Terror bill influenced timing of release of gunman’s video
RCMP wanted to avoid conflict with C-51 hearings
OTTAWA — The RCMP carefully timed the public release of a video taken by Oct. 22 gunman Michel Zehaf-Bibeau to ensure it would not overshadow the start of public hearings on the government’s anti-terror bill.
An RCMP communications strategy drafted for the release of Zehaf-Bibeau’s video, and obtained using the access-to-information law ,notes that releasing the video on a Friday, which ultimately happened, would ensure “attention on the video will be very high over the weekend, but that the issue will die down early the following week so that the focus can be on the Bill C-51 hearings.”
A spokesman for the force told the Citizen the RCMP wanted to avoid any conflicts between the video’s public release and hearings on the contentious anti-terror bill.
Still, the video’s release on March 6 could be viewed as a boon to the Conservatives just as they began making their case at a Commons committee the following week about sweeping new anti-terrorism powers for law enforcement and spy agencies.
As cabinet ministers had previously done, Conservatives on the Commons national security committee specifically pointed to the Oct. 22, 2014 attack as a reason for Parliament to quickly adopt the anti-terror legislation.
The documents indicate the RCMP was keenly aware of the timing issue. RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson’s officials advised him that, should he be asked about why he was releasing the video just before the hearings, he should tell politicians it had to do with when he could answer parliamentarians’ invitation to him to come to a committee and air the video.
Some MPs and senators had been asking for weeks for there lease of the Zehaf-Bibeau video, which the gunman shot on his phone soon before killing Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial. Zehaf-Bibeau then rushed over to Parliament Hill, where he was gunned down by security inside the Centre Block.
Paulson himself had indicated last fall that he wanted the video — or at least parts of it — released.
“I took this committee’s invitation to show the video at the moment it was possible to do so and in the best interest of the public,” reads part of an answer crafted for Paulson’s use when he appeared at the standing committee on public safety and national security.
“This was the only determination that we had in the timing of the video’s release.”
In early April, the Ontario Provincial Police provided the RCMP and House of Commons with its review of what went right and wrong with Hill security on the day of the shooting. That report has yet to be made public.