By Randall Palmer, David Ljunggren and Richard Valdmanis
OTTAWA (Reuters) - A Canadian Parliament committee is set to hear from two top security officials on Monday about threats facing the nation following a pair of attacks by homegrown radicals who killed two soldiers on home soil last week.
The officials' testimony comes a day after police said Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, the man who killed a Canadian soldier and attacked the Parliament building, made a video of himself just before the attack that contained evidence that he was driven by ideological and political motives.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they were analyzing the video and could not release it at this time. A source familiar with the investigation said that in the video he specifically referred to Canada's foreign policy and made references to Allah.
The attack in Ottawa came two days after a man ran over and killed a soldier in Montreal, in a week when Canada sent additional warplanes to the Middle East to take part in air strikes against Islamic State militants in Iraq. Canadian officials vowed their involvement would not be influenced by the attacks, but urged soldiers at home to maintain a low profile, including avoiding appearing in public in uniform when off duty.
The government plans to introduce a bill on Monday to broaden the powers of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. The bill, which would allow CSIS to track and investigate potential terrorists when they travel out of the country, initially had been due to come up last Wednesday, but its introduction was derailed by Zehaf-Bibeau's attack.
A government source noted that measures stemming from Canada's rethink of security following the two attacks, which police say do not appear to have been linked, would come later.
"This is a step. This is not all that we will be doing," the government source said. "I don't want to leave the impression that this is the response (to last week's events). These are changes that were coming prior to that anyway."
The head of the RCMP and a senior official at CSIS will likely face tough questions from a Senate committee about how Zehaf-Bibeau and another man, Martin Rouleau, 25, both described by police as homegrown radicals, were able to kill two soldiers on Canadian soil last week in separate attacks.
Both Zehaf-Bibeau and Rouleau were shot dead by security officers.
The incidents sparked questions about Canada's culture of openness that allows free access into the Ottawa Parliament building.
Public tours of the building resumed on Monday and galleries where visitors can watch lawmakers in action also reopened for the first time since Wednesday's attack.
"Parliament will remain an institution that is both open and secure," said Andrew Scheer, speaker of the House of Commons.
SHOOTER'S TRAVEL PLANS QUESTIONED
RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson also could face questions about Zehaf-Bibeau. Paulson told reporters last week that he had come to Ottawa seeking a passport and intended to travel to Syria, a hotbed of Islamic militant activity.
But Zehaf-Bibeau's mother, a top Canadian bureaucrat dealing with immigration issues who Paulson cited as the RCMP's source for the information, denied his assertion. In a letter to news agency Postmedia, she said she told investigators her son told her he wanted to travel to Saudi Arabia to study the Koran.
Questions have also come up about how much information Canada shared with the United States about Zehaf-Bibeau and Rouleau, who ran over two Canadian soldiers in Quebec with a car, killing one, last week.
In the wake of Wednesday's attack, some U.S. officials raised concerns about security along the world's longest undefended border.
CSIS Assistant Director for Intelligence Michael Peirce is due to testify after Paulson.
On Tuesday a funeral will be held for Corporal Nathan Cirillo, 24, who police said was shot dead by Zehaf-Bibeau while standing watch at the nation's war memorial before he ran into parliament.
The funeral for 53-year-old Warrant Officer Patrice Vincent, who police said was run down by a car driven by Rouleau on Oct. 20 outside Montreal, will be on Saturday, Nov. 1.
(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson in Toronto; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Alden Bentley and James Dalgleish)