'Only the beginning': Anti-immigration group says Ottawans should 'brace themselves'

For weeks, posters and stickers across Ottawa advertising the anti-immigration group Dominion Society of Canada — which is calling for mass deportations of millions of people — have been generating complaints of racism and white nationalism online, to police and to the city.

But Ottawa police say the posters and stickers reported so far do not constitute hate crimes, and the group's chair and founder Daniel Tyrie said the recruitment campaign is not going to stop.

"Posters and stickers are only the beginning. Ottawa residents should brace themselves," Tyrie told CBC News in an email last week.

"Those demanding that we stop recruiting should get used to disappointment. We are organizing, we are growing, and we are not going away."

The Dominion Society is a registered non-profit corporation based in Ottawa, established in 2025. It had rented a virtual office at the Château Laurier hotel near Parliament Hill from the company Regus until September, when it moved under unclear circumstances to another virtual office at 222 Queen St.

The group has been organizing postering campaigns across the country since its founding last year. It generated headlines this summer in southern Ontario where it tried to organize and hold a convention in Hamilton but ended up relocating to Burlington after community protests and statements against them.

The group believes only anglophone and French people with English, French, Irish and Scottish settler ancestry qualify as Canadian, "later joined by further waves of Europeans."

It's unclear if the society considers all Indigenous people Canadian. The society's website states that First Nations are among Canada's founding groups alongside European settlers, but says First Nations have since become either Anglo-Canadian or French Canadian through "ethnogenesis" with the settlers over generations — "a new people ... born of European roots."

• Hamilton mayor asks businesses to be aware of anti-immigration group planning conference in area

• Far-right Austrian white nationalist, permanently banned from U.K., plans to attend Hamilton conference

• Hamilton police join call for venues to 'consider the impact' of hosting anti-immigration group Saturday

• Video

  Protesters rally at Hamilton City Hall against anti-immigration group

• 'We didn’t want them:' Hamilton rallies against Dominion Society, as group holds event in Burlington, Ont.

The group wants to end and reverse Canada's immigration and multicultural policies dating back decades, and to punish the people and organizations that created, ran and enabled them, according to its website.

The Dominion Society wants all temporary foreign workers deported, birthright citizenship and naturalized citizenship restricted and revoked, permanent resident status revoked, dual citizenships eliminated, and any immigrants who have not sufficiently assimilated to be deported.

What would their version of Canada look like?

In the Dominion Society's version of Canada, no kosher (Jewish) or halal (Islamic) meat production would be allowed, business and government signage in any languages other than English and French would be banned, and "public institutions — including schools, media, and the civil service — will be required to promote assimilation, unity, and shared national values, not group-based identity politics," its website states.

The Canadian Multiculturalism Act would be struck down and replaced with the National Cohesion Act, which would "affirm Canada's founding as a historically European, Christian, and bicultural (English and French) nation with a common civic identity," the site continues.

The society has no clear answers about how many years of immigration it wants to reverse, or what an acceptable level of assimilation would be.

In an interview with CBC by phone, Tyrie said he believes things took a turn for the worse in the 1960s and again under Justin Trudeau's government starting in 2015, and that turning back the immigration clock to that year would be "a very fair and reasonable cut-off, unfortunately, even for people that have integrated into our society, with the exception of people who have married Canadians."

'An environment that is less welcoming'

Tyrie believes "mass immigration and radical demographic changes" are today's "most pressing" issues.

He insists his group's deportation policies aren't based on ethnicity.

"The English, the Anglo-Canadians, the franco-Canadians and the First Nations need to work together to collaboratively protect our unique identities, which can't be found anywhere else in the world," Tyrie said by phone.

He thinks the state has made Canada uncomfortable for "actual Canadians," and that "putting in place programs to prioritize people from other countries, people from foreign cultures, ahead of our own, I think that's hateful."

