Over the course of a two-hour-long conference call in August, two leaders of Canadian groups that experts have described as white nationalist and eager audience members bantered about deporting 10 million people, decried the existence of mixed-race marriages and children and said they would “be happy to march millions of Punjabis into the Pacific Ocean.”

Speakers complained about Canadians with Italian, Greek and Ukrainian heritage who don’t fit their definition of a “heritage Canadian,” someone with preferably French or English background.

And the 14 speakers brainstormed about how to get mainstream political parties to help achieve their major goal of “remigration,” mass deportations of the people they judge aren’t truly Canadian. About 1,100 X users listened in, according to the Spaces dashboard for the event.

In the midst of the conversation, Othman Mekhloufi, a 22-year-old political staffer, spoke up. During the call, Mekhloufi — who was then working for a right-wing provincial party called OneBC — shared insights from what he claimed were contacts inside the Conservative Party of Canada.

“This morning, I spoke to a really senior adviser to Pierre Poilievre, and he said that it took him all hell’s work to convince Pierre to finally take up anti-immigration status. And that’s happening,” Mekhloufi said.