Please do not use this tragedy as an excuse to curtail Canadians’ rights and freedoms, or to advance suspicion and hatred against Muslims!

I feel badly about the unnecessary loss of life. My feeling though is that Harper will try to take advantage of the situation to further erode individual rights. This MUST be prevented at all costs!

I personally think that the level of intelligence necessary to detect one particular lone gunman, who was clearly emotionally unstable, is the kind of intelligence that would invade innocent peoples homes. That someone had to die is tragic, but I was satisfied with the level of reaction that was mustered in response to this threat. What would I suggest? Education and propoganda against extremism. Don’t let people become part of a terror system without knowledge.

My understanding is that the shooting was the act of one disturbed young man. While tragic, his actions should not be used to remove any more of our public democratic freedoms. It is only through public dissent that a democracy remains free and strong.

The horrific retaliation in the middle East started with Bush?Cheney declaring war due to weapons of mass destruction that were never there. So Damn Insane Hussein killed 5000 the USA killed 50,000 and now we have the whole middle east in retaliation.

The Harper government needs to go and I smell fish did this government not tap Canadians phones and wasted taxpayers dollars he is selling our country and it is fir him to sell? Stop wars now HARPER IS NOT CANADA’S SOLUTION HE IS THE PROBLEM WE DON’T LIKE PROBLEMS LET’S GET HIM OUT HE FIGHTS FOR THE CORPORATE

So grateful that the NDP is such a strong voice in Ottawa – defending our rights as Canadian citizens during what I expect to be a ramped-up, rhetoric-laden assault on our privacy and civil liberties. Thank you!

I agree completely with the necessity of sober second thought. I do not want my freedom boxed in by draconian laws that were made in response to the actions of an insane person.

Let’s have a war on mental health issues, first. Let’s not risk citizen freedom by taking away the right to express unpopular views.

We do not need a knee jerk reaction. Harper has just been waiting for an ‘incident’ to put in what has happened after 9/11 here in Canada. Smells like a ‘false flag’ op from the videos and comments posted all over the internet of this event.

Unfortunately there are dead soldiers and dead men with mental issues that should have had help before this happened.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I would not for one moment think to belittle the losses of two Canadian soldiers nor the heroic actions of the individuals involved in bringing these terrible situations under control; however, the events of the past weeks have been very disconcerting for me otherwise, on many levels. We must remember these most recent events were not carried out by organizations but by mentally disturbed individuals who wanted to associate themselves with what they perceived, however misguided, as a cause. Yes we should be concerned and we should take action to prevent THIS EVENT from occurring again. We should not, as has now happened, pass legislation that allows us to electronically surveil, and imprison without charges for one year, a “terrorist”. I do need to take a more detailed look at bill C-13and others before the house to determine the validity of the claims but it has me worried about where we are headed. Could a brown skinned person be a “terrorist”? An Islamic person could frankly be any skin colour or of any outward appearance but that tends to be a western assumption. Could a “foreign influenced”, “eco-terrorist” be one via these laws? No one dares oppose them in the current atmosphere…

The Harper Conservatives are using the death of an innocent Canadian soldier to score political points. That is shameful in itself, but there is a greater outrage in the fact that they are poised to legislate curtailments on the very civil liberties which soldiers like Cpl. Cirillo were tasked with defending. Further to this, they are claiming that there are links between the shooter and known terrorist groups without providing any credible evidence that that is the case. This government has got to go.

I find the timing of both the shooting and the reaction rather suspicious.


No, I don’t trust this administration. It is secretive, manipulative, and both overly controlled and controlling.


We need to examine the shooting, the shooter’s motives, and our reaction to it, instead of immediately calling it terrorism and reacting to curtail our freedom and increase police powers. This is the wrong choice, and the wrong direction.

This event creates a spotlight upon our rule of law, our culture of over dramatisizing events, and the government’s underhanded techniques in further removing Canadian citizen rights. If the people of Canada wish to sit back and watch without protest in belief the systematic installation of rules and laws removing our freedom will somehow make us safer then George Orwell’s 1984 is not fiction but prophecy.

