Homegrown Terrorists: Canada Must Take the Jihadi Threat More Seriously

Years ago I recall seeing a mock recruitment poster for the U.S. Marines that went something like this: Join the Marines! Travel around the world! Meet new people … and kill them!
A man from Western Canada seems to have taken this idea, broadly speaking, to the extreme.
Furthermore, we collectively dodged a bullet in the past when it came to terrorism. In December 1999, Ahmed Ressam tried to enter the United States at the B.C.–Washington border with a car full of explosives. The so-called “Millennium bomber” was headed to LA’s main airport to execute an attack to coincide with the advent of the 21st century.  Thankfully, alert U.S. border patrol agents noticed his nervousness at the crossing and prevented him from achieving his goal.
This near miss was serious for Canada. Sources told me that the U.S. government warned Canada that had Ressam been successful, relations would have taken a turn for the worse. We in national security took note (Ressam had been on the radar of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service) and realized we needed to do better. As a side note, after 9/11 our greatest concern was to ensure our U.S. allies that Canada had nothing to do with the Al Qaeda hijackers that day.
But back to the Alberta jihadi.
And we need a government that recognizes jihadism as the world’s No. 1 terrorist threat, as it has been for the last four and a half decades.