Chris Selley: Release the video left behind by Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau

Hard to disagree with Selley on this:

There is nothing implausible about Mr. Paulson’s account. But considering the RCMP’s record when it comes to described video, I think Mr. Harper’s trust is misplaced. Seven years ago, when the RCMP finally released Paul Pritchard’s footage of Robert Dziekanski’s fatal encounter with police at the Vancouver airport, it wasn’t just the officers’ clearly excessive force that made headlines. It was also impossible not to notice some, shall we say, significant discrepancies between the RCMP’s previous account of the video and what was actually on it.

The RCMP said the officers didn’t use pepper spray on Mr. Dziekanski because there were too many people around. In fact, they were alone behind Plexiglas. The RCMP said Mr. Dziekanski grabbed something from a desk before he was tasered. He didn’t. The RCMP said there were three officers involved. In fact there were four. The latter falsehood didn’t even seem to serve any purpose. It was as if making stuff up was just standard procedure.

It’s therefore entirely understandable that the missing video invites speculation. Some suspect the RCMP, the government or both want to promote the narrative Mr. Paulson described — a lucid, ideologically motivated gunman; i.e., a terrorist — the better to promote security legislation. Perhaps the video paints a more ambiguous picture. Perhaps it paints a totally different picture, the more conspiratorial will suggest — that of an unhinged, purposeless killer; i.e., not a terrorist.

It’s an infuriating debate, in many ways: Was Michael Zehaf-Bibeau a terrorist or not? Honestly, who cares? We know what he did. He seems to have left us video evidence of why he did it. Had he lived, he would be staring down a life sentence whether or not prosecutors managed to pin the T-word on him. And if there is an appropriate policy or legislative response, it ought to be a response to what he did and why he did it, regardless of whether his actions and motives tick enough boxes to invoke the big scary T-word.

The terrorist-or-not debate can be absurd enough when we have the facts. Without them, it’s even more so. We can’t trust the RCMP’s account of the video. We can’t trust parliamentarians to properly balance civil liberties and security even when the evidence before them is uncontested. There’s only one solution, and it’s an easy one: Release the damn video.

Chris Selley: Release the video left behind by Parliament Hill shooter Michael Zehaf-Bibeau