Tories slam ‘dishonouring’ of 2 slain soldiers

Two years after a gunman stormed Parliament Hill, the Citizen looks at what has changed since that fateful day in the capital

Conservatives took turns hammering the Liberal government Friday, one accusing them outright of “dishonouring” two slain soldiers by failing to mark Saturday’s second anniversary of the attack on Parliament Hill.

York-Simcoe MP Peter Van Loan said during question period in the House of Commons that Oct. 22 marks “two years since a jihadist terrorist struck at the heart of our freedom and democracy.”

Cpl. Nathan Cirillo was gunned down “just steps from here” as he guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the National War Memorial while “the thickness of a door and brave actions of our Hill security staff saved members here (from) a similar fate,” Van Loan said.

It was two days after a jihadist murdered W.O. Patrice Vincent, he said, who was killed in a targeted hit-and-run in Saint-Jean-surRichelieu, Que.

“Last year, our government honoured the sacrifice of these men, but this year the Liberals want Canadians to forget,” Van Loan charged. “There will be no memorial.

“Why are the Liberals dishonouring these fallen men and trying to pretend that these jihadist attacks never happened?”

John Brassard, MP for BarrieInnisfil and critic for veterans affairs, paid tribute to “two brave men for their sacrifice” and sent “sincere gratitude” to their families. He noted that the previous Conservative government initiated a large ceremony at the National War Memorial for the first anniversary. It included a speech by the Governor General, a march past by Cirillo’s Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, a CF-18 flypast in missing-man formation and the unveiling of a permanent plaque commemorating Cirillo at the site.

“Yet, this year there is no commemoration, no event, and no honour is being paid to these fallen heroes by the government,” Brassard said. ” I think I can safely say on behalf of all veterans and all Canadians that we are deeply saddened by this.”

Rona Ambrose, interim leader of the Conservative Party of Canada and leader of the Opposition, chimed in on Facebook.

“Last year, they were remembered,” she said. “This year, there is no commemoration, no event and no honour is being paid to these fallen heroes. “I think most Canadians would agree this is a shame.”

Veterans Affairs Minister Kent Hehr said that all Canadians remember the “tragic events” of Oct. 20 and 22, 2014, mourn the deaths of Vincent and Cirillo and extend sympathies to their families.

“It is at events in Ottawa Nov. 11 and others across Canada and the world where we will join together as a nation and as a people to recognize and pay tribute to all those brave Canadian soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice, in wartime and in peace, at home and abroad to safeguard our values and our way of life,” Hehr said.

Evan Koronewski, a spokesman for the Department of National Defence, said that while an event was held on the one-year anniversary, the decision was made by the department to subsequently honour the two soldiers on Nov. 11 along with Canada’s other fallen.

David McGuinty, Liberal MP for Ottawa South, paid tribute to the impact of the Oct. 22 attack during question period, noting that just a few hundred metres away, “a mother lost a son, a son lost a father and an entire nation mourned the loss of a dedicated soldier.”

Cirillo had been standing guard at the monument to the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice in defence of freedom, McGuinty said. “Today, we stand in unwavering support of those that choose to watch over us, thankful for their sacrifice and resolute in our commitment to continue fighting for a world free of fear, injustice and oppression. At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we will remember them.”

It was two years ago today that Michael Zehaf-Bibeau drove up to the National War Memorial, hopped out, then ran over and shot ceremonial guardsman Cpl. Nathan Cirillo in the back. Zehaf-Bibeau then stormed Parliament Hill, and died cowering behind a pillar in Centre Block.

Shocking as the attack was, it would be a stretch to say that anyone in the parliamentary precinct was all that surprised. Just one month earlier, a spokesman for ISIL named Abu Muhammad al-Adnani had called on its supporters to target Canadian civilians, along with Americans, Australians, French and other members of the U.S.-led alliance that was forming to defeat the radical Islamist group.

