BY: LEO KNIGHT
When the World Trade Centre was attacked on September 11, 2001, I was in Calgary. I wound up at the airport watching all the international flights being grounded and stack parked wherever they could on the tarmac.
I did more than a dozen TV news interviews that day from the airport. The underlying message I was giving was whatever you knew the world as on September 10, it had now changed and changed utterly.
That day changed the way we think about security and keeping citizens safe. The U.S formed the Department of Homeland Security, amalgamating all federal agencies under one umbrella. In Canada, we already had a national police force, the RCMP, but created different sections to respond to the emerging threat.
In the days after 9-11, the RCMP scrambled to get as many resources as it could into intelligence investigations. The Mounties were working hand-in-glove with our American partners on info and intel trying to separate the wheat from the chaff.
The issue of national security is complicated and involves cooperation with our allies, chief among them the U.S. And so it was this week in a suburb of Toronto when, acting on intel from our American friends, York Regional Police executed a search warrant at a Richmond Hill home. They seized precursor chemicals used to make explosives, at least one detonator and a copy of The Anarchist’s Handbook, a guide to making bombs.
Police arrested 18-year-old Mahyar Mohammadiasl and 47-year-old Reza Mohammadiasl. They were charged with a variety of things relating to the search and were released on $50,000 bail.
That’s it. And they are back in their community.
Police said the younger man was “on the cusp of being radicalized.”
Um, what? Is that like being on the cusp of being pregnant?
Not to be outdone, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale said this wasn’t a national security issue, but a local police matter.
Come again?
Allow me to take a quote from the RCMP web page dealing with national security responsibilities. “Threats to national security can come in any form: chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear; an explosive device.”
Wouldn’t the fact chemicals, explosive precursors and at least one detonator and “he was on the cusp of being radicalized” fit within those parameters?
The RCMP has a section called the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team (INSET) with offices across the country. And I happen to know they have an office in the Greater Toronto area. So, where the heck are they in this?
We are not sure, yet, how the information was developed and given to Canadian authorities, but we do know it came from U.S. sources. Typically those things go government to government. By that, I mean federal agency to federal agency. How did York Regional Police wind up with the conduct of the investigation?
I ask again where the heck was the RCMP in all of this? Too busy stitching up Vice Admiral Mark Norman at the behest of the PMO to deal with an actual terror threat?
And what of Goodale’s remarks?
Goodale is nothing more than a political opportunist, a hack who has never had a real job in his adult life. He was first elected in 1974 when he was 24. And that’s the nicest thing I can say about him.
The Liberals want to repatriate ISIS fighters and don’t want a word spoken that might suggest there might be a problem in this country with those who wish to do us harm. Radical Islam shall not be mentioned lest you think they are actually the enemy of the west. That would be contrary to the Liberal narrative. And we can’t have that.
Nothing to see here folks. Move along.
No part of any of this case passes the sniff test.
