What bothers me are when people reduce discourse to simple answers, ie. "There should be heightened security there from now on."
Heightened security? What do people think should have happened differently? This all happened in the span of about one minute. Would people have preferred that mall security start shooting at the suspect? Do people want to have metal detectors installed in malls? No thanks.
There is no "ceiling" we can eventually hit where security is high enough that crime occurs 0 times per year. There will ALWAYS be SOME crime, and the idea is to keep it as low as possible using methods that are effective. The answers aren't as simple or cheap as "more/higher security".
To keep crime low, like we generally do in Canada, you need to work on creating safe and caring communities, helping the mentally ill, and reducing poverty/increasing inequality.
But to increase security? Sounds like an emotional knee-jerk reaction, a "simple answer" that doesn't pay attention to the true causes of rare crimes like this one, and is an ineffective answer that would in the end just create more irrational fear and hassle for people.
Fortunately, most of the discourse has stuck on the course of "This is a safe city, and this incident does not change that. Go enjoy your city as you would have any day before yesterday" which is great and a great approach for the people of Toronto. The only calls for heightened security I've heard so far have been from a couple family members of victims, and that is completely understandable since this would be a particularly emotional event for them and would illicit an emotional response.
Meanwhile, the war on poverty and inequality, guns, gangs and violence must continue with real, solid solutions rooted in evidence.
/end rant.