A Calgary mother is critical of the way security officials handled the terror threat that happened in Strathroy, Ontario.
Aaron Driver was killed during a confrontation with RCMP officers last week. Driver moved from Winnipeg to Strathroy as a condition of a peace bond which was applied last year after he was arrested after being accused of supporting ISIS.
The situation hits close to home for Christianne Boudreau because her son Damion Clairmont was killed fighting for the Islamic State in 2014.
Clairmont was being watched by Canadian intelligence for two-years.
Boudreau said she had no warning at the time and didn’t receive any help from the government.
Speaking from her home in Eymet, France Saturday afternoon, she says the fact that officials knew Driver was making threats and didn’t act to help him or his family is a failure.
“It’s devastating, absolutely devastating. The whole family wanted to help him but they were left on their own to do it. I don’t think that’s right, I don’t think that’s fair to try to handle something of this magnitude and understand it from the beginning. It’s so complex, and then for him to be left in their care without assistance or support – it just wasn’t fair for any of them,” Boudreau said.
READ MORE: Aaron Driver’s father remembers son’s grief-stricken childhood, says ‘worst fears’ came true
“It’s a struggle when you have an adult like that, how do you force them into counselling? You can’t.”
“With the peace bond they could’ve use that. They could’ve said, ‘you have to go through the steps or if you do not comply we will put you back in prison.’ But that was never the case, there was no follow-up and so he was left to his family who don’t necessarily understand the complexities, don’t necessarily have the qualifications to deal with it,” Boudreau said.
“So for anything to work, the government should put something in place.”
Boudreau doesn’t think anything is going to change or a solution will be made to prevent something like this from happening again.
“I watched everything that rolled out in October 2014. There was a lot of promises made back then, in both those instances. As soon as it came off the radar and the cameras were off, it went away and here we are again with another senseless loss of life. It’s not just this young man who lost his life, it’s the family who will live with this forever,” Boudreau said.
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