I think that the members of parliament should not limit the rights and freedoms of Canadians legislated in the Canadian Constitution and the Charter of Rights. Doing so would mean that the terrorist have won, because everyone in Canada will live in a state of “terror”, being spied on, restricted and censured. Both cases look more like criminal cases, not like terrorist attacks. Even if they were terrorist attacks, “terrorizing” the whole population of Canada with restriction of their rights and freedoms will not change the way terrorist think. The right action is to understand why terrorism ideology can indoctrinate people, and to try to educate everyone why this is wrong. Also, more money are needed for dealing with mental health issues and social problems.

Rather than build more prisons, enact more draconian laws, and increase policing of citizens. Why not attack the problem at the root causes? Things like mental health, depression and prescription / illicit drug abuse.


Why are these (intelligent) young men and women being alienated, thus seeking refuge in the welcoming arms of fanatics? Why should the word of just one psychologist suffice to determine if someone is a threat to himself and worse … to the general public? If you are diagnosed with cancer, AIDS, or any deadly disease, the normal procedure is / should be a second … and even a THIRD impartial opinion.


The Harper government is following the erroneous idea that putting people in jail for relatively minor offences will ‘save’ society. The sad fact is that …. with precious few exceptions, our ‘correctional’ facilities serve to inculcate worse criminal behaviour in its inmates, rather than ‘correct’ and modify their characters to the betterment of themselves… or society.


It is time that we return to the old adage of “prevention is better than cure” / “vaut mieux prevenir que guerir” … by putting more emphasis on education, by encouraging PARENTS to be more involved in their children’s lives …and educating the populace into having a community spirit.


After all, as I myself have said so often: “It takes a village to raise an idiot, but an idiot to raze a village”.

Rushed and therefore ill-conceived steps to deal with this particular situation – as unfair and tragic as it is – will not only reveal another level of conservative reactionism but also a political opportunity for the ruling party to foster fear and diminish clear thought and wise steps… Their incapacity to govern at the human level, their obsession to put economy before people, the climate , food and poverty is shameful. Enough!

The Harper government has mishandled Foreign Affairs from the beginning as they have all other ministries. They have abandoned diplomacy for this shouting thing that resolves nothing and leads to animosity with other nations with nothing of substance to back up their rhetoric, usually empty, and have managed to isolate Canada on the world stage. I get the sense that Harper is merely using this aggression as campaign photo-ops to seek a new persona of the Warrior Prime Minister. Not that I can blame as he has nothing else to boast about as he has bungled just about everything from the economy to public services for Canadians. The shooting regretfully may allow him to force through undemocratic laws feeding on the fear that he has whipped up himself. I noted that the Conservative caucus has made statements out of turn without consultation with the police, security forces or their own constituents. Hoback’s soft lob question to Harper clearly was a set-up. Jason Kenney tweeted a couple of hours after the incident that the reservist had died in hospital from his wounds without consulting the police, the reservist’s family or the Prime Minister. The next day harper made statements without knowing the results of police investigations. The Conservatives are too quick to label the event as a terrorist action from a radicalized Muslim ignoring the troubled history of the shooter from on-going drug problems, estrangement from his family and mental illness. They have done this show before with other ideological policies they want to flog and it sure smells like a photo-op. Cynically I suspect he wants to scare naive citizens into pushing his agenda before the next election. There has to be a national debate and consultation with citizens before any extreme legislation is passed. Harper has rammed too many undemocratic policies through already. With his track record, however, such laws will be challenged in the courts.

These two events shouldn’t be used as an excuse to increase spying and to take away, yet more, personal liberties. If the current government really wanted to do something worthwhile, it would send each province a large amount of money designated for mental health issues. At the very least, it should restore to previous levels the health care dollars it has taken away. This could be financed by reducing military spending but not at the expense of veteran’s pensions & heath care, those should also be restored. Let’s get back to being peacekeepers not warmongers.

Agree that any policies on this matter should be fact based. It’s time for the Federal Gov’t to get serious about mental illness, increased dedicated budget for transfer to provinces with conditions. The police and CSIS are simply the wrong agencies to deal with this “threat.”

At face value, I agree. It appears to be an isolated incident and not part of organized terrorism. Cool heads should prevail. However, IF there is something that should be tightened, has been noticed and just not made it forward to change yet, then I might be in favour of a change. (Why is “favour” a spelling error on this Canadian page?) So, I would have to know more detail about the proposed change before saying no to it.

I always remember the old saying “legislate in haste regret at leisure”. Jumping to conclusions, heating rhetoric, including unconstitutional provisions and playing partisan politics is not good government. Heave Steve 2015.