"We can build an environment that is less welcoming, more hostile to foreign cultures, foreign languages, foreign people in order to make them also want to leave and go back to their home country where they can continue to build, be within a community that is consistent with their values, their culture, their religion," Tyrie said.

'We can do much better than this in Ottawa'

Ottawa resident Sarah Fraser first saw the Dominion Society's posters Sept. 24 on Bank Street at Billings Bridge, and others in a nearby residential area. They appeared racist to her, with the word "remigration" and pictures featuring white people exclusively in wartime, so she took them down.

"I was furious, actually, that these posters were in my neighbourhood and that there was an effort to recruit into this group in my neighbourhood," Fraser said in an interview last week.

"We can do much better than this in Ottawa. We need to build communities of care. We need to reach out to our neighbours and our friends and our families to be more open about racism and hate ... to take action within our own spheres of influence to make sure that these ideas do not spread," she said.

"The ideas are so far beyond inappropriate, they're unwelcome in my Ottawa."

Fraser understands that for people who are struggling, the idea that one change could solve all the country's problems "would be fantastic."

"But the world is quite complex, and anything that sounds too good to be true, probably is," Fraser said. "I would hate for folks to go from, 'I'm feeling uncomfortable,' to, 'I think other people should be hurt in order for me to feel more comfortable.' That's not a good place for folks to start. Let's not put our own comfort over someone else's safety."

WATCH | What is the Dominion Society of Canada? From CBC Hamilton:

What is the Dominion Society of Canada?

August 23|

Duration

3:45

'Encourage the powers that be to take some action'

Evan Balgord is executive director of the non-profit organization Canadian Anti-Hate Network, and has researched the rise of the far-right movement in Canada for years.

He calls the group the "suits and ties" political arm of the white nationalist movement in Canada, "seeding the ground for a political idea to take root. And the political idea they want to take root is racist mass deportations."

"When you dig into what they actually say in their podcasts in their own audience, they are talking about removing citizenship from people who are Canadians and deporting them on the basis of race, religion and ethnicity. They are advocating for ethnic cleansing when they call for remigration.... That's my opinion, but it's pretty clear," Balgord said.

Two of the "hallmarks of hate" in Canadian law include targeted groups of people being blamed for society's problems, and that removing targeted groups of people is the solution, Balgord noted.

"I believe that the Dominion Society of Canada's entire message hinges around exactly those points and is in violation of the law," he said.

People offended by the Dominion Society's views and goals should continue to take their posters and stickers down, Balgord said, but they should also be asking their elected officials what law enforcement and the government are doing about the group's leaders.

"Take [the materials] down, cover them up, call your MP and ask them ... 'Why aren't the leaders of this organization calling for racist mass deportations being charged? Why are they allowed to have a non-profit corporation [in Canada]?'" Balgord said.

"Encourage the powers that be to take some action here, because it's been 10 years of white nationalist growth in Canada. These guys have gotten emboldened enough now that they're out there harassing communities, and we don't want it to happen anymore."

Posters don't meet criminal threshold, police say

The Ottawa Police Service first became aware of the Dominion Society of Canada's posters and stickers in December 2025. As of last week, police had received 18 reports from the public about the materials in Alta Vista, Barrhaven, Kanata South and Rideau-Vanier, the force wrote in an email to CBC.

None of the reported content constitutes a possible hate crime, police said.

"Each report is assessed individually and in context to determine whether it meets the legal threshold for a criminal offence. To date, the posters, on their face, have not met that threshold," police wrote.

"We recognize the community’s concerns and appreciate those who have come forward."

Ottawa's bylaw department had received four complaints about the posters and stickers as of last week.

Staff removed the materials in each case, according to Jake Gravelle, the city's chief of bylaw and regulatory services.

The city "is committed to fostering a safe, respectful and inclusive community for all residents," and people "who encounter signs, posters or other materials that may contravene municipal regulations are encouraged to submit a report to the City through 3-1-1."

Suspected crimes should be reported to police, Gravelle added.