Here in Canada’s capital, Parliament Hill is about as majestic as public spaces get. The Parliament buildings, somber and gothic, push into the sky above the river. An expanse of green lawn slopes down to Wellington Street with its tourists and a hot dog vendor. The whole place would be imposing if the locals treated it with deference. But we don’t.
There’s no security stopping pedestrians from getting onto the hill. On any given day you’re likely to find people on the lawn playing soccer or doing yoga. There are almost always protesters of some sort — usually polite and not that obtrusive. Activists calling for marijuana legalization occasionally gather to smoke pot.
I’ve always been proud of the relaxed feel of the place, its accessibility and, frankly, its lack of visible security. It fits with my ideal of a government that isn’t separate from or above the people it serves. You don’t see portraits of our prime minister in Canadian schools or public buildings, either. After all, he’s not our head of state, and the government is Her Majesty’s; he merely runs it.
On Wednesday, a gunman exploited this openness at the heart of Canada’s democracy. After murdering the Canadian soldier Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the nearby National War Memorial, he ran into the main Parliament building and was just outside members’ caucus rooms when he was shot dead.
The attack occurred only two days after a man thought to be a radical Islamist used a car to run over Canadian soldiers in Quebec, killing Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent.
Wednesday’s gunman has been identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a 32-year-old Quebec man with a criminal record involving drugs and uttering threats. A Twitter account supportive of the Islamic State, the jihadist group rampaging through Syria and Iraq, published a photograph of him on Wednesday. According to a Globe and Mail report on Wednesday, Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau had been designated a “high-risk traveler” by Canadian authorities who recently seized his passport. But police later stated the report was inaccurate and that he had not been identified as a security threat.
The question is whether this attack is related to Canada’s recent decision to join the international coalition against the Islamic State. In August, Canada committed special forces trainers and advisers, and ferried arms to Kurdish forces in northern Iraq. In September, an Islamic State spokesman then urged the group’s supporters to attack Canadians.
A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper responded by saying, “We will not be cowed by threats.” This month, Canada escalated its intervention in Iraq to a combat mission, deploying six fighter jets, two refueling planes, a surveillance aircraft and support personnel.
We don’t know what motivated Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau to kill, and it’s risky to ascribe political or geostrategic motives to murder. I was recently in northern Iraq, where thousands have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced by the Islamic State because of their religion or ethnicity, rather than as an attempt to influence any country’s policy.
But if Mr. Zehaf-Bibeau followed an extreme and perverted interpretation of Islam, it’s reasonable to wonder if Canada’s participation in the combat mission in Iraq influenced him, whether he intended to punish Canada; to pressure it to withdraw from the coalition; to change the country he was attacking.
If so, he miscalculated. Canada’s combat mission is certainly politically divisive here. An Oct. 7 vote on it in the House of Commons split the governing Conservative Party from the opposition Liberals and New Democratic Party. But to say Canadians have mixed feelings about going to war in Iraq is different from claiming we’re easily scared.
On Wednesday, the Canadian senator Jim Munson declared, “Our days of innocence ended today.”
I’m not sure how innocent Canada was before the attack. It’s true we’ve avoided much of the domestic strife and terror that has afflicted so many other countries, including our closest friend and neighbor, the United States, and we’ve done so without draconian security measures. Our security services have thwarted attacks, and perhaps until now we’ve simply been fortunate. Our society, bilingual and multiethnic, is mostly at ease with itself.
We’ve also fought two devastating world wars and recently concluded a 12-year mission in Afghanistan that took the lives of 158 soldiers. We’ve had a peaceful and functional democracy for 147 years. There’s luck involved. But there’s also resilience.
Yesterday’s attack was tragic and obscene and yet far too puny to fundamentally rattle this country. Mr. Harper made it clear that the attack would not blunt Canada’s antiterrorism efforts abroad. “It will lead us to strengthen our resolve and redouble our efforts to work with our allies around the world and fight against the terrorist organizations who brutalize those in other countries with the hope of bringing their savagery to our shores,” he said. Canadian members of Parliament will continue to debate the merits of military intervention in Iraq, and other foreign policies, based on their perceptions of what’s best for Canada, and what we can and should do abroad. Yesterday’s attack won’t change that.
As for Parliament Hill, it and downtown Ottawa had a far less placid atmosphere Wednesday. There were hundreds of armed men and women, dogs, sirens and, briefly, the faint smell of gunpowder. And yet the police were professional and respectful. Onlookers were calm. The hill may never fully return to what it was before, but I hope it comes close. Locked gates would seem out of place here.
Michael Petrou is a senior writer and foreign correspondent at Maclean’s magazine.