Reuters, Ottawa :
Top Canadian security officials are due to testify on Monday before a parliamentary committee about threats facing the nation in the same building where a man described as an homegrown militant opened fire last week as Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with lawmakers.
On Sunday police said Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the man who killed a Canadian soldier and attacked the Parliament building made a video of himself just before the attack, evidence that he was driven by ideological and political motives.
The incidents have prompted Harper and his Conservative colleagues to scramble to strengthen anti-terrorism legislation and sparked questions about Canada’s culture of openness that allowed anyone to walk freely into the Ottawa parliament building.
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson also could face questions about Zehaf-Bibeau. Paulson told reporters last week that he had come to Ottawa seeking a passport and intended to travel to Syria, a hotbed of Islamic militant activity.
But Zehaf-Bibeau’s mother, a top Canadian bureaucrat dealing with immigration issues who Paulson cited as the RCMP’s source for the information, denied his assertion. In a letter to news agency Postmedia, she said she told investigators her son told her he wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia to study the Koran.
Questions have also come up about how much information Canada shared with the United States about Zehaf-Bibeau and Rouleau, who ran over two Canadian soldiers in Quebec with a car, killing one, last week.
In the wake of Wednesday’s attack, some US officials raised concerns about security along the world’s longest undefended border.
