Mandating Diminished Access

"[In military circles a single line of defence] is also known as a single point of failure. If something goes wrong there, then you're left scrambling."
"That's exactly what happened [Wednesday] in Ottawa]. Thee was a single line of defence. It was attacked. It failed."
"To go deep inside somebody's mind and try to determine what they're going to do in the future is damn difficult to impossible."
"Right now, you can literally shoot your way through [into the House of Commons]. [With competing security services] you're going to get turf battles, you're going to get confusion, you're going to get egos."
Tom Quiggin, Terrorism and Security Experts of Canada Network

Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers stand guard on Parliament Hill in Ottawa October 23, 2014. A gunman attacked Canada's parliament on Wednesday, with gunfire erupting near a room where Prime Minister Stephen Harper was speaking, and a soldier was fatally shot at a nearby war memorial, jolting the Canadian capital. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

"It's imperative we realize the security that was there [Wednesday] morning, prior to the event [violent incursion into Parliament by armed terrorist], will never be the same following the event."
"[The front door of the Centre Block] will not be easily accessible] to the general public and could be locked in future]."
"We now live in a changed environment. The question remains for Canadians: Do we want an American model or do we want something that is more tailored to our needs?"
Pierre-Yves Bourduas, former RCMP deputy commissioner

"He [Zehaf-Bibeau, Parliament Hill armed intruder/killer] seems to have been one of those genuine examples of a homegrown terrorist whose path to terror was unpredictable and perhaps unpreventable."
"[It would be] very prudent [to have a public inquiry that] could really get to the root of what went wrong -- if anything went wrong -- learn lessons and reassure the public as well."
Wesley Wark, University of Ottawa, terror specialist

The Senate on Parliament Hill does not have armed security personnel, but that is expected to change soon.  Photograph by: Sean Kilpatrick, The Canadian Press File , Postmedia News

What went wrong, actually, is that a man whose parentage appeared to have confused him; with a Libyan father who left Canada to fight in Libya several years ago, and with whom he lived in Libya as a younger man, perhaps he became mired in the ideology of Islamism, even while his father appeared to have engaged in the conflict against Moammar Ghadaffi. On the other hand, the tribal militias in Libya who waged war against the regime were infiltrated with Islamists.

Still, the gunman had a mostly Canadian upbringing, living with his Canadian mother in Quebec, then spending part of his life in Canada living in Calgary and Vancouver. Michael Zehaf-Bibeau distinguished himself, coming to the attention of police wherever he lived, for his petty crime rapsheet, and his addiction to cocaine. He wanted to be a better Muslim, as a convert, and to kick his cocaine habit, and thought that jail time would isolate and cure him.

Estranged from his parents, his devotion became fanatical Islamism. He sought a passport to enable him to leave for Syria. He felt that Canada, along with other Western countries, was at war with Islam; his kind of Islam, in any event. Which gave him the justification in his diseased opinion, to shoot a Armed Forces reservist on honour duty at the National War Memorial, at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, in the back, killing him. He aspired to greater conquests and sped on to Parliament Hill.

There, the reactions of the RCMP, the Hill Security personnel and before that Ottawa Police was just a mite off to stop him from invading the Centre Block, entering the Hall of Honour and striding just metres from where the Prime Minister and his caucus were meeting behind a closed door, the Opposition caucus on the side opposite. Swift action thereafter on the part of Hill Security awarded him martyrdom.

Which didn't bring the episode to a speedy conclusion, releasing the hundreds of terrified MPs, staffers, visitors, and in fact all of the Parliamentary Precinct, government employees, and nearby schools, businesses and tourists from mandatory lockdown since there was uncertainty respecting the number of gunmen that might have been prowling about looking for additional targets. Now that Ottawa has settled itself back to normal, the predictable questions loom large.

What might have been done to avoid those 24 hours of panic? Not an awful lot, it seems. Canadians want to be secure and are agreeable to having their freedoms slightly impacted in pursuit of security, but there are no absolutes. It would have been absolutely difficult to stop a determined, swift-moving and -conniving gunman from achieving some level of success in his hunt for victims to assuage his fanatically-blighted-religion-inspired rage.

Even in the eye of authorities -- which this particular man was not, yet -- it would appear unreasonable to lock someone up on the basis of suspicion alone that 'something' might, just might erupt. He had not revealed himself as did the killer of two days previous when an Armed Forces warrant officer was deliberately run down and killed by vehicular homicide, who posted his Islamist messages regularly online and whose parents reported their concerns to the RCMP.

The fact is that security as it was, even in its tightened-since-9/11 state was insufficient to deter a determined gunman. The fact also is that security agents did show up in short order when it became obvious that there was a dire emergency situation unfolding on the Hill. RCMP did shoot at the intruder but he still managed to enter the Centre Block, leaving it to Hill Security to confront and shoot him.

It appeared as events swiftly unfolded that the man entered the precincts with speedful ease, with nothing to really deter his progress, as people being confronted by the vision of a masked man wielding a rifle, melted before his advance. Mr. Quiggan, an expert on terrorism and security, advances a solution, that a physical barrier is required at the entrance to Parliament, or a "standoff entryway" at a distance, where first-level security assessments could take place.

And replacing the problematical coordinated separation between RCMP who screen vehicles before permitting them to enter the Hill minimizing the risk of car bomb attacks, after which they are free from scrutiny until they enter one of the buildings when Hill Security takes over. And once they're outside the Parliamentary Precincts, it is the Ottawa Police Force whose responsibility they become. There is now some agreement that one agency must be paramount.

But now that the RCMP will be permanently detailed to be with the Prime Minister wherever and whenever he appears in public, even if Hill Security retains paramount responsibility, the RCMP must still have their place of dominant authority. A problem that is implacable in its concerns and complications. But diminished access to the halls of political power though they belong to the people of Canada, will in theory be the ultimate outcome.