Learning Lessons to Protect an Accessible Parliament Hill
Balancing How We Protect Parliament While Keeping What We Love About the Precinct
In Canada we’re blessed with many unique characteristics that other larger countries point to. On the whole, we tend to be more open, more welcoming, friendlier and just all-around nice people. Some say it’s just how we are, and it can be a big point of pride for us. Some would call it being polite, while we would probably just call it being Canadian.
Even when it’s come to things like protesting governments or their policies in our nations capital, historically for the most part those have been relatively civil affairs. Having spent a decade on Parliament Hill, I got to see a lot of that up close and even took part in a protest or two. There were protests that happened every year like clockwork, like the annual anti-abortion protest on the lawn of Parliament Hill. Every year you’d see protesters on both sides gather, in the tens of thousands, following police instructions and exchanging views. Sometimes those views would get heated, but in the end, people would walk away at the end without incidents or concerns.
When certain foreign dignitaries would visit the Hill, you’d see the same thing. Loud and passionate disagreement would be shared as people made their points in respect of our democratic traditions. But in doing so there was also a level of respect for the place where they were and for those charged with looking after it. It was an understanding that everyone had a job to do. Even when the “Idle No More” protests came to Parliament, organizers worked with police in safely closing streets so protesters could march on the Hill, raise our voices and round dance, both on the frozen lawn of Parliament and on the street in front of the Prime Ministers office.
Part of that always felt like how it should be all over the world, but at times there were reminders that was a quaint idea that clearly wasn’t the case elsewhere. I still remember vividly on my second week of work on the Hill when Greenpeace protesters scaled onto the roof of the West and Centre blocks. I was in my office early that morning opening mail when all of a sudden, the room went dark, because a large banner was dropped in front of the window. Then later I saw a protester rappel down from the roof and hang outside my window.
What played out after that was maybe the most Canadian thing I ever saw. The RCMP brought a fire truck up to the building and walked up the ladder. All the while those protesters hung there in their safety gear, even waving in my direction to acknowledge that I was there. When the police officer arrived, he would say to the protester “I am going to grab hold of you now, is that okay?”. The protester simple answered “Yes Sir”. After securing the protester safely, the officer looked my way and waved at me as I watched on, to which I just waved back politely at all I was witnessing. The officer then said to the protester “I am going to cut your ropes now, is that okay?”. The protester answered plainly again “Yes Sir”. The ropes were cut, the protester was taken down the ladder and into custody. Then that scene repeated itself as the building was cleared.
I sat there in goofy awe of what I was witnessing, thinking about how this was happening on only my second week on the job. Later that day at lunch in the cafeteria, my colleagues and I were all talking about this. One colleague, who was originally from the United States and had worked on Capitol Hill, shared a thought that stuck with me ever since. He plainly said that “If that had happened in Washington, the snipers would have been brought out and they would have had practice that day”.
And the thing is, he was likely right about that. It was a bit of cold water thrown on me, snapping me back to the reality that we are a bit of an outlier when it comes to how we view our nations capital and treat it. Later that same feeling crept over me after the 2014 shooting on Parliament Hill and how it even came to be. The Parliamentary Protective Services and the RCMP were heroic on that day and did the best they could.
But part of me thought back to that day in late 2009 and that scenario my colleague put to us. If that had happened in Washington, would that shooter have even gotten onto the Hill, let alone in the front doors of Centre Block? That feeling stayed with me as I returned into Centre Block for the first time after the shooting, seeing the stone walls chipped by bullets and the stark hole that sat in our committee room door, at the same height where some of my colleagues and friends would have sat at a dais that morning during caucus meetings when it all happened.
Yet even then after that time, we strove to find a way to protect that uniqueness of our Parliament while ensuring its safety. While we saw more armed police on the Hill and other new security measures, other things remained the same. We still saw yoga on the Hill at lunch time during the warm months. I could still go watch the performers who were a part of the big Canada Day show practice on stage a couple days before the big event. We could still protest safely, as all those annual protests continued as normal. Maybe we had found a balance.
But sadly, that all seemed to come crashing down this past winter with the occupation that gripped Parliament Hill and downtown Ottawa. A confluence of reasons created what happened, but in the aftermath, we’ve seen a lot of reflection about how we keep our capital safe. The House of Commons Procedure and House Affairs decided to study this and released their findings this week before the House rose for the Holidays. The study made some significant recommendations, notably including:
Federal jurisdiction for the operational security of Parliament Hill be expanded to include sections of Wellington and Sparks streets
Wellington Street, from the War Memorial to Kent Street, be closed off to vehicular traffic
In the end, it was the “Freedom Convoy” that turned out to be the straw that broke the camels back here. And after what happened, its not hard to understand why. None of that usual respect for the place or those who protect it, that was usually there for most protests, was there. It was non-existent during this episode. Furthermore, this event showed the clear problems with the way things were done before. It showed when things went wrong, no one had full jurisdiction over the space and that led to even more problems.
Sadly, it also showed the fatal flaw in having the open, available space that we all cherish. When it is taken advantage of and abused by people who had no intention of respecting the norms or the rights of Parliamentarians (let alone those who live and work downtown), it left us all in the lurch. These are questions that we should have faced long ago.
When people managed to scale onto the roofs of Parliament in the early morning of 2009, it seems crazy to think it was that easy to do it. When the shooter in 2014 tried to storm Parliament, it was maddening to think that someone with a rifle could get onto the Hill so easily. So when dozens of semi-trucks park themselves on Wellington and occupy the downtown core, it was upsetting to say the least because it was so preventable.
I wish we could go back to those quaint days I spoke about before but maybe we need to wake up to the fact that not everyone shares our idealistic views on these matters. Where we see a virtuous example of openness and accessibility, others see opportunities to exploit. I don’t think Ottawa needs to be locked down completely, but what this committee is recommending makes all the sense in the World to me. If we want to continue to have some kind of access to the Parliamentary Precinct we hold dear, then we need to take these steps to make it happen. It’s not the solution anyone prefers, but it’s the one that we must take. If we don’t now and something worse happens next time, we may not have the chance to get it right that time. I’m sure that will be much less quaint than the alternative offered here.