JAKARTA - Canada, on Wednesday, February 3 declared the Proud Boys with the right wing ideology as a terrorist entity.
The Proud Boys pose an active security threat and played a "vital role" in last month's attacks on the United States Capitol that killed five people.
Although the Proud Boys never launched attacks in Canada, Public Security Secretary Bill Blair said domestic intelligence forces were increasingly concerned about the group.
"There has been a serious and worrying increase in violence - not just rhetoric but activity and planning - and that is why we are responding as we do today," he told a news conference. He did not provide details.
The group's assets can now be frozen by banks and financial institutions, and it is a crime for Canadians to knowingly handle the assets of entities listed as the terrorist group. Anyone who joins the group can be prevented from entering Canada.
The group's founder, Gavin McInnes, is a Canadian living in the US. US authorities have charged several Proud Boys members in connection with the January 6 attacks in Washington.
Ottawa added 12 other groups to its list of terrorist entities - three neo-Nazi groups, eight organizations described as affiliated with al Qaeda and Daesh (Islamic State), and Hizbul Mujahidin, a Kashmiri group.
Blair said Canadian intelligence services had been working for months and in some cases years gathering the evidence needed to list the group.
"Canada will not tolerate acts of ideological, religious or politically motivated violence," said Blair.
Founded in 2016, Proud Boys started as an organization that protested political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity in the US and Canada, and grew into a group that supported street fighting.
Former US President Donald Trump, asked last September if he would denounce white supremacists and militia groups, asked the Proud Boys to "step back and stand aside."
The inclusion of Proud Boys on the list is likely to have "a bit of a polarized response" to Proud Boys members, said Jessica Davis, a former senior intelligence analyst with Canada's Security Intelligence Service spy service.
"For some individuals this may have a dampening effect ... However, there may be some core members who will be increasingly radicalized by the group's inclusion on the terrorist list," said Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence.
It's hard to say how many Proud Boys there are in Canada, said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Anti Hate Network of Canada.
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