Security experts wonder if Toronto's subway can be protected, after two bombing attacks on London's transit system within a few weeks.

Toronto has the third largest transit system in North America, after New York and Mexico City, and experts say this makes it a potential target. They also say it's a "soft target," in that it's relatively difficult to protect.

"London is, without a doubt, the best-prepared city in the world for what happened, and they couldn't prevent one or two of those events," Maj.-Gen. Lewis McKenzie (ret.) told CTV News Toronto on Saturday.

"So if that doesn't convince Canadians that it can happen anywhere, then they're just not paying attention. They've got their heads in the sand."

While New York has increased security on its own transit system following the London the July 7 and 21 attacks, including possible random searches of passengers, some feel Toronto's subway can never be made truly safe.

Prevention difficult

"If somebody wants to blow themselves up, there's nothing that anyone can do," Howard Moscoe, chair of the Toronto Transit Commission, says in an exclusive interview with CTV's Question Period, to be broadcast Sunday.

He added that the TTC has been preparing itself for how to respond to the aftermath of a terrorist attack.

"You can react effectively after the fact; it's very difficult to prevent any of this kind of thing from happening," Moscoe says.

Moscoe also says he doesn't want to become involved in the "politics of fear," and believes random searches would play into the hands of terrorists.

However, the TTC is in the process of installing security cameras into its buses and streetcars, and security officers regularly patrol the subway.

Julian Fantino, Ontario's commissioner of emergency management and former police chief of Toronto, believes it's possible to make the subway less of a soft target, but there is a great deal of work to be done.

"Given rise to what we now see -- the vulnerabilities, and how we can be victimized basically at will because of people practicing a very dastardly trade -- we need to do a lot more," Fantino says.

The issue is likely to be on the table when the federal Transport Minister Jean Lapierre meets urban transit authorities early next month. The Canadian Press reported Saturday that the government is studying the installation of surveillance cameras aboard Canadian buses and subway cars (Current CCTV technology is limited to stations and platforms).

David Harris, a former CSIS agent, says it's critical that authorities start taking a better look at public transit security issues.

"We have got to start examining people going into our underground systems and we have to be vigorous about it," Harris told CTV News. "This is a real threat we all face."

Author and terrorism expert Eric Margolis offered this perspective. "I don't think most Canadians want that, and until there's some horrible incident, they won't certainly demand it," he told CTV.ca.

People should also remember that almost 50,000 people die per year in automobile accidents, "and we're very nonchalant about that," Margolis says. "But a few people get killed in a terrorist attack, and we throw up our arms in a tizzy."

He also says that societies can survive such violence -- and prevail.

"The French in the 1980s went through a steady series of bombings in Paris. Very bloody bombings -- a lot of people were killed.

"But they learned to live with it, and they eventually broke the backs of the terrorist groups that were doing it. They toughed it out, and that's what we have to do."

With a report from Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife