Canadians draw a little closer

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/10/2014 (4347 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Pundits, politicians and ordinary Canadians say the violence in Ottawa Wednesday changes everything.

Maybe so, but it’s far from clear what exactly has changed, or what exactly should change.

The incident was not Canada’s Pearl Harbor, America’s Day of Infamy. Nor was it 9/11, the well-planned assault by al-Qaida that killed some 3,000 people. Its significance should not be elevated beyond what can be supported by all the facts, which are yet to be determined.

Still, the slaying of a young soldier at Canada’s National War Memorial and the assault on Canada’s seat of democracy has shocked the nation. The country feels a little closer today, our differences somehow diminished. Prouder, too, after learning of the heroism of people such as Kevin Vickers, the House sergeant-at-arms who reportedly killed the gunman.

If anything is going to change immediately, it’s going to be security consciousness at our national, provincial and civic institutions.

In the United States, heads rolled when a gunman managed to run across the White House lawn and into the building.

Mr. Vickers is nominally in charge of security in the House of Commons. In Canada, however, accountability for security rests with the minister of public safety, Steven Blaney. He will have to answer some hard questions about how an apparently lone attacker was able to cut through security after shooting a soldier at the war memorial.

Emergency calls were made immediately after the shooting, but for some reason the alarm was never raised at the nearby House of Commons, where guards were caught unprepared.

The challenge for security planners will be to increase safety without unduly impairing access. Most countries use rings of security, rather than a single desk of guards.

Once visitors get past the security desk at the Manitoba legislature, for example, there’s not much to stop a madman from scaling the stairs to Premier Greg Selinger’s office, which has no visible security. That will probably change, another victory for those who profit from sowing fear and alarm.

The question of whether police and other security agencies need greater powers of arrest and surveillance should not be answered based solely on what happened in Ottawa or Quebec, where one soldier was killed and another injured earlier this week by a man who drove his car deliberately into them. In fact, the Harper government should delay tabling its plan to increase the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service until the present emotional fury has subsided.

As stated in this space before, knee-jerk reactions rarely make for good public policy.

The war against Islamic State was supposed to be another one of those bloodless campaigns, similar to the wars in Libya and Kosovo, where only the bad guys get killed. The worldwide jihad, however, is changing that equation.

It could well affect the way Canadian defence personnel conduct themselves at home in the future. The Defence Department, for example, ordered its troops not to wear their uniforms outside military bases following the attack Wednesday as a temporary security measure, an unprecedented precaution.

The men and women who protect Canadians, as soldiers, police officers, parliamentary guards, firefighters and paramedics, are easily and quickly faulted when they make a mistake, but events this week graphically illustrate the sacrifices and great risks they endure. They do this without complaint and minimal recognition.

They deserve our gratitude and support, particularly as the world adapts to the harsh reality that a mad person inspired by a genocidal ideology can pop out of nowhere, anywhere at any time.