The OPP report on the October 22^nd shooting is out, and highlights a number of lapses that happened on that day, but among them all, it should probably be highlighted that a lot of the problem seems to be with the RCMP who are patrolling the exterior of the buildings on the Hill, and that they had a minute-and-a-half to do something about the shooter and didn’t. (Some of what people saw during the shooting is described here). Not that there weren’t problems inside, as some of the bullets that flew were from security personnel and not the shooter, including the one that lodged itself in to the door of the Railway Room, where the NDP were having their caucus meeting. It was also raised in the report that the RCMP were dealing with budget cuts, so it does raise the question as to whether their limited resources played a factor in what happened, be it in resourcing or equipment. It also raises a lot of questions moving forward because the government made a particularly top-down move to have the RCMP take over the oversight of all Hill security from its previous silos (remember that Commons and Senate security forces are separate because of privilege issues). If the RCMP couldn’t manage the situation outside of the buildings, how will they be any better overseeing and coordinating things inside? As well, it needs to be stressed that this new system, under RCMP management, has been imposed hastily and without enough discussion and consultation – the government put the motion under closure, and its implementation is in the omnibudget bill with not enough time for proper scrutiny, particularly as many of the questions about what it all means still haven’t been answered yet, like what the role for the Sergeant-at-Arms will be under this new regime. Speaker Scheer did acknowledge that parliamentarians are complaining, but he seems to think that everything will work out fine. How can we be sure of that if we’re rushing this through and not thinking clearly enough about it, or consulting enough with all of the stakeholders and taking this report into consideration, which hadn’t been completed when the motion was passed and the implementation put into the budget bill. Meanwhile, the fact that RCMP are now carrying submachine guns on the Hill has a lot of its denizens unsettled.

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