It’s a shame that the very things that brought us to Canada – openness, multiculturalism, and freedoms - have been hijacked by homegrown zealots to further their terror plans.

Since the London bombings last July, Canadian law enforcement and intelligence gathering agencies have been pounding the “homegrown terrorist” drums, saying an attack on Canadian soil is imminent.

Intelligence analysis and news reports warned that Canada has its own cadre of "homegrown" Islamic extremists.

“Canada is home to Islamic extremists, both homegrown and immigrant," says one of the reports by the Integrated Threat Assessment Centre (ITAC).

The U.S. State Department in its recent annual report on global terrorism said: "Terrorists have capitalized on liberal Canadian immigration and asylum policies to enjoy safe haven, raise funds, arrange logistical support and plan terrorist attacks."

Those warnings, which came in a flurry during May, culminated in the arrests this month of 17 people accused of plotting bombings in Ontario.

The dozen Toronto-area men and five teens under the age of 18 “took steps to acquire components necessary to create explosive devices” including three tonnes of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, commonly used in terrorist bombs, police said.

The Muslim men of Somali, Egyptian, Jamaican, and Trinidadian origin were all residents of Canada and “for the most part” all are Canadian citizens. The authorities said the suspects were inspired by the actions of al-Qaeda.

Despite the earlier warnings and reports, the arrests sent shockwaves throughout Canada with some saying the nation has lost its innocence.

Many Canadians choose to believe that the 17, like others before them and the ones that are bound to surface, were trained in faraway lands to wreck havoc in the West.

That is how we see al-Qaeda.

But the harsh reality is that al-Qaeda is by and large a western phenomenon.

For the sake of gaining your support on the war on terror – al-Qaeda has always been portrayed as a foreign threat aided by the axis of evil in foreign lands.

But the truth is that al-Qaeda’s main breeding grounds are Montreal, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, London and Paris.

It is here that the sons and daughters of migrant engineers, bus drivers and doctors, alienated from the mainstream, find a common bond.

This alienation is the fertilizer sought by fanatical recruiters to grow the al-Qaeda influence.

The trail of terror blamed on al-Qaeda tells the story vividly.

The London bombers were boys from Leeds.

Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who tried to blow up a jumbo jet was raised outside London and radicalized there. His accomplice, British-born Sajid Badat, came from a middle-class background in Gloucester and educated at the prestigious Crypt Grammar School for Boys while his dad worked for Wall’s ice-cream.

Zacarias Moussaoui, the 'twentieth hijacker' of 9/11, was a French-born Muslim who got involved with fundamentalists at a Brixton mosque.

Mohammad Naeem Noor Khan, al-Qaeda's alleged computer whiz was a graduate of City University in London.

Mohammad Atta, one of the key organizers of 9/11 studied urban planning in Hamburg, Germany. Another 9/11 pilot Hani Hanjour, had been a student at the Center for English as a Second Language at the University of Arizona

Closer to home, millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam, the 33-year-old Algerian who was caught trying to plant a bomb at Los Angeles international airport in 1999, was introduced to Islamic extremism at a Montreal mosque.

Now as the background of the Ontario 17 comes to the fore, we learn like the others they lived, worked and went to school like everyone else in Canada.

Like the others, they were fuelled by disillusionment with the public process, disenfranchisement from the political process and carried the same angst like many of us, only in a much more violent way.

In essence, they were not unlike the angry anti-global campaigners whose outbursts are targeted at multi-nationals whenever there is a major economic summit.

While we congratulate the forces that thwarted the alleged plots by the Ontario 17, let’s also be cognizant that the depth of the al-Qaeda influence on home-grown terrorism is directly connected to the way we treat our minorities and new Canadians.

Al-Qaeda is no longer just a terror group.

It has become a way of life for the alienated, disenfranchised and disillusioned in the west.

As such, our war on terror should not only be about covert operations, surveillance and Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan.

It should also be about attacking the social dimensions that give rise to the al-Qaeda influence in the west.