Canada’s Parliamentarians, along with Canadians from coast to coast, were left shaken by an armed intrusion to the centre of political power in this country, with a horrific and tragic shooting on Wednesday in Ottawa.
By itself, the incident was shocking and terrifying as a gunman first killed a soldier at Canada’s national war memorial, then ran right into the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings, and had a shootout with Parliament’s security forces in the hallway outside of two meeting rooms where the caucuses of both the Conservatives and NDP were gathering for their regular meeting prior to a session in the House of Commons.
What made this incident more troubling is that it followed hard on the heels of a terrorist-inspired incident where two soldiers were ran down in a parking lot in Quebec before the motorist was later shot dead by police.
While not on the huge scale of 9/11 when the twin towers of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon were all hit by airliners crashing into them, killing thousands of people, the emotional impact of this attack on Canadian soil was and will be huge on Canadians from every walk of life, and will irrevokably change many things on Parliament Hill and at many federal government facilities in and around Ottawa and across Canada.
As 9/11 showed all of us, and now this incident too, the war against terrorism isn’t only on foreign soil, in such lands as Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, but it can be anywhere and everywhere. Not only that, the face of the terrorist can be anyone of any age or any race, and they can appear any time, anywhere.
Security was in place, and Parliament’s sergeant-at-arms proved himself a hero by dispatching the gunman and likely saving many, many lives as a result, there will nonetheless be many questions about how and why this happened, and what can we do about it?
Canadians can no longer be complacent about their relative peace and safety, but neither can we live our lives in fear, unable to move or be active out of fear of some unprovoked sudden attack somewhere. Precautions need to be taken, and security forces for all provincial and federal levels of government will hopefully take lessons from this and ensure the safety of our elected representatives. Meantime, we need to work towards promoting peace in our country, and in our world, and defeat terrorism.