I feel they were isolated cases, aberrations really and don’t think any changes should be made. I found it interesting that in Ottawa only the military and the deputies were threatened. He did not want to make a splash killing the ordinary public like a suicide bomber. If anything we should reflect on and curb our policies of bombing other places. You can’t do that and expect to escape attention.

It is fallacy that force can make people like or love each other. The Sunnis and the Shia should be left to sort their troubles out. They are not ours and for so long as we make them ours we are interfering and aggressive.

I feel that Canadians are being lied to regarding the truth behind recent events leading all the way back to September 11th, 2001. Our Gov’t will now try to convince us that they are trying to protect our freedoms and human rights and maintain our way of life, but in reality, they will take away more of our freedoms and human rights than ever before, just like the Gov’t of the United States did to their citizens. The United States has become a police state. The media and our Gov’t will use fear and lies to gain support for their actions. Our Gov’t lies to us everyday, so Canadians must pay attention and learn what is fact from fiction. Someone once said “Those that believe they are free, are the most enslaved of all”. We must be sure that does not apply to Canadians. Steven Harper’s Canada is very different from mine. I agree with your view point that says we do not have to sacrifice freedom and human rights for security and peace. I will not allow my Gov’t to take away my rights as a human being.


Thank you.

I do not believe that last week’s events were anything other than isolated acts. I also believe that heightened security intervention by police and intelligence apparatus would not have prevented what happened.


At present any further limits on our freedoms in the name of so-called security are rash, counterproductive, and reactionary at best.

While I don’t condone what took place this past week, I believe that the members of parliament should be cautious with any adoption of legislation that could limit the ability of its citizens to enjoying their rights and freedoms under the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights. As Canadians it is important for us to remember that this Nation is a peace loving nation and we shouldn’t be turning into another state that professes “an eye for an eye”. Rather we should be making sure that all citizens have the ability to have proper medical supports, low cost education and the ability to have employment that pays a living wage with benefits.


To enact new legislation without first assessing the situation, understanding the facts and having positive outcomes for the citizens of the country is a knee jerk reaction to two incidents which may or may not have any connection with each other or to organizations operating in other parts of the globe. Enacting such legislation would be no different than having the government of the day enacting the War Measures Act such as the Liberal government did in the 70’s around the FLQ crisis.


Have we as Canadians not learnt anything? Two wrongs don’t make a right but once the pen has been poised no party ever seems willing to undo what the previous government has done. Now is the time for the NDP to show true leadership and stand strong in protecting the rights all Canadians by engaging the Harper government in full and open dialogue.


Knee jerk reactions won’t – bring back those who fell this past week.


If nothing else now is the time for clear level thinking heads to prevail.

My question is how did a person with known mental health issues get a long gun? Even with Harper’s government collecting more personal information than any government should really need on it’s citizens they missed the two murderers last week. It just goes to prove that spying on individuals is not the way to deal with these issues. Shame on the conservatives for using fear to drive their agenda.

I am very concerned that the unfortunate tragedy in Ottawa is being seen as a “carte blanche” by the Harper Govt. to escalate their incursion into the private lives of Canadians.

Everyone knows that the laws the CPC what to enact go against what the majority of Canadians believe to be Canadian values.


Previous to either incident Power in Politics ran a poll asking "do you think security forces need more powers, powers not resources, 80% of the respondents said no.


CBC ran the same poll Last Monday after the incident in Quebec the results were the same 80% no. They again ran the same poll again on Thursday after Wednesday’s incident and again the same result, 80% no.


It is very evident that they have no mandate from the Canadian public for these laws. It is the job of the opposition to make sure you use all your resources to inform the public of this and to make sure they let their politicians know.


Send out your mailers, demand TV time, go on the talk shows across the Country. Make sure those constituents in CPC ridings are properly inform and told how to let/get their voices be heard.


We the people of Canada need your help. We don’t need phoney opposition we support we need you to use all your powers and resources to encourage Canadians to demand complete transparency and full explanation of any and all aspects of what the new laws mean and do and how they can and will be used.


We counting on you this is most likely the most important moment in Canada and for it’s democracy.


Thank you, Gods speed!


P.s. If as the opposition you perceive that the CPC is going to use it’s majority to ram through laws the majority of Canadians are against, I do believe it would be your job to tell Canadians to show their disapproval by way of protests.