What Canada can learn from Australia on adequately protecting citizens at live events

Yahoo

5 days ago

In April 2025, a man drove an SUV through a crowd of people attending a Filipino cultural festival in Vancouver, killing 11 people and injuring dozens more. In response, the British Columbia government immediately commissioned an inquiry to examine the systemic causes of the incident and whether any lessons could be learned from the tragedy.
Read more:
The commission came up with six recommendations based on gaps in the current municipal application and approval system for public events across the province.
One key recommendation was that all public events should be required to complete a risk assessment. This isn't currently happening across the province. The absence of such analysis poses a risk for public safety.
Another recommendation was the creation of local knowledge capacity to support event organizers, particularly for small and rural events, where the expertise to conduct a basic security risk assessment is lacking.
Forseeable tragedy
As I argued in August 2022, the live events industry lacks the same level of professionalism as other occupations. Many of these small event organizers are amateurs who lack the resources to properly deal with the security risks involved in holding their events.
Read more:
These factors, combined with emerging security risks, meant that the tragedy at the Lapu Lapu festival could be considered a foreseeable event given the risk realities associated with modern mass gatherings.
The inquiry report highlighted how B.C. is lagging behind other international jurisdictions in terms of legislative pro-activeness in securing public events. This policy deficiency is actually a Canada-wide problem; the country is woefully behind other western nations when it comes to securing public events.
My doctoral thesis examined this very issue when I compared the regulation and application process to host public events in Canada and Australia's largest cities.
Australia vs. Canada
Firstly, it's important to note that Canada is a less safe country in terms of security than Australia, all things considered equal. Canada's porous border with the United States means more illegal firearms are entering the country, resulting in more gun violence than in Australia, where there are more restrictive gun ownership laws.
The Lapu Lapu attack was not investigated as an act of terrorism, but in a related concern, Canada's intelligence-gathering and national security laws place it at a counter-terrorism disadvantage compared to Australia.
Relatively speaking, research suggests Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms hinders its security services from being able to detect and investigate terrorism-related offences given the greater importance placed on individual rights compared to Australia, where there is no such Charter equivalent.
Australia also has pro-active foreign intelligence collection capabilities to aid in its counter-terrorism efforts, while Canada's CSIS agency only has domestic capabilities. That essentially requires it to import intelligence from its allies.
Given these facts, it would seem plausible that Canada would be at greater risk for security threats at public events — including terrorist attacks, active shooters, etc. — than Australia.
When I compared the data between both countries in my research, it suggested Australia has more public event regulation than Canada.
It was quantitatively shown that Australian officials require risk assessments and other proactive measures from event organizers, including for risk mitigation, while Canadian officials are mostly concerned with reactive security response plans — in other words, determining how organizers would respond to attacks after they occurred.
An analysis of event application documents in both countries reveal that Australian municipalities disproportionately emphasize 'risk management' in approving events compared to Canadian municipalities.
Three ways the B.C. report falls short
The B.C. report missed out on examining several important elements.
Firstly, it did not take a holistic, deep dive into just how vulnerable public events are to myriad security threats — like active shooters, crowd crushing and terrorist attacks — but instead focused solely on the hostile vehicle threat.
It also failed to consider the urgency of governments to adopt policy changes in the face of emerging threats on public spaces, like drone attacks.
Secondly, the report made no mention of the need for law enforcement to develop stronger ties to share intelligence with event organizers as a proactive measure to protect mass gathering events from violence. The Hamas attacks at a music festival in Israel in October 2023 highlight the worst outcome of such failures.
Read more:
Lastly, there was no call for action or recommendation for the federal government to play a greater role in providing guidance to the industry and lower levels of government.
National security is a federal issue as well as the regulation of airspace for drones. In countries such as the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States, the national government provides guidance on protecting public spaces. There is no such policy leadership in Canada.
The B.C. findings show Canadian authorities have a lot of work to do to make public events safer for Canadians. With the FIFA World Cup coming to Canada next year, Canadian governments still have time to implement corrective actions to ensure soccer fans stay safe.
This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organisation bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: Sean Spence, Royal Military College of Canada
Read more:
Calls to designate the Bishnoi gang a terrorist group shine a spotlight on Canada's security laws
B.C.'s mental health law is on trial — and so is our commitment to human rights
Vancouver SUV attack exposes crowd management falldowns and casts a pall on Canada's election
Sean Spence provides security consulting services within the hospitality industry.