I know what you're thinking. "Did he fire five shots or sixty?" Well to tell you the truth with all the echos I kinda lost track myself. But seeing as the RCMP have 9mm automatics, the most powerful handgun in Canada and are liable to blow your head clean off, you've gotta ask yourself one question: "Do I feel lucky?" Well, do ya, BUDDY?"

Might be a bit too soon to be joking about this one.. Hasn't even finished, and we don't know what's happening yet.

Turns out the officer who took the shooter out was a retired RCMP officer employed in the largely ceremonial role of Sergeant-At-Arms. A role I was surprised to find out was armed.

I don't have any real objections to him being armed, but S-A-A is more-or-less a glorified security guard. The only weapon you see him with is a bad-ass looking mace. In the US, the S-A-A is the guy you see announcing the arrival of the President in the House of Representatives before the State of the Union addresses. You can imagine how much security the shooter would have had to passed to get the same place in D.C.

Some of the questions right now are about how the fuck the guy got to the doors where Parliament sits largely unopposed. I mean, it's Canada, the last attack on a Prime Minister consisted of a pie to the face, but you'd think there'd be a metal detector checkpoint and/or a couple Mounties milling about.

Then again, unauthorized crossings at our shared border -up until 9/11- were protected mostly by traffic cones.

Canadian here. Our national news coverage on CBC has a comments section that is... terrifying. The top 3 liked comments are all decrying the Canadian Prime Minister for causing this and making Canada a target through his participation in the fight against ISIL. Are people truly that stupid or are there troll bots upvoting stuff like that?

It's now being reported that there was more than one shooter, and at least one still at large.

Hopefully this will all get addressed at the next Question Period in the house. Yes, sarcasm. With morons like Calandra and the gutless Scheer as Speaker, perhaps someone finally went tilt and just couldn't take it anymore.

Let's see who the shooter is and the motive, eh?

ps. People are that stupid. See: UK news, Australian news.

Yes. People really are that stupid.

*wtf *fear

Adding video to channels (Fear, Wtf) - requested by ant.

I was just talking to a canadian the other day about how the right wing there were following the US social model.. I guess they're further down that road than either of us thought..

Ooooooooh Canada

Well, would he still be at arms if he wasn't armed?

The House Sgt. at Arms is actually in charge of overseeing security details for the House. Parliment Hill has a weird system, where as the Sgt. at Arms runs security inside the house, the RCMP cover the outsides, and the Ottawa Police cover Wellington St.

His office is right next to the front door that guy ran through, so he was one of the first and closest people to respond.

I'm a Canadian who loves the history behind these types of positions. When things calm down, ask us about our giant mace.

Humanity seems to be all about fucking itself right into that Orwellian nightmare we're in today.

This is just picking up the tab for the last 30 years of greed and murder. Expect it to last for a LOT longer..

Care to explain what you mean by that. Seems you are suggesting Canada's past 30 years are characterized by greed and murder which doesn't reflect the reality I've seen up here.

*shamelessselfpromotion

Canadian Sergeant-At-Arms back on duty the next day has been added as a related post - related requested by Payback.

Pretty sure he means Western Civilization in general. You have to admit though, Canada hasn't been really "Peacekeeping" all that much in the last decade. Our rep' has been a tad tarnished of late...

Well, historically, he's armed with a big ass club (mace) that he's supposed to bash heads with should a fight break out. I was just surprised he was "packin' heat".

I always knew he was in charge of Parliament security, but a lot of positions that are 100s of years old tend to be completely ceremonial, like the Speaker of the House.

It's like finding out the British "Beefeaters" (Yeoman Warders, the Royal bodyguards) actually have UZI machine guns under their hats and silenced Glocks stuck in their waistcoats when all they ever do is really conduct tours.

I know you aren't able to speak for cosmovitelli, but I appreciate the guess work. Of course, I hardly see any way in which Canada has some kind of running 'tab' that events like this are payback for.

