Unified security for the Hill
Terror attack spurs plan to get rid of separate guards for House, Senate
The Senate and House of Commons will no longer have separate security forces inside the buildings on Parliament Hill.
A joint committee of senators and MPs said Tuesday they had agreed to unify the forces protecting each chamber, a move that comes almost three years after first being proposed, and one month after a gunman rushed inside the Centre Block wielding a rifle and a knife.
The unification of forces will eliminate overlapping jurisdictions on Parliament Hill that made it more difficult to protect the precinct.
However, the RCMP will continue to have jurisdiction for the grounds outside of the buildings, but will only have to communicate with one force inside, instead of two.
In a joint statement, House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer and Conservative Sen. Vern White, the co-chairs of the security committee, said the two chambers “are committed ... to implement these changes rapidly.”
The two forces were put in place at the time of Confederation to protect senators and MPs from each other should the two chambers ever come into conflict.
As the possibility of armed conflagration between senators and MPs waned over time, so too did the need to have two forces patrolling different hallways, where MPs and senators stroll freely.
The two chambers began nego- tiations to unify the security forces in 2010, but the talks failed.
The Senate then got sidetracked by a spending scandal that ate up resources that might otherwise have gone toward security negotiations.
What the two sides had discussed was one force to patrol the inside of the buildings, such as the Centre Block, East Block, Victoria and Confederation buildings, with one central command to liaise with the Mounties outside.
On Oct. 22, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau shot Cpl. Nathan Cirillo at the National War Memorial, and in a few moments made his way from there through the front door of the Centre Block with a loaded rifle. He wounded a Commons security guard who wrestled with him after he burst through the front door, then died in a gun battle with security forces outside the Library of Parliament, at the end of the Hall of Honour.
The shooting took place me- tres away from caucus rooms filled with Conservative and NDP MPs. Scheer ordered a review of security in the immediate aftermath.
In a memo to MPs, senators and Hill staffers, Scheer and White say that a number of operational changes have been put in place:
A joint Senate and Commons operational management team that meets on a daily basis;
Senior security officials from the House and Senate will now meet weekly;
The two chambers have started joint training of front-line employees;
“Please note that additional details are not being shared specifically to protect you and your staff,” the memo added. Under the agreement announced Tuesday, one senior executive will oversee the unified force and report to the Speakers of both chambers.