Evolving updates on the Evolve Program

In June I posted a piece about my unexpected encounter with the Evolve Program and my at the time rebuffed attempts to learn more about it.

I have filed three FOIP requests about it so far. One, to the Province of Alberta, was returned with no information (Alberta provides no funding to Evolve or OPV so it was simply a mistake on my part to make one to Alberta). A second, to the City of Edmonton, has come back informing me that no City of Edmonton funding has gone to the Evolve Program. They provided OPV with $25k in 2018 for a Resiliency program and have provided an unspecified amount of funding to their current Youth Vulnerability Reduction Protocol. I then put in a third FOIP, at the Federal level, about the funding provided by Public Safety Canada. I have not yet received a response but will update when I do.

After I posted my Substack piece, the Executive Director of the Organization for the Prevention of Violence, Dr. John McCoy, got back in touch with me to chat. He had refused to answer my questions before, and I appreciate his coming back and reaching out. He provided me with additional information about the Moonshot program. The Evolve Program in Alberta is under the auspices of Moonshot CVE:

He said he was unable to answer my technical questions about what search terms prompt the Evolve Program link to appear and what kind of reciprocal data is collected — I’ll have to wait and see what the Public Safety Canada FOIP turns up about that. He did, however, explain that the work of the Evolve Program is downstream of that: they respond to people who do click on the Evolve link and fill it out looking for help.

I’ll post updates about the federal FOIP when I have them. I do have some thoughts about the Moonshot CVE program description. It is striking that the kind of “violent extremism online” to which Moonshot is tailored is “violent far-right (VFR) and incel”. Those of us involved in the fight for women’s sex-based rights are acutely aware that right-wing ideology is hardly the only internet-based font of violence and inceldom. Black bloc protestors feature regularly at our events. These consist in their majority of masked men clearly excited at the prospect of assaulting women, which they quite regularly manage to do while only occasionally facing any legal consequence as a result.

Does this mean, however, that I wish the Canadian government would start surveilling MORE fellow Canadians in more ways? No. I’d like to see men who actually assault women for the crime of speaking in public pursued vigorously by law enforcement, but I don’t want the surveillance of internet pre-crime proliferated. Speech is not violence and simply being a frightening creep is not illegal.

The Moonshot program seems to me prima facie evidence for why this distinction is important. Is it accidental that the Trudeau government funds a program that looks for incipient dangers only in the part of the political spectrum that will never vote for the Liberal Party? If, as seems likely, Pierre Polievre is the next PM will I delight at the prospect of his government turning the federal eye of Sauron in the direction of the grubby little weenies of antifa and trantifa?

As a woman who almost lost her job and her home to the excited baying of those weenies and their many academic allies, of course a part of me wants to clap like a seal at the prospect. As the fortunate citizen of a still-democratic nation, however, it is my absolute civic duty to quash that impulse. Moonshot CVE looks to me like a federally funded program to target the political opposition to current office holders. I am against that sort of thing. I would be against it if Moonshot CVE came back under a Polievre government saying it wanted to provided “targeted, tailored support” to violent far left (VFL) and incel audiences. It’s not that I don’t think an incel VFL exists and is dangerous: it does, and it is. It’s that it is not the business of the government of a free country to stalk them. It’s the business of citizens like me to stand up to them peacefully and steadfastly, and the business of governments to get out of our way when we do. It would be nice if they also stop putting their thumb on the scale to protect and promote them. That’s it, that’s all I hope for from the next government of Canada.