Violent actions and radical opinions are distinct problems that should be handled differently, an expert told parliamentarians as they seeks to address ideologically motivated violent extremism (IMVE) in Canada. In testimony at the House of Commons Public Safety and National Security Committee on Monday, Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at the Royal Military College, explained the need to distinguish “ideologically motivated violent extremism,” which refers to speech, from “ideologically motivated extremist violence,” which is a physical act of violence. “Only under very specific circumstances is an utterance in and of itself a crime. Rather, the criminal justice system in a democracy is generally structured to deal with acts of crime ex post facto. Intent and motivation are not normally punishable, although they may factor into the degree of punishment,” Leuprecht wrote in a research paper. “Democracies are premised on the assumption that freedom of speech and thought should prevail, …