Just arm the soldiers
Matt Gurney
National Post
16 Mar 2015
On Wednesday, CBC News reported that the Department of National Defence is in negotiations with the Ottawa Police Service. Defence hopes to reach an agreement whereby armed Ottawa police officers will protect the military personnel who stand guard at the National War Memorial and Rideau Hall, the official residence of the Governor-General of Canada. The police officers so assigned would not be drawn from on-duty patrols, but would be so-called "paid duty" officers, working extra shifts with the costs covered by the purchaser of the service. Typical uses of paid duty officers include traffic control around construction sites or keeping an eye on public events, such as sports games or concerts.
Oh, Lord. How Canadian. Hello, National Defence? Is there perhaps a more obvious solution to this problem than hiring off-duty cops to protect soldiers?
In the aftermath of the attack on the National War Memorial and Parliament Hill last October, many Canadians were surprised to learn that the C7 automatic rifles carried by Corporal Nathan Cirillo, who was killed, and his colleague at the memorial that day were not just unloaded, but disabled. Removing key mechanical components from the rifles leaves them inert, unable to fire even if you shoved live rounds into them one by one, by hand. This is, the military insisted, entirely consistent with the role of honour guards performing ceremonial duties. The troops are there as symbols of dedication and commitment both to our national institutions and our fallen soldiers. They're not actually guards in the literal sense.
And that's all well and good, in theory. Canada is a country blessed enough to know the rule of law. Our police forces are generally all we need to maintain order. The military may occasionally be called out to provide "aid to the civil power," but that typically means disaster relief. Shortly after the attacks in Quebec and Ottawa last year, a military official told Global News that Canadian soldiers had not been issued live ammunition while patrolling the streets of home since the October Crisis of 1970. "It is not the role of the Canadian Forces to be armed on the streets of Ottawa," he said.
On balance, I agree with him. Separating the functions of the military and the police is vital to any healthy, functioning democracy. That's true for legal reasons, for political reasons, for practical reasons and, yes, for symbolic reasons. Canadians don't want armed troops on their streets. Who would?
But even having granted all the practical realities and the important principles of the role of the armed forces in a free society, surely there's still some wiggle room. Canada is and must remain a free society, where the armed forces perform their very specific duties under well-understood procedures and only when ordered. But, for goodness sake, if we're going to put soldiers in a public place where we have a reasonable belief that they may be shot at, giving them the means to shoot back isn't going to turn our fair dominion into a military junta.
How reasonable is the belief that the sentries at Rideau Hall and the National War Memorial will be shot at? Who knows? CSIS and the RCMP have probably done threat assessments, but good luck getting that information out of them anytime between now and the 22nd century. The only insight the general public really has into the extent of the danger faced by the honour guards is that Defence takes it seriously enough to be considering signing a contract to have armed police guard the sentries. There may not be any imminent threat, but there is, clearly, concern. And awareness that what happened in October could certainly happen again.
No one wants that to happen again. And sending Ottawa police to guard the guards was a logical shortterm solution. I recall, several days after the attack, moving photos, such as the one above, of various dignitaries laying wreaths where Cpl. Cirillo fell, while military honour guards stood at their posts and rifle-toting police officers kept their eyes open for any threats. At the time, that made sense.
But assigning cops to guard soldiers on a full-time basis doesn't. Any member of our Armed Forces ought to be competent and trustworthy enough to carry a loaded weapon at home, else we shouldn't be sending them to represent our country and serve its interests abroad. And the soldiers selected to serve as sentries just aren't any soldiers. They're the best of the best. Where they may face danger, give them the means to protect themselves, just as we ask them to protect us.
