Deadly U.K. attack a reminder of Canada 150 concerns on Hill
Sesquicentennial celebrations in capital a ‘potentially attractive target’
They are the symbolic centres of our Western democracies.
Parliaments and other seats of government are also — as Ottawans know all too well — attractive targets for terrorists intent on a twisted symbolism of their own.
This week a British-born man named Khalid Masood drove a car over the Westminster Bridge in London, striking numerous people, then tried to enter the Palace of Westminster with a knife. By the time his rampage had ended, he had killed four people, including a police officer, injured more than three dozen others and been fatally shot by police.
In Canada, the attack seemed eerily familiar. In Ottawa nearly 2 ½ years ago, another lone-wolf attacker, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, fatally shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo as he guarded the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier before hijacking a ministerial car to drive up to Centre Block, which he stormed with an old rifle before being fatally shot.
London’s fresh horror will “trigger heightened or elevated efforts” to assess threats on Parliament Hill, according to the Parliamentary Protective Service, formed in 2015 in the aftermath of the attack.
Western democracies see the threat to high-profile, symbolic targets and have implemented tough security measures. They’re both obvious, like concrete barriers to keep out a bomb-laden vehicle or New Year’s Eve pat-downs on Parliament Hill, and not so obvious, such as the newly unified Hill protective service and its blandly named “mobile response team.”
Parliament Hill is fundamentally different from other potential terror targets such as airports or shopping malls. Journalist and author Mark Bourrie has called it “the physical incarnation of our democracy.”
And there’s no way to eliminate every threat, according to Jez Littlewood, who teaches courses on terrorism and international security at Carleton University, and serves as an associate director of the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society.
“No one can offer a guarantee that we will be able to stop every single attack, whatever any politician or expert says,” he said Friday after the Westminster attack.
That doesn’t mean, however, that there aren’t measures to protect, defend and harden targets, plus potential lessons to be learned from London, even though it has not been characterized as a security failure.
“Once the U.K. gets through their procedures, I have every confidence and expectation that somebody will come and talk to their Canadian counterparts, and say, ‘This is what we learned, this is what we did OK, this is what we did wrong,’ ” said Littlewood, who also served in the British army.
While the “Five Eyes” alliance on intelligence between Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the U.S. is famed, the myriad connections between the countries also include an international network of sergeantsat-arms that shares best practices among holders of the office.
The notion of preparedness is certainly top of mind in Canada right now. Parliament Hill could be an even more tempting target this summer, with Canadians flocking to celebrate Canada Day amid sesquicentennial celebrations.
“From a security perspective, you would have to consider this is a potentially attractive target, just like the Olympics, just like the World Cup, just like any largescale gathering,” Littlewood said, pointing to the Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, last summer as one example.
“This is a major celebration, this is a public celebration, people are going to come to the Hill, people are going to be wandering around Ottawa. How are you going to put in place the necessary protective and security measures that are not so intrusive that they prevent or dampen the fundamental objective, and the fundamental objective is allowing people to gather and celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday?”
Wednesday’s attack was analogous to what happened when Zehaf-Bibeau, espousing jihadist sentiments and thwarted in a bid to go abroad to fight, decided to attack Parliament Hill. It’s a pattern, seen in London as well as in France and Germany, of people who are inspired but not formally directed by a terrorist group taking it upon themselves to conduct attacks with basic weapons.
“This is the attack that the U.K. has said it’s going to get for a long time,” Littlewood said, noting that in the past several years senior counter-terrorism officials have said plainly it’s their job to stop attacks and make arrests, but that they won’t succeed in stopping every one.
“The government of the day has said many, many times over the last few years — it’s a trite phrase, but they’re saying essentially it’s not a matter of if we’re attacked, but when, and one of them will succeed, or more than one of them will succeed. We cannot prevent everything,” he said.
Privately, Canadian counterterrorism officials say the same thing, and RCMP commissioner Bob Paulson has publicly pointed to the challenge of the “zero-fail environment.”
“As a country thinking about this, we need to stop thinking that we can stop every single act of terrorism, because we cannot,” Littlewood said. “Just to do so would require a depth of information and intrusion on people’s privacy and daily lives. There are privacy issues, civil liberties issues.
“Even if you decided to do that — and I don’t think anybody is going to do that — there is simply the cost.”
The Parliamentary Protective Service, which brought together fragmented Hill security forces after the 2014 attack and is led by an RCMP member, was before a committee earlier this month seeking another $6.1 million for 201718, which would bring its total to $68.2 million.
