Threats to Trudeau’s cabinet up 30 per cent
Nova Scotia’s Zann targeted
Politics, of late, has mainlined vitriol and acrimony, and Canada is not immune to this trend. We’ve just been lucky.
Gunmen have tried, and failed, to kill former Quebec premier Pauline Marois and members of former prime minister Stephen Harper’s government. They failed, but people still lost their lives.
In early July, Corey Hurren drove his truck through the gates of Rideau Hall, allegedly armed to the teeth and looking to do harm to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his family. Since then, staffers and politicians have a fatalistically similar message: it’s a matter of time before someone gets killed.
Consider Lenore Zann: a newly-elected Liberal MP. In recent months, someone has been stuffing Nazi propaganda through the mail slot in her office. Someone has also been calling her office, describing himself as a retired RCMP officer, telling her staff that “she should be careful going to work,” Zann says. The man tells her that because of his cop connections, “I can find out where (Zann) lives and where all of you live.” He continues that, because of Zann’s support for Liberal gun policies, “the streets could run red with blood.”
Then there’s the man who has been posting to Facebook incessantly, writing things like, “I want her head on a platter.” When Zann got fed up and reported it to police, they took weeks before finally visiting his home. Turns out he not only lives in Truro, N.S., like Zann, but he actually lives on her street.
“They didn’t really deem him a threat because he’s very slight,” Zann says.
“Yes, as a politician, you get tons of emails, texts, social media posts that are rude, obnoxious, political, putting you down, they don’t like you, they don’t like your politics, they don’t like your leader — that’s one thing,” Zann says.
She points to the Nazi propaganda, the veiled warnings, the direct promises to do her harm: “I take that as a threat.”
In the first half of 2020, the RCMP has compiled files on 130 threats to the prime minister and his cabinet. That’s about a 30 per cent increase from the same time frame last year. More than a dozen staffers and politicians from different parties say the threats are growing — disproportionately for women and racialized cabinet ministers, but also for backbench and opposition MPs. Women face rape threats. Black politicians are told they’ll be lynched. Queer people in politics are warned that they’ll be gay bashed.
“People, I’m telling you, feel empowered to behave this way,” Zann says.
In recent days, Ottawa police have begun an investigation into someone who screamed obscenities at a staffer for Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna. For weeks, that man has uploaded videos of himself trying to get into Liberal party offices, and harassing CBC journalists. He has also voiced support online for Corey Hurren, and tweeted that the best solution for a Liberal is a shotgun.
Members of Parliament have paid for their own private security. Politicians have started changing their route to work, to shake stalkers.
“I’ve had to change all the doors in my house, get extra locks, get a security system,” Zann says. “It has cost me money out of my own pocket.”
Politicians have taken matters into their own hands because the RCMP, which is uniquely responsible for the security of all Parliamentarians, has told ministers they will not spare personnel to provide security. Despite spending $90 million a year on protection services, they have said that investigations into threats are the responsibility of local police. Attacks on staffers have been ignored. Threat assessments prepared on each minister are not shared with the minister themselves. The advice the RCMP provides is: call 911 if you’re afraid.
Zann didn’t even know the RCMP had a protective service — the Truro police told her.
Parliament is a workplace. If any other employer allowed this sort of thing to go on without taking serious steps to protect its staff, it would be buried in lawsuits.
We cannot have a country where a phalanx of armed guards stand between politicians and the public. But having dedicated protection — armed or unarmed — goes a tremendously long way.
So why not just do it? What’s stopping them?
The answer is money. “If you’re seen to be spending any public money to protect yourself, there are some in society that goes: oh, boo hoo, what a snowflake,” Zann says.
This prime minister pats himself on the back for his gender-balanced, diverse cabinet. Yet in our current environment, appointing a Black Muslim man to the immigration portfolio, or an Indigenous woman to the role of attorney general, or an immigrant woman to the be minister for the status of women puts those people at risk. The prime minister is happy to leverage their identities for his profile, but when it comes to spending money to protect them from being violently murdered in public? Sorry, call 911.
“People don’t sign up to do this kind of a job,” Zann says. “We didn’t sign up to be walking targets.”
How can we expect good people to go into politics — from marginalized activists to Bay Street executives — if they’ll be facing constant threat of assassination, and their employer won’t do anything about it?
There is plenty to discuss here: from social media companies’ responsibilities to prevent violent extremism; to the culpability of media organizations who broadcast ministers’ and staffers’ home addresses; to politicians and partisans themselves using overheated and bombastic rhetoric. All of that is worthy of debate.
At a minimum, Trudeau himself needs to take responsibility for this. He needs to step up and fund the necessary security for the cabinet he appointed. He needs to extend resources to every member of Parliament — Liberal, Conservative, New Democratic, Bloc, Green — who is worried about their own safety, or the safety of their staff.
If he doesn’t, someone is going to get killed.