In the days following the London transit bombings at the hands of "homegrown" terrorists last summer, then-public safety minister Anne McLellan stepped forward with a message to the Canadian public: you are not ready. She suggested repeatedly that Canadians, having not experienced a terrorist strike in over 20 years, had become apathetic and weren't ready for an inevitable attack here. "I do not believe that Canadians are as psychologically prepared for a terrorist attack as I think probably we all should be," she said at the time. "I think we have perhaps for too long thought that these were things that happened somewhere else. But Canadians are not immune to what we see happen in London, Madrid, 9/11."So will the arrests of a dozen adults and five minors in connection with an alleged bomb plot in Toronto accompanied by pictures of machine gun-toting officers in the street and bags of explosive fertilizer change the public's perception of the terrorism risk?
Probably not, experts suggest.
Martin Rudner, a national security professor and director of the Canadian Centre of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa, says most Canadians believe they belong to a just, "highly decent" society. Therefore, they simply don't understand why someone would want to attack them. "I think most Canadians are going to be in a state of denial," Rudner says. "I think there is a very profound feeling among Canadians of, : `why would anyone want to do us harm?"' Rudner points out Canadian Mohammad Momin Khawaja was arrested and charged in 2004 under anti-terrorism laws for what police allege was a role in a similar fertilizer bomb plot in London, England, but that didn't appear to change the public perception. None of the allegations against Khawaja or those leveled Saturday have been proven in a court of law.
Rudner adds Canadians have yet to realize that terrorists don't "target us for what we do or don't do, they target us for what we are: a liberal, secular, multicultural society."
John Thompson, president of the Mackenzie Institute think-tank and a frequent commentator on terrorism issues, agrees. He says until terrorists succeed in breaking through the law enforcement net and carry out a large-scale attack something he believes is inevitable nothing will change. Canadians think "our defences are fine, police will take care of us and we will be well," Thompson says, suggesting the most recent arrests will only help fuel that belief. But London police, he points out, succeeded in foiling five planned transit attacks before the tube and bus bombings last summer. "It's not the plot you know about, it's the one you don't know about that will get you," he says. "I think Canadians give them a couple weeks and they'll slip back into the old way of thinking and reassure themselves,' he says. "In a couple years or so, when we do get hit, then the reality of it all will sink home."