The guns of freedom
One of the most frightening parts of the Ontario Provincial Police’s report into last October’s shooting on Parliament Hill is the blunt declaration that things would have been much worse had the shooter, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, simply been better organized.
Armed with an old hunting rifle and apparently no particular plan, Zehaf-Bibeau murdered Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial before breaching Parliament Hill’s outer security perimeter and gaining access to sensitive areas (indeed, just a few feet from where the Prime Minister was meeting with his caucus). Had Zehaf-Bibeau been a more competent attacker, or if there had been multiple shooters, the centre of our democracy could easily have been the site of a bloodbath.
The report’s official recommendations are classified, on grounds of national security. But the tone of the report is unmistakable: Zehaf-Bibeau was stopped as much by luck and pluck as by planning. We must do better next time. For there is every reason to believe there will be a next time.
Some steps have already been taken to bolster security. The security arrangements on Parliament Hill, until now a bizarre, twisted mess involving four separate police agencies, are to be put under a single force.
Additionally, and controversially, the firepower available to police officers has been increased. Not only is the Senate security force now armed (incredibly, on the day of the October attack, despite being authorized to carry firearms, none of the Senate security officers were armed as their pistols had not yet been issued), but RCMP officers deployed around Parliament are also openly carrying compact automatic weapons — sub-machine guns. Though available to them, these had previously been kept tucked discreetly out of sight.
The deployment of the submachine guns was specifically called for in the OPP report, which noted that officers on the Hill “need access to a long gun that has a multi-purpose capability.” Even so, this has not stopped some parliamentarians from publicly expressing their displeasure at the presence of the firearms. Liberal senator Céline Hervieux-Payette said that the guns made her feel afraid, and that she “hates to see someone with a machine gun.” Green Party leader Elizabeth May frets that the heavy firepower now visible around Parliament Hill has left it “an armed encampment as opposed to a house of democracy.”
These comments are revealing of a very real issue in Canadian society and especially our politics. Far too many of us believe that the peace and security Canadians have enjoyed for virtually our entire history are just the natural order of things, as if the more muscular aspects of law enforcement and national security — training and equipping armed forces, issuing powerful guns to some police officers — were frivolous and even wasteful activities, in a country without real risks.
This is naive. It’s true that Canada has always enjoyed the protection of the dominant military power of the day. But there are still threats, foreign and domestic, that we must be prepared to face. Even in peaceful countries, the fundamental duty of any government is to maintain peace and order. That’s easier in Canada than many countries. But just because it is easier here doesn’t mean it is easy, or that our peaceful society should ever be taken for granted.
May and the senator should remember that. There is no incompatibility between a well-armed security force and a peaceable democracy. Such forces, operating under reasonable rules of engagement and answering to lawful civilian authorities, are as much a symbol of our democracy as the tranquil grounds of Parliament Hill. For they are the guarantor of both.