Today on the Hill: A cloud of renewed security threats

OTTAWA – As parliamentarians begin their final week of the fall sitting of the House of Commons, they do so under the cloud of renewed security threats.

A video surfaced over the weekend showing a former University of Ottawa student, seemingly somewhere amidst rubble in the Middle East, urging Muslims to launch indiscriminant attacks against Canadians.

The man in the video, which was posted by a U.S.-based company that monitors trends within the global jihadist movement and distributed on Twitter and jihadi forums, calls on Muslims in Canada to either strap on explosives, or leave the country.

Here are some other events planned in Ottawa today:

— The Senate human rights committee holds hearings on Bill S-7, the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act.Among those expected to testify are Deepa Mattoo of the South Asian Legal Clinic of Ontario and Avvy Yao Yao Go of the Metro Toronto Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic;

— And we’ll see whether the country’s construction sector has kept up the strong pace of growth seen in September when Statistics Canada releases building permit figures for October.The value of permits jumped nearly 13 per cent in September to $7.5 billion, beating analysts’ estimates, after tumbling more than 27 per cent in August.

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