Since Zehaf-Bibeau’s mad dash came only two days after Martin Couture-Rouleau rammed his car into two members of the Canadian military in a parking lot, killing Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, it was hard not to conclude that some sort of organized, ISIL-inspired terrorist plot was underway. But when the dust settled, it was clear there was no real connection between the two killings. Perhaps they were both vaguely inspired by ISIL’s call to action.

We still have no idea how Zehaf-Bibeau became radicalized and what finally motivated him to act.

That winter the authorities successfully disrupted a “terror cluster” in Ottawa, and this past August an ISIL sympathizer named Aaron Driver was killed by the RCMP in Strathroy, Ont., while on the verge of committing a terrorist act. But, truth be told, over the past two years there has been very little to indicate that there is any sustained or growing terrorist threat in Canada. What little there is tends to be of the lone-wolf variety: oneoff attempts by social outcasts who have latched on to a pidgin Islam as a vehicle for their alienation.

This is just a narrow instance of a more general and unique phenomenon, which is coming to be described as “Canadian Exceptionalism”: We have created a successful society with a robust welfare state, in a multicultural high-immigrant context, with virtually no significant backlash among anti-immigrant nativists. No Brexit or Trumpism or National Front for us.

The big question is, are we lucky or are we good? That is, is the relative peace in the nation a matter of history or geography or other circumstance, or is it because there is something special in our policies, institutions, or national identity and character.

If it’s the former, how can we avoid squandering this luck? If it’s the latter, how can we identify what we are doing well, and reinforce and maybe even export that success? These are important questions, and if we don’t spend a bit of time trying to answer them we could find ourselves stumbling into a national crisis over immigration, for two reasons.

The first is we’re bringing a lot of new people to this country and the government wants to bring in a lot more.

More than 320,000 immigrants landed on our shores last year, up by more than a third from the year before. By some estimates, it’s the largest increase in more than a century, and Immigration Minister John McCallum has said he wants to push that number even higher.

Just how high depends on what’s in his three-year immigration plan, due to be released this fall, though McCallum did pour cold water this week on a businessgroup proposal to raise the annual target to 450,000 newcomers.

The second reason is more sobering: Eventually the law of large numbers is going to bite, and there’s going to be a successful large-scale terrorist attack on Canadian soil. Maybe it will be a lone-wolf with an assault rifle the authorities missed, or a group of wannabe jihadis who managed to make some pressure-cooker bombs without blowing their own thumbs off.

How we react will be an enormous test of our national character and our faith in our security services, our political leadership, our institutions and our very identity as Canadians.

There is certainly room for optimism. The takedown of Aaron Driver in the summer didn’t spark any noticeable antiMuslim backlash.

Despite the flood of immigrants, including 30,000 Syrian refugees, there continues to be widespread confidence in our brand of multiculturalism.

But what if Driver had managed to pull off a successful attack causing multiple casualties? Or what if, instead of being a Canadian-born convert to Islam, he had been a refugee whose radical tendencies were missed by the screening process?

It would be naive to imagine there wouldn’t be a rise in support for a Conservative leadership candidate with policies even more nativist than those Kellie Leitch is peddling.

The flip side of the simple fact of Canadian Exceptionalism is a foggy-headed smugness about how things have worked out here. It’s easy to think there’s just something in the water that makes everyone seem to get along. Nothing captures this smugness better than the message Trudeau wrote in the guest book at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum during a visit last summer. “Tolerance is never sufficient,” he wrote. “Humanity must learn to love our differences.”

Only someone caught in the grip of a theory of Canada’s undiluted moral goodness could write that without irony. Canada’s capacity to absorb large numbers of newcomers is probably higher than that of most countries, but it isn’t limitless.

More to the point, our tolerance for diversity is just that — tolerance — and it probably wouldn’t take much in the way of bad immigrant behaviour to spark a nativist reaction.

Canada is a good country, but it is also very lucky, and we have a tendency to confuse our good luck with moral superiority. It’s a bit worrisome that, when it comes to that confusion, our political leadership is no exception.