Ending Pay-for-Slay: Criminalizing Terrorist Incentive Programs
Secure Canada is advancing legislation to explicitly criminalize "pay-for-slay" programs: structured payment programs that compensate individuals who commit or attempt to commit terrorist activity, or their families and beneficiaries, with rewards calibrated to the severity of the violence.
The Problem
The most extensively documented modern example is the Palestinian Authority's so-called Martyrs' Fund, which pays monthly salaries to imprisoned terrorists and stipends to the families of those killed carrying out attacks, with payments calibrated according to the length of sentence and severity of the underlying offence. The model extends to Iran and its proxies as well. While Canada's existing terrorism financing offences and sanctions regimes are arguably broad enough to reach this conduct, no one has ever been prosecuted or sanctioned in Canada on this basis, largely because the law never names it.
Pay-for-slay is not a distant problem. The Toronto Police investigation into a criminals-for-hire network linked to 27 shootings at synagogues, Jewish schools, and the U.S. consulate, in which gunmen were allegedly paid by a foreign entity to carry out the attacks, shows that financially incentivized terror has arrived in Canadian cities.
The Proposal
On June 17, 2026, Secure Canada published The Economics of Terror: Why Canada Should Explicitly Criminalize Pay-for-Slay Programs together with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Authored by our legal advisor Sarah Teich, the peer-reviewed paper sets out the factual record, the existing Canadian legal framework, international comparative analysis, and a detailed legislative proposal: a statutory definition of pay-for-slay programs and a standalone offence in the Criminal Code, alongside clarifying amendments to the Special Economic Measures Act and the Justice for Victims of Corrupt Foreign Officials Act (Sergei Magnitsky Law) enabling sanctions against foreign officials responsible for such programs.
From Research to Reform
The work has moved from publication to legislation. Secure Canada is engaged with senators' offices to advance the paper's proposals as a Senate bill, and on September 24, 2026, Secure Canada and the Macdonald-Laurier Institute are co-hosting an event in Ottawa, timed to Parliament's return, relaunching the paper before lawmakers and stakeholders, with MP Shuvaloy Majumdar and Sarah Teich speaking. Legislation explicitly criminalizing pay-for-slay programs would close a demonstrated gap in Canadian law, strengthen the integrity of Canada's counter-terrorism financing regime, and give police and prosecutors tools that today exist only by inference.