A little over two weeks after New Brunswick’s first youth terrorism peace bond case, a second youth finds themselves in a similar position. “It’s a frightening thing,” says CTV Public Safety Analyst Chris Lewis. “Once again, parents need to get on this and make sure their kids aren’t being victimized or become offenders themselves.” On Thursday, New Brunswick RCMP placed a youth, who cannot be named under youth protection laws, on a peace bond related to his or her alleged involvement in terrorist activities with the 764 Network. The Government of Canada website describes 764 as a “decentralized transnational network of online nihilistic violent extremists” who seek to destroy society through violence and chaos. They target young and marginalized people and groom and extort them to commit violent and sexual acts. “764 members view sexual, psychological, and physical violence as entertainment, a way to achieve status and notoriety in-group, and ideological labour to erode social norms,” the government’s website reads. “764 members disseminate instructional materials on how to effectively carry out these activities while avoiding detection. Elements of the network have increasingly focused on encouraging offline acts of violence.” Police say the peace bond is used when investigators are “concerned that a person’s actions could contribute to a terrorist offence and this enables the use of robust monitoring and de-escalation tools.” This incident marks the second time a New Brunswick youth has been placed under a peace bond by New Brunswick RCMP. In early February police notified the public of a youth arrest in late 2025 for alleged facilitation of a terrorist activity, which marked the first time a youth had been placed under the authority of a terrorism peace bond in the province’s history. New Brunswick RCMP confirmed to CTV News Atlantic that there is no connection between the two cases. RCMP did not share what specific conditions either youth has been placed under as it relates to their individual peace bonds. Lewis says the pandemic played a key role in seeing some youth be “taken out of the world” while they lived their lives mostly online. Mental health issues resulted in some cases, according to Lewis, leading some to be drawn into “destructive lifestyles.” He says it’s important for parents to track what their children are doing on their devices and social media platforms. He points out that not everyone on the internet is who they say they are. “They’re meeting a sex offender who’s 50 years old, and God knows what’s going to happen to them through all of that,” Lewis says. “If parents aren’t watching their kid’s activity, monitoring it in some way, they’re asking for trouble. And the trouble could be their kids reparably harmed in a sexual assault or something that’s going to ruin their entire life.” David Hoffmann, director of the Criminal Justice Program at the University of New Brunswick, says while two peace bonds in short succession is a concern, it is not necessarily the sign of a new trend starting. He says, if anything, it raises awareness about the dangers of social media, as well as online gaming chat rooms like Discord, which have been linked to groups like 764. “This is a process, gaining their trust over months, this isn’t something sudden,” Hoffmann says. “They befriend young and alienated individuals who are looking to reach out on the internet. It’s difficult reaching out to teenagers about this type of thing, but if parents fear that their child is maybe getting too immersed or too attached to someone online that would be a warning sign.” He adds 764 in particular will tend to use compromising pictures of individuals that are sexual in nature and use that to extort behaviours out of the victims that he says are “reprehensible.” He says it is important for youths to know that once they say or send something online that it never goes away. New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt said the cases are a concern, and will be looking at what the government can do to better protect the province’s youth. She says the recent cases are a signal that more needs to be done. “It’s a responsibility of the education system to make sure we’re informing and educating students on both digital literacy and on how trusted information is found and used,” says Holt. “It’s a role that government has to play as well to make sure that we have the early systems in place to educate and prevent, and the systems in place to identify and to redirect so it’s then an effort of society, of education, and of public safety.” With files from CTV’s Sean Mott For more New Brunswick news, visit our dedicated provincial page.
