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Canada's spies face tough questions after militant attacks

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On Monday one of Canada's top spy officials assured Canadian lawmakers that were no signs of an imminent terrorist attack on the country. Within hours a disaffected Muslim convert had run down two soldiers, killing one of them.

Two days later, another Muslim convert armed with a rifle shot dead a Canadian soldier guarding the national war memorial in the capital, Ottawa, and then raced into the nearby parliament, where he exchanged fire with security personnel before being shot dead.

Police said on Thursday they had no information indicating the two attacks were linked, and no Islamist militant group, such as Islamic State and al Qaeda, has claimed credit.

The absence of an apparent organized conspiracy by the two men is of cold comfort to Canada's security agencies, who are facing uncomfortable questions about what they knew and when and why they were unable to stop the attacks since both attackers were known to them as potential security threats.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, Canada's main spy agency, did not immediate respond to requests for comment.

Parliament attacker Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, 32, who was shot after passing a room in which Prime Minister Stephen Harper was meeting lawmakers, was not under surveillance at the ime of the attack, a US government source told Reuters. 

The source said Zehaf-Bibeau was regarded as a security threat by Canadian authorities but not a high enough threat to warrant constant surveillance, which is often costly and labor intensive.

Western intelligence and security officials have said that few if any Western spy and security agencies have sufficient personnel to closely monitor all suspects linked to the Syrian and Iraq conflict. They need to prioritize surveillance and focus on the suspects considered most dangerous, US officials said.

Police said on Thursday there were at least 93 Canadians who were viewed as "high risk" because they wanted to travel abroad to join Islamic militant groups. Zehaf-Bibeau, however, was not on that list, they said.

It takes between 10 to 12 personnel to plant a listening device and up to 28 agents to follow and constantly monitor a suspect, a lawmaker told Monday's hearing by the Senate Committee on National Security and Defence, citing testimony from CSIS personnel.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States, heightened monitoring and investigation of potential threats has put a strain on Canada's security apparatus at a time when Ottawa has been trying to bring a wide budget deficit under control.

CSIS' budget was C$513.0 million in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014. The budget for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was C$2.76 billion in the same period.

"There is nothing more we can do with the budget we have except to prioritize internally as effectively as we can, and I think we're doing that," Jeff Yaworski, deputy director of operations for the CSIS, said on Monday.

Yaworski said CSIS worked with the RCMP "wherever possible" to monitor people who had returned from abroad and were considered a threat, but "we can't devote all our resources o all of them all the time."

PASSPORT RENEWAL

The government stalled a passport renewal application by Zehaf-Bibeau, a small-time criminal who had recently lived at a homeless shelter and was estranged from his mother, the US government source said.

Canadian police said on Thursday they suspected that delay may have helped pushed Zehaf-Bibeau to launch the attack. It is not clear whether Zehaf-Bibeau was influenced in any way by Martin Rouleau-Couture, 25 who was shot dead by police on Monday after running over the two soldiers in a Quebec parking lot.

Another US source familiar with the case said Canada's move to block renewal of Zehaf-Bibeau's passport had been recent. It was not known when he came to the attention of Canadian security authorities.

Police said that it now appeared that Zehaf-Bibeau had intended to travel to Syria, where Islamic State has taken over swathes of the country. Yaworski said his agency was aware of at least 50 Canadians involved in terrorist-related activity with Islamic State and other extremist groups in the region.

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