Ottawa – The head of Canada’s national police told a parliamentary committee on Monday the government must do more to prevent homegrown radicals, such as the men who killed two soldiers on home soil last week, from traveling overseas for militant training.
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Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Commissioner Bob Paulson said that last week’s killings in Ottawa and outside Montreal, which he said appeared to be the carried out with minimal planning or preparation, show the nation faces a “serious” threat.
“While we are facing this threat at home, we must focus our efforts on preventing individuals traveling abroad to commit to commit acts of terrorism,” Paulson said. “Preventing the individuals from traveling is critical. If these individuals return with training and/or battle experience, they pose an even greater threat to Canada and our allies.”
Paulson’s remarks followed the fatal shooting on Wednesday of a Canadian soldier standing guard at an Ottawa war memorial by a gunman, who then charged into the Parliament building. Two days earlier, a man rammed two soldiers with his car near Montreal, killing one of them.
“The magnitude of the threat is perhaps best characterized as serious,” Paulson told a Senate committee. “It does feel as if the events of the last couple of days have led to a sense of loss and vulnerability.”
Paulson spoke a day after the RCMP said that the Ottawa gunman, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, had made a video of himself just before the attack and that it contained evidence that he was driven by ideological and political motives.
The attacks in Ottawa and outside Montreal came in a week when Canada sent warplanes to the Middle East to take part in air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq. Canadian officials vowed their involvement would not be influenced by the attacks, but urged soldiers at home to maintain a low profile: to avoid appearing in public in uniform when off duty, for instance.
SECURITY BILL
The government plans to introduce a bill on Monday to broaden the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The bill, which would allow CSIS to track and investigate potential terrorists when they travel out of the country, initially had been due to come up last Wednesday, but its introduction was derailed by Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack.
Canada’s main civil liberties group called on lawmakers on Monday to consider whether existing criminal laws were insufficient to deter last week’s attacks before approving new legislation.
“There is talk of a need for a fundamental shift in the way in which Canada engages in the task of dealing with criminality and violent individuals in our society,” Sukanya Pillay, executive director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, wrote in an open letter to members of Parliament. “These comments have been made as if they represent simply minor modifications to our moral fiber as a country … We could not disagree more.”
Both the attack launched in Ottawa by Zehaf-Bibeau and the one near Montreal by Martin Rouleau, 25, ended when the men were shot dead by security officers.
The incidents sparked questions about Canada’s culture of openness, which, for example, allows free access into the Parliament building in Ottawa.
Public tours of the building resumed on Monday and galleries, where visitors can watch lawmakers in action, also reopened for the first time since Wednesday’s attack.
WATCH LIST
Canadian officials are tracking 93 people they consider high-risk travelers who they fear could try to leave the country to join militant groups or mount attacks in Canada.
Zehaf-Bibeau had traveled to Ottawa from Vancouver in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain a passport, police said. Rouleau’s passport had been seized in July as he tried to leave for Turkey.
Zehaf-Bibeau was not among the high-risk travelers officials were tracking, but the RCMP said it met with Rouleau “multiple times” before dropping their surveillance of him early this month.
RCMP officials said Rouleau had given them reason to believe he had changed his ways after their last meeting, just two weeks before he ran down the two soldiers. It was not known what he said to make them walk away.
CSIS Assistant Director for Intelligence Michael Peirce is due to testify after Paulson.
On Tuesday a funeral will be held for Corporal Nathan Cirillo, 24, the soldier who was killed in Ottawa.
The funeral for 53-year-old Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who police said was run down by Rouleau near Montreal, will be on Saturday, Nov. 1.
If only the president of the US had this kind of needed moral courage. But alas he cannot go against his terrorist brethren in any way.