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I was impressed that Ted Cruz voluntarily renounced his Canadian citizenship to show his dedication to representing the United States. I would admire Andrew Scheer if he did the equivalent thing, renouncing his American citizenship to show his dedication to Canada, since he is running for Prime Minister in a few months. This is actually MANDATORY to run for office in Australia, or even to hold citizenship at all in Japan. I think it is important that our political representatives, if not all our citizens, should show their dedication to representing our nation first, and not have backup plans to reside in other nations if things go wrong. The only way I could be wrong about this is if Andrew's dad (deacon James D. Scheer, who was born in the Bronx in New York) immigrated to Canada prior to turning 19, or if he renounced his citizenship prior to Andrew's birth in 1979. Andrew hasn't supplied any evidence either of these things happened (James' older brother died in the Bronx, so the family as a whole never left) so I believe it is reasonable to assume he holds American citizenship by birthright by default.

There has been a bit of discussion lately about Canadian terrorists, particularly around whether we should allow dual-citizenship, stop letting in refugees, and/or be more selective about where Canada's immigrants come from. CSIS released a report about Canadian terrorists and the results shatter a lot of the myths that are floating around the forum. A Study of Radicalisation: The Making of Islamists Extremists in Canada Today. The report tells us that terrorists in Canada mostly commit their acts of terror abroad, are almost always born in Canada, rarely are they immigrants, and never have they been refugees. The report goes on further to say that not only are they not immigrants, but they almost never come from marginalized groups and are typically fully integrated into Canada. In other words, they don't come from those immigrant enclaves that struggle or refuse to integrate into Canada. In fact, CSIS says these terrorists are usually "highly integrated into Canadian society." MI5 also conducted a study in Britain that was released recently and found very similar results. MI5's study went further to say that "religious identity actually protects against violent radicalization," which flies in the face of generally accepted forum commentary. What does this tell us at the end of the day? Well, the experience of immigration, immigrant communities, and religion are almost never the source of terrorism here in Canada. People are not bringing extremist ideas with them here, despite popular belief to the contrary. Furthermore, the most religious are the least radicalized. The findings of CSIS (as well as MI5 and some American intelligence experts) has found that Islamic Extremists, who are religious by definition of course, are typically radicalized politically well before they adopt their extreme religion stance. In other words, there is no direct path from being deeply religious to becoming radicalized, rather it seems the radical become deeply religious. What CSIS and others believe these terrorist activities are really about is political motives, territorial claims about securing the "land of Islam." These terrorist activities and their narratives seem to have more in common, at least according to CSIS, with the IRA and FLQ than with Muslim communities around the world.