The horrific attack on Edmonton city hall by a heavily armed gunman the other day should be a stark warning to all municipalities in Canada.

There was damage to city hall after the suspect burst in, fired shots from a gun, and threw a Molotov cocktail to start a fire.

Thankfully, no one was injured. There is some damage to city hall. A brave Commissionaire stopped the intruder until Edmonton Police arrested him. Charges are pending.

It was a scary incident. Even though there were security measures in place, it is impossible to prevent a determined attacker from breaching most public buildings. The idea of most perimeter security is to delay the attacker and make it more difficult to breach the premises. It is never completely foolproof.

This breach is going to mean most city halls across Canada will undertake a review of its own security protocols. Good.

Security cameras, barricades, checkpoints, and other techniques will no doubt be explored. At the same time, there will be, properly, a concern about maintaining reasonable accessibility to public government office. It will be a challenging seesaw.

In an unrelated step, Calgary city council recently approved spending up to $8,000 for the mayor and each city councillor to install home security devices if they so choose.

That too is a growing trend. Municipal elected officials are increasingly vulnerable.

This all adds up to a riskier and more dangerous political climate for local government across Canada. It is, I suspect, partly reflective of the environment in which we live, but also the influence of the US political climate that always seeps across our border.

In the US, political violence has continued to be a problem after the horrific and unprecedented January 6 attack on Congress.

There have been reports of school board members being attacked, and fist fights at city council meetings. The gun laws in many places in the US are permissive, so the threat is always there of more extreme violence. Suddenly, being elected to public office—at any level—comes with high risk.

That is concerning. How many candidates, or potential office seekers, will simply look at the political climate and say, "I am not going to endanger myself or my family."

We may well lose some potentially great public servants because they never decide to run.

Security at city hall (and other government buildings) as well as the personal security of elected officials and appointed staff, must now be a regular consideration by our civic governments. That is going to create new challenges for vote-seekers who still want to 'press the flesh', and the concerns about rogue attackers.

These two issues—how to protect people and property in municipalities—are simply going to get more challenging, more difficult, and more expensive. When you add in cyber threats, the demands on local government for enhanced security are extraordinary. But we owe it to ensure the safety of our city hall elected officials and staff, and the places where local voters go to participate in our democratic local government.