Tragedy in Paris
As Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes his way to Turkey for the G20 summit, his first international meeting will now be taken over by concerns over global security in the wake of the deadly Paris attacks that broke out in the French capital Friday evening.
Security and defence expert Christian Leuprecht, a professor of political science at the Royal Military College of Canada and Senior Fellow at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, joins us from France to discuss what the attacks mean for global security concerns and for the upcoming climate change conference to be held in Paris in just a couple of weeks.
What is the situation in France like now?
Christian Leuprecht: France was already in a heightened state of security. That seems to have sort of become the flavour of the day and the French have been vigilant, so this is clearly an exceptional circumstance, an exceptional attack that took even the very well-honed French security forces by surprise by the coordination and scale of the attacks.
Is this similar to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France earlier this year?
CL: There's a significant difference between Charlie Hebdo and this situation. What we've seen here is this was definitely coordinated. The weaponry that was used is not readily available, and more sophisticated than the weaponry used in the Charlie Hebdo attacks. This will be disconcerting to both French security and generally to Western security intelligence services.
What challenges are facing French police and security intelligence?
CL: Intelligence services will be trying to look for networks. But intelligence and police services have to make very difficult decisions about who they're concerned about, and even when they do, every now and then people inadvertently end up slipping through the cracks. The real challenge here is that the police will need to work very quickly to assure the French public and the international community that it will be safe to hold a major international meeting — the COP21 climate change conference — two weeks from now here in Paris, with the presence of most of the world's key leaders.
The way to respond to these types of terrorist attacks is to show that we're a society of resilience. I think it will be very important for this meeting to take place in the aftermath, but there will be some reticence in terms of being able to reassure people.
How might security precautions change?
CL: We'll certainly see even more heightened security. There will also be some soul searching in France after this. There's a puzzling undercurrent of a very small fraction of people in this country who appear to be prepared to resort to extreme, violent means to make whatever political point they're trying to make. No matter what security presence you have, there will always be this risk of this undercurrent coming to the fore. I think this presents a significant challenge in terms of the very tight timeframe French security forces are working with.