Speaker of the House Geoff Regan said that the PPS’s mobile response team initiative will address many of the 161 recommendations made to boost security. But the extra cash is still needed to stabilize the service’s organizational structure and pay for ongoing security enhancements. Examples include securing the newly reopened Wellington Building and girding for the flood of visitors to Parliament Hill for 150th birthday celebrations, such as a with a baggage-screening facility.
Supt. Mike O’Beirne, PPS acting director, also spoke to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs about the balance between “ensuring an open and accessible Parliament, and combining that with a very real need for security.”
For example, the massive Crashed Ice downhill ice cross event, which unfolded recently without incident steps from Parliament Hill, gave the service, city police and RCMP a glimpse of what to expect as they work toward the “grand event” of Canada Day, he said.
“We have to be very nimble in our approach to future demands,” O’Beirne told the committee. “We’re in constant consultations with internal and external partners to determine exactly that resource level.”
Security forces, backed by Ottawa police and the RCMP, tackle daily events on Parliament Hill amid the “very real global threat environment,” O’Beirne said, noting that “certainly after the events of Oct. 22 (2014) there was a posture change on Parliament Hill.”
Asked about the impact of the London events on Parliament Hill operations, Melissa Rusk, PPS executive officer and senior adviser to the director, said the service is always evaluating threats at home and abroad, and adjusting security to meet them.
“It’s something that is embedded in today’s reality, it’s a practice that we do on an ongoing basis,” Rusk said. “Events like what transpired in the U.K. certainly trigger heightened or elevated efforts to assess the environment, and (we) work closely with our various partners to determine any potential nexus on the Canadian environment.”
Members of the new service also include individuals who have ties to their counterparts in other capitals, and hands-on training and tabletop exercises are designed to respond real-world threats, she said.
“It’s a very unique environment — we can balance the democratic openness and accessibility of Parliament Hill with the needs of the threat environment,” Rusk said.
“My personal opinion is that as people become more aware of the realities, and it’s unfortunate that these are the realities we are facing — everything evolves — there is that willingness to go through those extra steps to ensure we can all celebrate freely and together and safely.
“I think that’s something Canadians pride themselves on.”
Historian Anne Dance, a visiting researcher at the University of Ottawa, noted in an essay on the balance between public access and protest, security and parliamentary privilege published months before the 2014 attacks, that Parliamentary security, for which “multiple groups share responsibility,” had faced a string of historic threats.
“This is not a new reality,” she said Friday. “Parliament and other legislatures have been under threat from ‘lone-wolf’ attackers for decades.
“… Democracies like Canada and the United Kingdom have weathered these threats before and will again.”
Thus far, she thinks there’s a balance between security and openness, but said, “It is worth stressing that ordinary Canadians value the Hill as a public space, and the pressure to keep it accessible has
to come from the public.”
After Canada 150 celebrations, Centre Block will close for decadelong renovations — an issue highlighted as a security challenge by the PPS this month — and “a great deal could change,” Dance said.
However, “unless Canadians were to move the legislature to a secret underground bunker, it is very hard to make Parliament 100-per-cent secure,” Dance said.
She pointed to the comment by former sergeant-at-arms Kevin Vickers, later hailed a hero for helping stop Zehaf-Bibeau, that if Parliament is completely secure “and no one wants to come here, what have you accomplished?”
Dance said Canadians value the “strange, interesting compromise of the place,” where people of all political stripes, from pro-life to pro-sex workers’ rights, come to protest, school kids arrive for class trips and anyone can do yoga, listen to a Carillon concert or stroll with their families.
A study of public space at 11 national capitals around the world by public policy expert John Parkinson found that Ottawa ranked only behind Berlin and Wellington in being openly accessible, supported by collective resources, having common benefits and providing a stage for public life.
“There is a danger that in responding to threats we will undermine the values that make our Parliament so valuable,” Dance said. “In other words, Parliament is much more than a security risk.”
Those values are also what made the terror of the 2014 attack on Parliament Hill so visceral for people in Ottawa and across Canada.
Canadians, whether they’re from Saskatoon or St. John’s, N.L., have likely visited Parliament or know their MP.
“There’s a sense of ownership that some Canadians have regarding the Hill, so an attack on the Hill isn’t only a symbolic attack on all of Canada, it’s an attack on a place that you might visit,” Dance said. “There’s an element of personal danger. Parliament is very secure. We do put a lot of resources into keeping it secure, so when there’s an attack and people are hurt, it makes use feel less safe.”
No one can offer a guarantee that we will be able to stop every single attack, whatever any politician or expert says.