Summary of the Evaluation of the Canada Centre for Community Engagement and Prevention of Violence

About the Program

Established in 2017, the Canada Centre is a centre of excellence in countering radicalization to violence in the Canadian context. The Canada Centre was created to expand support for and coordination of these efforts and also, by its emphasis on prevention, complement traditional security and intelligence responses to radicalization.

The Centre’s activities fall into three main areas:

• National leadership – through the creation of the National Strategy on Countering Radicalization to Violence (CRV) and engagement and coordination with multi-sector partners;
• Knowledge development and mobilization – as part of the CRV Strategy, supporting and creating evidence-based resources and best practices; and
• Grants and contributions (G&Cs) funding program – supporting targeted programming through the Community Resilience Fund (CRF), which helps fund local initiatives that aim to prevent radicalization to violence in Canada.

What We Examined

As a delivery evaluation, the evaluation focused on program design, implementation, and production of outputs; achievement of early outcomes, program efficiency, and alignment with federal priorities and departmental objectives were also considered. The evaluation covered the Centre’s activities from July 2017 (launch) to September 2019.

Evaluation Findings

• Overall, the work and focus of the Canada Centre aligns with government priorities, federal roles and responsibilities, and departmental objectives.
• The Centre has established a national leadership role and international profile in CRV. Coordination with other federal departments could be enhanced and there is the desire for the Centre to have a more visible role with stakeholders and communities by conducting more direct outreach.
• The Centre’s activity area of knowledge development and mobilization was identified as the activity area needing the most attention. While the Centre funds research, it was seen as important for the Centre to do more to identify and distribute knowledge products.
• Projects funded through the Community Resilience Fund address identified priorities, and have built the capacity of organizations and CRV practitioners. To help build a knowledge-base and evidence for the effectiveness of CRV programming, the Centre should encourage and support project-level evaluations.
• The Centre appears to be operating efficiently but there is limited data to support an analysis of its efficiency.

Recommendations

The Assistant Deputy Minister, Portfolio Affairs and Communication Branch and the Assistant Deputy Minister, Emergency Management and Preparedness Branch should consider the following for the Canada Centre:

1. In terms of its national leadership role: explore opportunities to expand its coordinating role, including outreach at the stakeholder and community level.
2. In terms of its knowledge development and mobilization role: formalize the roles and responsibilities suitable for the Canada Centre as a curator and distributor, and even potentially a producer of research products.
3. In terms of its G&Cs role: provide necessary guidance to ensure that funded projects are monitoring and assessing their activities in line with the overall objectives of the Canada Centre.
4. The Canada Centre should put in place measures to systematically collect and report on its outputs and outcomes.

Date modified:

2020-10-02