Perimeter Security Coming to Alberta Courthouses

FTA Lawyer · March 29, 2006

Airport-style perimeter security will soon be the norm for courthouses in Alberta.

Starting April 10th with the Edmonton Law Courts building and the Calgary site of the Court of Appeal (and following up with other courthouses in summer of 2007 when the new Calgary mega-courthouse opens) every person who enters a courthouse in the province will go through metal detectors and have clothing and bags scanned.

(Although there will be a "fast track" with lower security measures for judges, lawyers, police, court staff etc.)

Alberta's new Sherrif's officers (formerly Court and Protective Services or CAPS) will administer the security perimeter...and to that end, a large number of new officers are being hired and trained.

Is this just a necessary development based on the current global environment we live in, or is it a significant step toward our society becoming more and more closely linked to the "culture of fear" of our neighbour to the South?

Currently, commisionaires or unarmed CAPS officers are stationed at the entrances of courthouses (but not in smaller rural sites) and armed CAPS officers are stationed to most courtrooms. Maybe we have been just naive and setting ourselves up for disaster, but I have never felt unsafe in a courthouse at any time and I wonder if we haven't just bought a small piece of the fear that terrorists have been selling...

Only a year or so ago, the Chief Justice of the SCC came to speak at the University of Calgary and there was not a single armed officer in sight. Admittedly, she likely had a plain-clothes bodyguard, but the point is we have mostly continued to maintain a fear-less freedom in Canada since 9-11, and this development would seem to be a significant step away from that status-quo.

Is it completely unrealistic to think that we could continue to live in such an open society as we have been and still remain safe?

FTA