The attack in Ottawa resulted in the cancellation of a ceremony to honor Malala. I won’t bother to point out the ironies.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office says two scheduled events today in Toronto with Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai have been cancelled.
The last-minute announcement comes amid an ongoing emergency in Ottawa, where several shootings have occurred on or near Parliament Hill.
Harper was to moderate an afternoon question-and-answer session with Yousafzai at a Toronto high school.
He was then scheduled to head to a downtown hotel, where the 17-year-old from Pakistan was to receive honorary Canadian citizenship.
Instead he’s been zipped away to a safe place.
I wonder if that’s why the attack took place today rather than some other day.
It’s possible the shooting took place today because Wednesdays are caucus day in Ottawa, where the sitting MPs of the various parties meet to go over various things. In fact the gunman was shot and killed in a corridor that the Conservative and New Democratic Party caucus meeting rooms are located in. If the gunman had gotten there quick enough, and kicked in the right door, he might have had a chance at killing Harper.
It’s possible the shooting took place yesterday because the mentally ill person who did the shooting just happened to think it was a good day to shoot up the infidels.
We are -not- going to be cowed into making Ottawa into an armed camp just because a sick person with a gun went over the top and committed a despicable and cowardly act.
My prediction is that there will be a slightly increased police presence, but don’t look for more fences to keep the public out. We are not afraid and will not be pushed into American style “Patriot Acts” in fear of attack. “Keep Calm and Carry On” applies to us.
Canada is not the U.S.
Did anyone suggest making Ottawa an armed camp or more fences to keep the public out?
Not here, fortunately.
Cool.
I don’t think the gunman took into account anything that was happening…be it Malala or ‘Caucus Day’.
His father was Libyan and somewhat violent, according to some sources, and his mother French Canadian.
He has some similarities with Marc Lepine.
A misfit, an outcast, an individual who failed at many, many things.
Yeah, we already did that once before, October 1970, and look how that turned out.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis
Any Canadian old enough to remember or grow up in the shadow of the October Crisis cringed at the US’s fascist turn after 9/11. Three shooters wouldn’t be enough to invoke the War Measures Act again, but it might be enough to get nutbags to support illegal acts overseas unless cooler heads prevail.
I am petrified that Harper will use this as an excuse to try and get the Canadian military involved in the Middle East. Back in 2005, only four members of the opposition Conservative Party (read: republicans north) voted in favour of legal gay marriage. The Conservatives have a majority government right now (161 of 308 seats, three empty) which can push anything through, but it would only take eight or nine to break ranks and defeat such a move.
@6
So what do you suggest we do in the Middle East? Allow ISIS to run wild so as to better terrorize and kill women and children?
The events unfolding in the Middle East are the result of a vacuum left by the withdrawal of NATO forces. It’s also the result of our intelligence and security services being paralysed by pomo mentalities that forbid us from accurately defining and identifying the enemy.
The father of the gunman in Ottawa waged jihad in Libya back in 2011 in order to overthrow a secular dictator and to replace him a theocratic fascist tyranny. He was a true believer and his wretched offspring a failure at everything he tried.
How on earth can you tie that back to Harper?
And your references to The October Crisis…events I remember very well…have nothing to do with any of this.