(This column originally appeared in the Toronto Sun)
It’s been four years since Canada was struck by two separate jihadist terrorist attacks against our Canadian Forces.
On October 20, 2014, Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent was one of two men mowed down in a vehicle ramming attack in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. Vincent later died of his injuries.
His attacker fled the scene and a police chase ensued. He called 911 to say he’d carried out his attack in the name of “Allah.”
The terrorist crashed into a ditch, jumped out of his car and charged a female police officer with a large knife. He was quickly shot and killed by police.
Two days later, 24-year-old Corporal Nathan Cirillo was standing ceremonial guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near Parliament Hill in Ottawa.
He was fatally shot in the back by a terrorist who then raised his gun in the air and shouted, “For Iraq!”
As Cirillo lay in a pool of blood, and half a dozen good Samaritans came to his aid, the terrorist made his way to the Parliament buildings.
He stormed an entrance of Centre Block, shot a brave security guard, and ran down a hallway before being shot and killed by Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers.
Both terrorists had pledged their support to the newly-formed Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), both deliberately targeted members of our military.
Just like that, Canada was thrust into the global jihadist insurgency.
Canadians were in shock, and the previous Harper government took steps to beef up our national security. They introduced new counter-terrorism measures, including greater information-sharing abilities between law enforcement agencies and a bill to strip citizenship from terrorists.
If you wage war against Canada, you’ve forfeited the privileges, rights and freedoms of Canadian citizenship.
One year later, however, Canadians elected a different kind of Prime Minister in Justin Trudeau.
When it comes to stripping citizenship from terrorists, Trudeau said that “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian,” and that “terrorists should get to keep their Canadian citizenship.”
He reversed the law, which effectively meant returning citizenship to a convicted terrorist and ring-leader of the thwarted Toronto 18 terrorist attack.
Trudeau issued an official apology and wrote a $10.5 million cheque to a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist.
And, according to reports from Stewart Bell at Global News, the government has quietly been trying to help ISIS terrorists come to Canada.
“We have the intention to help you,” a Canadian consular official told a captured British ISIS fighter. “Canada is an option”
Bell interviewed a captured Pakistani-born ISIS terrorist in Syria, who seems angry and resentful that Canada isn’t doing more to help him.
This man had celebrated the 2014 terrorist attacks in Ottawa and Quebec and called on his followers to wage more attacks against Canadians.
At the time, someone on Twitter asked him if he was Canadian. “Not anymore,” he wrote.
He’s apparently had a change of heart and wants to come crawling back.
If our government took national security and counter-terrorism seriously, these jihadists would have been stripped of their citizenship the moment they joined ISIS.
Canada wouldn’t even entertain the idea of helping them.
But under the Trudeau government, Canada’s approach to terrorism can best be described as pathological altruism.
Trudeau believes in protecting the rights and privileges of people who hate everything about…(READ MORE)
