North and south of the Canada-U.S. border, we are having important debates about immigration, and also about radicalization.

I believe strongly that these are both worthwhile conversations -- but also that they are different conversations. Radicalization is the process of drawing someone into more extreme and violent views, now done most commonly through online communications. Although many groups responsible for radicalization self-identify as Muslim, radicalization does not only impact those who come from Muslim backgrounds.

Both attacks carried out in Canada in 2014 were by Canadian-born Canadian citizens, neither of whom were raised as Muslims. Some have assumed that policy changes with respect to immigration are the answer -- but this assumption ignores the realities on the ground.

This is not to suggest that we should not be concerned about the possibility of immigration by people with radical ideas. We should be, and we should have appropriate vetting procedures in place. But by and large Canada and the U.S. already have those procedures in place. Our principle problems in this case have resulted from the radicalization of people already here, not from the immigration of people with radical ideas.

The U.S. is pursuing policies aimed at sending a symbolic message, but in the process that may actually exacerbate the problem.

Certainly a country's immigration policy should be fundamentally informed by its security interests, but the undeniable reality is that radicalization is not a Muslim immigration problem any more than the spread of Soviet communism during the Cold War was a Russian immigration problem. We are in a real war with extreme and radical ideas, but it is an ideological war that must be fought on the grounds of radicalization.

Nobody proposed banning Russian immigration during the Cold War. At the time, it was understood that such a ban would most negatively impact defectors trying to get out, and also that international communism spread principally through ideological propagation, not through immigration. This was before the Internet.

The U.S. is pursuing policies aimed at sending a symbolic message, but in the process that may actually exacerbate the problem. They are denying access to those facing persecution (Muslims and non-Muslims alike), while providing fresh fuel to those propagandists in Daesh and elsewhere who want more Muslims to see themselves as invariably in conflict with the U.S. This U.S. policy is bad for political dissidents and religious minorities in the countries targeted, and it is bad for American security.