Shots Fired On Parliament Hill

[jbg]

Depends on how large. It's easy enough to protect a building like the Center Block or the Capital Building. It's a little harder but still doable to protect a large area like Parliament hill or Capital hill. Beyond that you can ensure that if anyone starts anything it will be finished very quickly. The Times Square district of New York, for example, is heavily patrolled by uniformed and plainclothes police and there are a lot of CCTVs there. Likewise downtown Ottawa.

Heavy patrolling works for limited areas such as Times Square or Parliament Hill. To try to carpet a city the size of Toronto or New York in such a manner would bankrupt those cities. Thus the use of security theater to make people feel safe and allow the politicians to say they are "doing something" about terror without offending any university professors or mass media.