OTTAWA—A day after committing six fighter jets and hundreds of personnel to the fight against the Islamic State, the federal Conservatives are commissioning five new studies into homegrown terrorism and terrorist financing.

Public Safety Canada issued a call for five new research projects into a variety of terrorism-related topics Wednesday, including the domestic impact of international conflict and the role of the internet in terrorist recruiting.

“A prominent threat facing Canada’s national security . . . is radicalization leading to violence, including homegrown violent extremism,” reads the call for proposals.

“These cases are rare, but the impact of an act of terrorism is potentially enormous, with serious and lasting psychological and emotional harm to a large number of individuals, as well as economic impact and/or the creation or escalation of tensions between communities and countries.”

The research will consider a number of questions:

How does the “psychology of the internet” play into terrorist activities and recruitment?

What are the domestic impacts of international conflicts, such as the war in Iraq?

What are the gender dynamics involved in radicalization to violence?

How are resources transferred to terrorist organizations? How are those resources moved and used?

What makes people susceptible to recruitment into violent extremism?

The research will be funded by the Kanishka Project, a five-year, $10 million fund created in 2011 to study security issues.

Despite the government’s mockery of political opponents for searching for the “root causes” of terrorism or “engaging in sociology,” Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government has committed around $5 million to similar research over the last three years.

It’s not known how much this round of study will cost. Kanishka grants can range from one-off $10,000 contributions to $460,000 for multi-year research.

Over the debate on Canada’s six-month combat mission in Iraq, the Conservatives repeatedly stressed that ISIL poses a domestic threat to Canadians — either in the form of a terrorism act hatched abroad and carried out on Canadian soil, or from so-called “extremist travellers” returning to the West.

“What the world understands very clearly is that in the absence of any response, ISIL was growing like a cancer over the summer, over an entire region,” Harper told the Commons on Tuesday. “(ISIL) constitutes a threat and not just to the region, (but) to the global community entirely and also to Canada.”

Harper’s push for a six-month, six fighter jet contribution to the international effort to “destroy and degrade” ISIL was approved by the House of Commons late Tuesday evening. Both the opposition New Democrats and the Liberals voted against the mission.

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The call for more research came hours before Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney is scheduled to testify before a House of Commons committee on “terrorist entities.” Blaney will be joined by RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson and Michael Coulombe, the head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

While Canada has not experienced a successful act of domestic terror since the Air India bombing in 1985, failed and foiled attempts have brought considerable attention to the possibility. Canadian law enforcement agencies have repeatedly claimed Canada faces a real threat.

More recently, a man who identified himself as Farah Shirdon, a Calgary-born man believed to be fighting with ISIL in Iraq and Syria, told VICE Canada that he had no problems with Canadians, just the Canadian government. Shirdon, however, is reported to be the same man seen in an ISIL propaganda video threatening Canada and the United States, and burning his Canadian passport.

Public Safety estimates that in early 2014, more than 130 people with “Canadian connections” were abroad in places such as Somalia, Iraq, and Syria. The department believes these people engaged in “training, fundraising, promoting radical views, and . . . planning terrorist violence.” The number of actual Canadian citizens engaged in fighting is thought to be less.

Four people were charged with terrorism offences in Canada in 2013, according to the department.

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