
The Ontario legislature is introducing airport-style security next year, as it becomes one of the last provinces to start making all visitors pass through metal detectors – upgrades being made in the wake of two deadly attacks in Toronto last year.
Currently, visitors to Queen’s Park can enter through several doors, staffed by legislative security officers, and must present a government-issued ID. Visitors must only go through a metal detector and have their bags scanned to get into the public galleries of the chamber, to watch question period, for example.
That will change around this time next year. Construction is set to begin this week on a visitor screening centre, to be built as an addition outside the building’s south basement entrance. All visitors entering the building will have to pass through that one entrance, with metal detectors and X-ray scanners for bags.
“I think we were very blessed to have been able to keep the Ontario legislature as open and as accessible for such a long time,” Sergeant-at-Arms Jackie Gordon said in an interview. “It’s wonderful that we’ve been able to do that, but I think the security landscape suggests we need to consider a more robust process.”
That security landscape includes major incidents in Toronto last year, Ms. Gordon said, with a shooter killing two people and injuring 13 on a bustling stretch of the city’s Greektown, and 10 people being killed and another 16 injured in a van attack.
“These incidents bring it closer to home,” Ms. Gordon said. “They hadn’t really happened in this backyard and now we’re seeing that change.”
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