Canada 2020: part 2

Richard Hétu
Richard Hétu has been a correspondent of La Presse in New York since 1994. For years he has been passionate about United States politics and history. In 2002 he published La route de loudest (VLB). Under the title of correspondent, he explores the shortcomings of American society through personalities like Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan and George W. Bush, among others.

Canada under attack: Story of a foreseen terror
Richard Hétu
July 4, 2006

July 7, 2020
Since Sept. 11, 2001, reliable sources have been repeating the warning: Canada, like any other industrialized Western country, is not sheltered from a large-scale terrorist attack. And yet, for nearly 20 years we have been protected, day after day, by the grace of God, CSIS or luck.

Unfortunately, this state of affairs came to an end this afternoon in the Montreal metro.

What a contrast between the images of the planes smashing into the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and the ones from July 5, 2020! By the end of the evening, the web had started broadcasting the attack, caught on "smart video" by the public transit system: Absolutely nothing explosive, just the cold determination to kill in large numbers, in my hometown.

The new cameras in the Montreal metro didn't miss a thing, or almost. Installed after the Boston subway attacks, they scan every centimetre of the system — waiting areas, trains, tunnels and platforms — producing video images that are immediately transformed into digital data. This surveillance system, fruit of Québécois innovation, can detect, categorize and follow objects or people of interest according to user-defined specifications. In principle, it can receive real-time alerts and react proactively to threats. It is the very pinnacle of technology.

But will the video of the attack one day be shown on Canadian television? Tonight, broadcasters completely censored it, bending to the requests of authorities, who have promised to find and punish the person or people responsible for a leak that allowed a small-time blogger in Vermont, in the United States, to stream images of the attack over the internet. These made their way around the globe in seconds.

On their websites, Canadian news sources were forced to be content to tell the story in words and photos. Here are the facts, unendurable though they are:

Between 5:19 p.m. and 5:24 p.m., at the peak of the evening rush, five individuals wearing ball caps get up from their seats in five different trains all heading for Berri station, the busiest in the metro system. From a gym bag, each of them pulls out a portable spray gun, similar to the Canadian Model 5 tear gas ejector. Then turning around slowly, they spray a fast-acting nerve agent into the air.

The passengers do not know that the lethal gas, Tabun, can kill by inhalation or contact with skin within 20 minutes. It doesn't take them long, though, to realize they are the victims of a chemical or biological attack. How long this kind of threat has been talked about! In the packed trains, the cameras record panic spreading from face to face. However, these same cameras are unable to make out the features of the faces hidden under the terrorists' ball caps.

In each of the besieged trains, it is a matter of some 10 seconds between the start of the attack and the doors opening. The passengers' first move is not to subdue the terrorists, but to flee the gas-filled cars. The commandos follow them, gassing an increasing number of passengers in their wake.
It is roughly another 10 seconds between the doors opening and the terrorists being gunned down by police. Thanks to the smart video, the alert to the attack was set off the moment the terrorists brandished their spray guns. Nevertheless, over the course of the 20 to 25 seconds that followed, tens of hundreds of passengers would have inhaled the fruit-scented gas that paralyzes the respiratory system and causes the lungs to constrict.

In the wee hours of the morning, the number of victims is unknown and no one has yet taken credit for the attacks. One thing is certain, according to commentators who can't avoid the circumstantial cliché: Canada will never be the same. Knowing what happened to the United States after the attacks of Sept. 11, this is not particularly reassuring.

July 6, 2020

No one could accuse the Canadian authorities — municipal, provincial or federal — of not having taken the threat of chemical or biological terrorism seriously. After the VX Boston subway attack that left 197 dead and 461 wounded, they poured every effort into attack prevention and disaster management.

Thus, the different levels of government agreed on a specific strategy in the event of an attack — the Equinox Plan — which was put into effect yesterday. Hospital staff were mobilized to deal with the victims at specific facilities in seven major Montreal hospitals, as designated by the federal and provincial health ministries.
Ambulance crews, firefighters and other emergency staff — alerted at the same time as police and all wearing protective suits — arrived at Berri station shortly after the terrorists were gunned down. Thanks to their individual dosimeters, ambulance staff identified the type of gas used in the attack and recognized with consternation that there was nothing they could do for the majority of the victims.

Tabun, a gas created in 1937 and used by Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War, belongs to a group of toxic and infectious agents for which Canada no longer has a vaccine or antidote, says a Montreal newspaper, citing anonymous sources within the federal government. At a time when threats seem to evolve with the seasons — and biotechnological progress — Montreal hospitals do not deal with it any more.

