Shooters for hire: What’s fuelling the Canadian increase in outsourced violence?

Guns for hire are on the increase in Canada. Motives for a crime may be split among the shooter, recruiter, payer, ideological ecosystem and sometimes a foreign or transnational criminal sponsor. (Max Kleinen/Unsplash) Shooters for hire: What’s fuelling the Canadian increase in outsourced violence? Published: July 22, 2026 9.14am EDT Share article Print article Canada is facing an attribution problem when it comes to extremist violence. The person who pulls the trigger may not be the person who has the motive; in some recent cases, there may be no single motive at all. An emerging form of brokered violence involves local youth, encrypted communications, symbolic targets, recorded attacks, payment and multi-layered motives. Put simply, this is motive-fragmented violence: the motive may be split among the shooter, recruiter, payer, ideological ecosystem and sometimes a foreign or transnational criminal sponsor. The cases A bullet hole in the door of the Shaarei Shomayim synagogue in Toronto in March 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Kathryn Mannie Take the Toronto-area synagogue shootings in March 2026. Although no one was injured, York Regional Police later said an 18-year-old male was charged in the shootings. The question is: Was this antisemitic attack bought and paid for, a copycat incident or an example of hybrid violence? Then came the U.S. consulate shooting on March 10, 2026. Toronto Police later arrested and charged 19-year-old Zara Jabbi. Police said the RCMP’s Integrated National Security Enforcement Team treated the incident as a national security issue while the motive remained undetermined. Law enforcement agencies in Toronto reportedly connected dozens of shootings, including some of the above incidents, to a “multi-layered” gun-for-hire network. The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom has reported a similar pattern involving teenagers and young adults recruited through Signal, Telegram and WhatsApp, paid to carry out attacks and sometimes asked to film the violence as proof. Simply put, shooters have become freelance contractors. The target’s ideology is entirely irrelevant to them. Their involvement is purely transactional, driven by organized crime, financial exchange or youth recruitment pipelines. Hybrid threat Authorities in the United States also accuse an Iraqi national of supporting Kata’ib Hizballah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the IRGC, including via an alleged involvement in attacks in…