AMID OUTPOURING OF GRIEF, NAGGING QUESTIONS REMAIN

One dead cop is tragic. Four . . . unfathomable.

The nation will be draped in black today, the hoopla of the Liberal
party convention dampened, the closed beef border temporarily
forgotten, ballistic missile defence . . . well . . . who the hell
cares all of a sudden?

The Liberals rose for a moment's silence at their policy
convention.

Deputy Prime Minister Anne McLellan, whose riding is near the affected
area, was teary-eyed as she confirmed the news and pledged to do more
to give the RCMP the tools to do more, better and safer.

At this writing, the flags were still at full mast on Parliament Hill.
That won't last long.

Plans are afoot to mark the fallen four with a day of remembrance.
They'll be offered state funerals if the families want.

The news has yet to sink in: four RCMP dead. FOUR! Seemingly ambushed
in a hut being used as a marijuana grow op. By a single man with a
high-powered rifle.

In Mayerthorpe, Alta., of all places. Still, life is not all it seems
in this sleepy agricultural town of 1,570 residents. The dirty secret
of Mayerthorpe, with its 400-seat arena, teen centre, BMX bike track
and Senior's Friendship Centre is an epidemic methamphetamine problem,
so much so that local MP Rob Merrifield will be introducing a private
member's bill next week to allow RCMP to charge those in possession of
the tools to make the drug. Cough syrup. Cleaner. Anti-freeze. Battery
acid. Put them together with the tubes and burners and it'll be enough
to make a bust.

"If it wasn't for the drug problem in the riding, it'd be like
Mayberry out here," Merrifield told me as he arrived on the scene,
which has some nice fishing holes to complete the imagery of
innocence. "You feel awful for the families and friends of the
victims. They put their life on the line every day. But it's
frustrating when you have a serious drug problem in the community."

What next? It's hard to say. There's no precedent to map the fallout
of a tragedy on such a scale. They look to the North West Rebellion of
1885 for precedent. That means there's nobody alive today who was
around when so many officers have fallen in a single shooting.

A thousand tears have yet to drop and hundreds of questions remain in
the aftermath of this adjectives-elude-me-already tragedy.

It's a hard-to-figure scenario -- police guarding a crime scene being
ambushed by a lone gunman with a high-powered rifle. How can that happen?

But this much is certain: the consequences of this tragedy will
reverberate around Parliament Hill for months, if not years to come.

We'll be questioning the gun registry anew. If the murder weapon was
registered, we'll want to know how a cold-blooded cop killer could
have acquired such a weapon. If it wasn't, we'll again mock the notion
of a boondoggle billion-dollar registry as nothing more than a
hunter's inconvenience.

The marijuana decriminalization bill, now languishing as an unfilled
promise by Paul Martin on the order paper, may languish a lot longer
as public empathy for the move falters.

Liberal MP Dan McTeague, who has had a long interest in stamping out
marijuana grow ops, looks at this tragedy as the final straw -- he'll
be demanding minimum mandatory sentences in the coming weeks.

"It's become a national priority to address it. They are backed by
organized crime and we have four dead officers. It's time to move hard
against this plague with effective tools."

But those are all political debates to come. Today and for many days
to come, the grieving process will unfurl. The flags will drop to half
mast this morning. And the nagging questions will begin.

How could a rural detachment be almost wiped out in a single shooting?
And how can we make sure it never happens again?