Revised Security Required For Parliament

 

Was Zehaf-Bibeau known to the security services, as some reports suggested? Was he among the 90 or so individuals that the RCMP says it has been keeping under surveillance in connection with radical jihadist groups?

What went wrong with Parliament's security screen that allowed a man wielding a rifle to first fire the fatal  shots at the cenotaph killing a unarmed reservist and then run across the wide lawn in front of Parliament, burst through the checkpoint at the entrance and penetrate deeply into the building?

Parliament Hill is patrolled by security officers and the guards at the entrance of the building are armed. Yet it took the sergeant-at-arms himself to put down the intruder with his own weapon. Kevin Vickers, the sergeant-at-arms, is a highly respected RCMP veteran who has earned the gratitude of MPs for personally ending die threat to their lives.

It will be difficult in the coming days and months to find the proper balance between a heightened concern for security and the equally important need to cherish our open system and civil liberties. That will become even tougher if it is confirmed that both Rouleau-Martin and Zehaf-Bibeau were driven by the same twisted jihadist ideology.