When David Moscrop is in Ottawa to check in with editors at the Ottawa Citizen, he has to go through more security than he does to enter the Parliament Buildings.
The UBC political scientist and PhD candidate said that reality speaks to what the discussion needs to be as details become known about the shooter who made his way into the Centre Block of the country’s seat of government yesterday.
The shooter has been identified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, who was born in Canada in 1982.
“We need to distinguish between two things: Is Parliament Hill secure and is the country secure?” Moscrop said.
“Clearly, there are some gaps in security on Parliament Hill and, if you look at it, the way the city and the police responded was quite measured, calm and effective. It would be unreasonable to turn this into a debate on the security of the country.”
Moscrop, who writes on politics for the Citizen and has lived in the nation’s capital, said it’s important to remember other images than that of medical personnel trying to save the life of the Nathan Cirillo, the soldier fatally shot at the War Memorial, and the imagined ones of MPs and other Parliament staff hiding under desks behind locked doors as the shooter made his way into the Centre Block.
“We also have images of people doing yoga on the lawn and watching fireworks there,” Moscrop said.
“We have to work hard to protect those images because that is something remarkable to preserve.”
Moscrop said it would be disrespectful to turn the situation into something other than what it was — a lapse of security on Parliament Hill.
And, he added, he wonders if the next federal election, scheduled for less than a year from now on Oct. 19, 2015, could become a campaign based on fear.
“If we want to make the country more secure, do something about heart disease and lung cancer,” Moscrop said.
“This is a tragic, massive distraction. Resisting the urge to play politics with this will be hard.”
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