Did the terrorists know? Conspiracy theorists were not the only ones to wonder this upon hearing the first count of the victims: 310 dead and only 15 wounded, a tally that attests to the superior quality of the gas. As in many Western countries, including the United States, France and the U.K., the makeup of antidote, antibiotic and vaccine stocks are government secrets in Canada. The vaccines to which the government has access or, more to the point, the vaccines or antidotes to which it does not have access in sufficient quantities – or at all any more – is information that terrorist networks would be eager to put to use.

This raises the question on many people's minds: could there be a traitor or traitors among us?
If there is paranoia, it is but one of the manifestations of the shock felt today from one end of Canada to the other. Sorrow, sympathy, patriotism and anger are also in the mix. On television and radio, in the newspapers and on the internet alike, politicians, experts, and citizens have expounded on the hateful and insidious nature of the attack.

"Despite advances in genetic invention, gas is still probably the most powerful and effective instrument of terror available," an expert says. Another opined: "The possession of these weapons gives terrorists the opportunity to blackmail the governments of small and large countries, to sow the seeds of hate and panic in the population in general." Yet another asked, "Why on earth does Canada not have an antidote to Tabun any more? Of all the neurotoxic agents, isn't it the easiest to make?"

In Ottawa and Quebec, opposition parties have demanded public inquiries into the makeup of strategic stocks of strategic health products. The issue is not only crucial in the event of a chemical or biological attack, but also in the possibility of a pandemic.

While Montreal and Quebec authorities wait for these inquiries to be carried out, they have attempted to reassure metro users by promising to introduce new "protective" measures. In particular, they have announced the installation of sophisticated detectors that can recognize weapons, plastic explosives and chemical, biological and radioactive products. Each subway turnstile should soon be monitored by one of these detectors. Employed in many North American subways — New York, Boston, Chicago and Toronto, among others — the system should cause no slow down of service, unless there is an alert.

The technology was available as of 2014, but it would require an attack before it made its appearance in the Montreal metro.

As for the cameras, they will continue to scan everything in their path, and not only the activities of potential criminals or terrorists. Ten years after their installation, it is rare that people raise concerns of privacy.

We live in a time where safety comes first.

July 7, 2020

We've been saying it non-stop since the attack: On July 5, 2020, the Canadian psyche received a devastating shock; its population, long accustomed to peace, now finds itself at war with an unknown enemy. Not only does responsibility for the attack go unclaimed, but also authorities, scorning the media's repeated requests, refuse to release any information on the terrorists killed in the subway.

Canadians of all types have certainly pointed the finger at radical Islamists, whether they've immigrated here or grown up among us. Neo-Nazi groups have gone further by burning down mosques in Montreal, Toronto and Calgary, among other cities.
Still today, authorities call for calm. Still today, the media shows restraint. Yet the coincidence is remarkable: the attack in the Montreal metro occurred one week after Canada's official refusal to recognize the new Islamic republic born out of the revolution in Saudi Arabia. In so doing, Ottawa followed in the footsteps of Washington, where the Republican administration is ready for action.

The Canadian psyche most definitely did receive a shock, but certain reflexes remain. Yesterday, a Toronto columnist wrote that the Tabun attack drove a final nail in the coffin of the Quebec separatist movement.

"The separatists want to create a country where the army would be abolished and replaced with a peace force. There is no more peace, not even in Quebec," he wrote.
It was to be expected.

This morning, commentators in the Republic of Quebec — the francophone ones, to be more accurate — reacted to this comment with irritation, indeed, indignation. Separatist or federalist, Quebec commentators were united in their condemnation of the Toronto journalist's lack of tact.
"If the Tabun attack calls an ideology into question, it isn't Quebec separatism, but rather Canadian multiculturalism," wrote one Montreal columnist, having already attributed the attack to radical Islam. "This ideology should have died the day Ontario renounced plans to institute Shariah law for family litigation. Alas, it still continues to serve as an argument for our fundamentalists."

July 8, 2020

After the shock and the mourning, here is the surprise. The Tabun attack wasn't linked to Sept. 11, 2001, as we had thought, but rather to March 20, 1995. Its perpetrators are presumed to be part of a religious organization more closely resembling the Aum Shinri Kyo sect, responsible for the Sarin attack in the Tokyo subway, than Al-Qaeda, sponsor of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

The Canadian prime minister dropped this bomb this morning, at the same time announcing the arrest of the leaders of the Canadian sect, named "Supreme Victory," whose headquarters are located in the Eastern Townships in Quebec. Known for its apocalyptic prophecies, the organization has small offshoots in all Canadian provinces as well as in several U.S. states.
Like the suicide bombers, its disciples are representative of the ethnic diversity of North America. During the sect's last public declaration, less than a year ago, its leader, known as Victor I, predicted a series of spectacular events signalling the end of civilization. As usual, no one took it seriously.

Link ...