmon stocks, as other First Nations fight the open-net farming ban.
• Law professor Florence Ashley describes being put on administrative leave for a Charlie Kirk tweet, and what this means for academic freedom being under threat.
• Susan Delacourt dives into the recent findings of post-election analyses by a couple of polling firms.

Odds and ends:

https://bsky.app/profile/ryanjespersen.bsky.social/post/3lzzarlelzk2h

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