OTTAWA – A judge has found a youth guilty of two terrorism-related charges stemming from an alleged 2023 plan to kill Jewish people in Ottawa.
In a verdict delivered Friday, Ontario Superior Court Justice Kerry McVey found the young person guilty of conspiracy to commit murder through involvement with a terrorist group, and of facilitating terrorist activity by seeking to acquire a prohibited firearm.
McVey found him not guilty of facilitating terrorist activity by making instructional material and propaganda available.
The youth, who cannot legally be identified due to his age, had pleaded not guilty to all three charges.
His trial began in April, a day after his co-accused was found guilty on four charges.
The co-accused, who also cannot be named due to provisions of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, pleaded not guilty to the charges but admitted to a statement of facts and invited a judge to find him guilty. The unusual move preserved his right to appeal pretrial rulings in his case, as well as the findings of guilt.
McVey concluded the youth found guilty Friday conspired with his co-accused and another individual who was not charged in a plan to kill a large number of people.
“The planned attack was intended to intimidate a segment of the public, namely members of the Jewish community, with respect to their security,” McVey said.
The attack was intended to cause serious harm through violence, she said.
“The communications between the participants reveal detailed discussions concerning the scale of the intended killing, the weapons required to accomplish it, the quantity of ammunition necessary and the possible use of explosives,” McVey said.
“Their shared objective was the mass killing of innocent people.”
The youth found guilty Friday was arrested in February 2024.
In her reasons, McVey noted the Crown alleged that in the summer of 2023, the young person and his co-accused communicated regularly online and shared violent extremist material.
The judge said that by August of that year, the two young people clearly shared an interest in violent extremist content and expressed hostility toward particular communities, including Jewish people.
She said much of the material sent by the young person to his co-accused could be characterized as propaganda or instructional material — including videos created by the extremist Islamic State group and documents about firearms, explosives and methods of killing.
The judge noted that, according to the Crown, those communications evolved over time and by late October 2023 a concrete plan had emerged to carry out a mass casualty attack in which the co-accused youth intended to take his own life.
McVey said she found the young person not guilty Friday of facilitating terrorist activity by making instructional material and propaganda available because she was not sure that he knew he was furthering terrorist activity when he sent the material to his co-accused.
McVey said she was not satisfied that his co-accused’s plans had even advanced that far at the time.
McVey said that when the youth was aware of his co-accused’s plan for a large-scale attack, he did more than simply express support or interest. She said he contacted potential sources of firearms, made inquiries about availability and pricing, and relayed information back to his co-accused for decision-making.
McVey said that, put simply, attempting to obtain an assault rifle for use in a preplanned, religiously and ideologically motivated mass shooting plainly facilitates that terrorist activity.
After delivering her verdict, McVey addressed the youth directly.
“Based on all of the evidence, I am satisfied that you genuinely intended to help advance this act of deadly violence,” she said.
McVey said the young person was a participant in the conspiracy, even though he did not intend to fight or die as part of it, and even though he may not have known of, or intended to be involved in, every aspect of it.
“In Canada, people are not prosecuted for holding unpopular, offensive or extremist views,” McVey told him.
“You are not being found guilty because of what you believed. You are being found guilty because of what you did. The evidence establishes that your beliefs led you to take concrete steps with others toward the commission of terrorist activity.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 16, 2026.
