A deadly shootout in Montreal that left a police officer, a civilian bystander and the gunman dead has quickly become a proxy battle over how to frame political violence in Canada.

Conservative-leaning outlets have focused first on establishing the shooter’s identity and ideological profile. The Epoch Times foregrounds that the “alleged gunman was named as 25-year-old Seth Scott Hatfield of Lethbridge, Alta.”¹ and pairs the basic facts with local police actions such as a “high-risk search” in his hometown.¹ The Blaze goes further, branding the text attributed to Hatfield as a call for “far-left communist totalitarianism, ‘revolutionary terror,’”² implicitly challenging early characterizations of the document as mainly “incel” in nature and stressing its anti-capitalist content.

Liberal outlets, by contrast, downplay ideological labels while centring institutional risk and extremism patterns. CBS offers a spare, fact-heavy frame — “2 killed, including police officer, in shooting in Montreal”⁵ — with limited early speculation on motive. The Guardian casts the events as a “’Nightmare’ shooting in Montreal”⁶ and emphasises their rarity, noting it was “the first time in 24 years that a Montreal police officer had been killed in the line of duty.”⁶

On the manifesto, The Guardian stresses its overlaps with the “involuntary celibacy – or ‘incel’ – movement,” along with “racist and misogynistic conspiracy theories,” and highlights police fears of “possible copycat attacks” after a federal bulletin warned it allegedly encouraged citizens to shoot officers.⁷ Conservative coverage, meanwhile, stresses that authorities “have indicated that the attack is not being considered terrorism,” framing this as a potential minimization of a radical leftist threat.²

Where both sides converge is on human cost. Conservative reports memorialize officer Mohamed Lamine Benredouane, whose “sense of duty, his dedication, and his professionalism will remain in our memories forever,”³ and civilian victim Michel Mizrahi, remembered as a “devoted father and friend” who likely saved lives by warning others away.⁴ Liberal coverage similarly stresses the shock to a city unaccustomed to such violence and notes that watchdogs are probing whether police gunfire killed the bystander.⁶⁷

The divide is less over what happened than over what it represents: a rare policing tragedy amid misogynist and extremist currents, or a warning sign of ideologically driven, explicitly anti-liberal violence that the state is reluctant to name.