Canadian members of Golden Dawn say all they're doing is raising food donations to be distributed to people in Greece, however those donations are reserved to those described as "real Greeks."

Kyle Matthews, deputy director of Concordia University's Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies said the party's identification of the "other" is troubling and it's all taking place during a tumultuous time in the country's history.

The party's emergence isn't surprising to some of those who have been following Greece's economic decline.

Ken Matziorinis, an economics professor at McGill University, said the party's popularity has picked up in the past two years, in large part due to the influence of the country's financial situation.

"Greece is undergoing a depression — output has contracted 20 per cent since the start of the crisis," he said, adding that youth unemployment is now the highest in Europe.

"The conditions are reminiscent of those in Germany in the 1920 and Europe in the '30s with the rise of fascism and Nazism. People are desperate, they don't know where to turn to take out their anger and unfortunately, as is the case, they turn it out against the weakest segments of the population."