Reply #16: I'll bet the PM does [View All]

[iverglas]

They would be members of the RCMP.

Was that what you had in mind? Protecting the head of government from possible assaults? Members of the national police service being employed to protect the head of government and carrying firearms for that purpose? Like that?

Maybe you had something else in mind. Let me know if you have further questions.


Perhaps you've heard this tale ...

http://www.canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=M1ARTM0010514

While the government will not get a look until later this week at an RCMP report about how a man armed with a knife ended up at the door of Chrétien's bedroom in the small hours of Sunday, Nov. 5, authorities already have tightened the security cordon around the Prime Minister. And Chrétien may well be forgiven for the hope that never again will he have to pick up an Inuit stone carving from his nightstand and prepare to defend himself against a potential assassin.

The break-in, only hours after the assassination in Tel Aviv of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin on Nov. 4, might make for a compelling TV drama if it had not been such a horribly close call. "It was good in a way" that the intruder had a knife, Chrétien said last week en route from Rabin's funeral to Australia. "If he had a gun ..." There was no need to finish the sentence. ...

... Some of the facts surrounding the break-in became clear last week. Aline Chrétien woke up about 2:45 a.m. on Sunday morning after hearing a noise in the three-storey stone mansion that stands next to a cliff above the Ottawa River. She got up to investigate, and in the hallway outside the Chrétiens' bedroom came face-to-face with a man carrying a jackknife and putting a glove on one hand. He had entered the house by breaking a side-door window. She retreated to the bedroom, locked the door and woke her husband. He did not believe what she told him. "You're dreaming," he replied, as he later related to journalists what had happened. As Madame Chrétien locked a second door to the room, the Prime Minister, to defend himself, grabbed a 15-inch Inuit stone carving of a loon. If the man had broken into the room, "he would have had one big headache," Chrétien said. The Prime Minister has often praised his wife for her political acumen; last week it was time to thank her for saving his life. "I am lucky she was there," he told reporters. "And I am grateful."