Internationally, not as much, but man we treat our First Nation peoples like they were dirt. =(

In the past tense, I'd agree but not today. For starters, First Nation people have 100% full Canadian citizenship and the only distinctions made based on a persons treaty status compared to a non-treaty neighbour in any Canadian city is additional rights and benefits that are potentially available to the treaty person. That is to say, First Nations people have all the full rights of everyone else in Canada, and in some situations bonuses as well.

That said, living conditions on Native Reserves in Canada are abysmal. The municipality I live in is just vastly better off than the nearby native reserves. Better access to education, policing, fire protection and health care. If that weren't bad enough, average family incomes in my municipality more than double those of neighbouring native reserve communities.

That abysmal divide in conditions though is NOT an example of we as Canadians treating First Nations terribly. If you take per capita taxes collected from community and take away per capita government dollars put back in, my community still gives more to the government than it gets back. The neighbouring reserves with far worse conditions receive far more money from the government than they pay it back. Systemically, the Canadian government is economically favouring the neighbouring reserves.

That begs the question why are conditions there so abysmal, and I can't claim to fully understand it myself. The components I DO know are at work though are many:
1.Reserves are NOT fit into government the same way as municipalities are. While my municipality is under Provincial jurisdiction, reserves are parallel with the provinces and fall directly under the federal government. The idea is reserves deserve greater autonomy to respect First Nations unique status and treaty obligations. In practice though, IMO they lose out. My community has education and health care handled by the province, which great benefits those kind of items. Reserves are responsible for those things on their own.
2. Reserves create segregation. The idea is again respecting treaty agreements and protecting First Nations culture from being overwhelmed and assimilated. In practice, that isolation is crippling the communities rather than helping them.
3. Historic abuses against previous generations of First Nations people at the hands of government get passed down to the next generation. This is amplified by the segregation on reserves.
4. Absence of accountability. The same transparency rules that apply to my municipality and all other municipalities nation wide do not apply on reserves. If my mayor spends millions of city dollars paying him or his family to do almost nothing it is more traceable than if a chief on a reserve did the same thing. Again, the idea is provide greater autonomy and not 'force' white beuracracy on First Nations, but the effect is to make it harder for them to hold their own leaders to account.

That's hardly a comprehensive list, but I think it highlights a lot of ways in which the current generation of Canadians running the country are very conscience of treating First Nations well and just failing at it through mutual mistakes. Any efforts to convert the failed reserve systems to municipality status will by fought the most by the very people living in the failed reserves. I wish knew how to move things forward to a better place, but the root is nothing as simple as 'treat First Nations better'.

So the fact that the Red Cross had to go to the reserves and declare an emergency means that it's better for the First Nations people? How about all the missing indigenous women that have had little attempts to figure out what's happening to them, or where they could possibly be?

Have you been on any of the reservations in the past few years? Have you talked to anyone about the conditions? You think they'd really fight any kind of change to improve the health and social services on the reserves? Most of the water services are worse quality than Walkerton, when the water was filled with bacteria.

Is it better than the small pox blankets, murder, and "correctional schools" we sent them to? Yes, but it's still substandard living on a lot of the reserves. Is it all of them? No, some are doing quite well, but those are the minority.

Let's also look at the prison population in Canada, where around 30% is First Nations. There's something rotten in the Dominion of Canada when it comes to living standards and treatment of Aboriginals.

You didn't even read my post did you? You know, the one were I stated that conditions are WORSE on reserves than neighbouring municipalities basically agreeing with you about how about conditions are there?

I've got family that have attended school on reserves, and worked in both the schools and hospitals on reserves.

Please, go read what I said more closely before beating up a strawman argument that I not only never made, but agreed with you over.

On stating it as fact that municipalities have far, far better standards of living than reserves I noted the obvious solution is to convert reserves to municipalities. I stated THAT move would be fought tooth and nail by those living on reserves. I wish to heaven to be wrong on that count, but I most certainly have discussed this with people there and it's not a welcomed solution. Nobody yet has explained to me why though and I'm gonna keep championing it until someone can point out a problem with it to me,

yep

x2

With extra clips in his office to boot. The account I just sifted goes into detail on the Max Payne-ish moves he pulled to take down the shooter. Amazing.