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Furey reported in part two of the series that the number of these terrorists appears to fluctuate from week to week because CSIS has been producing weekly reports. Could admitting refugees from various countries explain the fluctuations?

Chilling of course is the conclusion by CSIS that attacks in Canada are unlikely to diminish. One of the reports says that “domestic extremists are likely to continue to target Canadian uniformed personnel and related installations in neighbourhoods that are familiar to them (such as police stations and military recruitment centres).”

In my forthcoming book, The Case Against Jihad, to be published by Mantua Books Ltd, I confirm the nature of the threat by suggesting that adherence to jihadist ideology is widespread enough for random attacks on Canadians, such as the vehicle attack in Edmonton, to happen again.

The strength of outfits like ISIS or al-Qaida is their division into tiny cells, requiring unwavering commitment but no central command structure. The ideology of jihad is ever-present among those followers of Islam who have been radicalized by their blinkered view of Western policy in Islamic countries or who simply despise the West and its freedoms.

Animosity can ferment even in individuals who have never been abroad to fight a jihad, who have no known links to terrorist groups and have never even spouted any jihadi rhetoric. Since ISIS is facing retreat from Syria and Iraq, it is striving to spread its tentacles everywhere else and calling on anyone to join the “virtual caliphate”. The game has become one of chance and unpredictability. No one knows for certain when, where or even how a terrorist may strike Canadians. All this may also account for the fluctuations.