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Founded in 1986 in Toronto, the Mackenzie Institute is an independent non-profit organization concerned with issues related to political instability and organized violence. This includes such matters as terrorism, political extremism, warfare and organized crime.
The aim of the Institute is to provide research and commentary on its subject matter, to promote informed public debate, and to hold to the proposition that our liberal democratic tradition must be safeguarded and fostered.
The Institute is also concerned with the social and political stability of Canada, and works to enhance it when it can.
The Institute is named for the voyageur Alexander Mackenzie, the first European (and likely the first man) to reach the Pacific Ocean from Upper Canada, and the first to trace the Mackenzie River to the Arctic Ocean. Mackenzie had the courage to explore routes that everyone knew existed, but feared to try. In our own way, we try to emulate his courage and forthrightness.
Recent Commentaries...
Have foreign governments infiltrated Canadian politics?
Canadians don't shoot messengers with bad news, we just sneer at them instead.
CSIS Chief Richard Fadden has spent months trying to tell Canadians that hostile foreign powers and alien non-state actors were trying to influence our public life through covert means. Nobody listened until this week, and then we all acted like teenagers learning their parents have sex lives.
A Canadian Proposal for Listing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Terrorist Entity
C-CAT: Since its founding in 2004, the Canadian Coalition Against Terror (C-CAT) has called on the government to list the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist entity under section 83.05 of the Criminal Code. Listing the IRGC is essentially a unilateral Canadian prerogative that can and should be pursued in the framework of Canada's ongoing anti-terrorism efforts and human rights advocacy - independently of any nuclear context.
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The Myth of Airport Security
Within our entire national security landscape, airport security is perhaps the most visible and high profile manifestation of our collective will to defend ourselves against terrorism and a component part of our over-all matrix of National Security.
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Recent Newsletters
This is Cassandra Calling...
At the very time when a wave of terrorism may be looming out of the darkness, our counter-terrorism assets are swamped and their hands are off the tiller...
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Mackenzie Briefing Notes
With the recent defeat of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), the distinction of being the world's most sophisticated and globalized terrorist group has passed to the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah. Yet many observers reasonably argue that this has always been more innovative and powerful than the LTTE. Moreover, the Tigers were a limited threat to the Western World, but this is not true of Hezbollah.
In the last fifteen years, Hezbollah - both on its own account and as a proxy of Iran - has undergone a rapid expansion beyond the Middle East. Its recent entry into the cocaine trade will make it more dangerous yet, particularly inside North America. The danger it poses must not be underestimated.
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