Ottawa shooting will not intimidate Canada, PM declares

The prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, vowed a tough and uncompromising response to a brazen gun attack on the national parliament on Wednesday that left a soldier dead and a nation in shock. The perpetrator, dentified as Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, first shot and killed a soldier guarding the national war memorial in Ottawa before storming parliament and making it into the heart of the building being being killed by a ceremonial official, Kevin Vickers. It was the second time in two days that the country’s security forces had confronted an attack on the streets: on Monday a man described by authorities as having been radicalised ran down a soldier with his car in Quebec.

This week’s events are a grim reminder that Canada is not immune to the types of terrorist attacks we have seen elsewhere around the world. We will not be intimidated. Canada will never be intimidated.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, was a Canadian citizen born in 1982 who appears to have had a number of encounters with law-enforcement agencies. Quebec court records cited by Reuters show three cases in 2004 involving a Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, born in 1982. He pleaded guilty to two drug-related charges and one charge of failing to comply with a judge’s order. Authorities this week raised the security threat level from low to medium after the car attack on Monday, which came as Canadian jets were to join the U.S.-led air armada bombarding Islamist militants in Iraq.

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