There are, quite literally, hundreds of thousands of ways you are more likely to die or be critically injured than at the hands of a terrorist in Canada.

Cancer, heart disease, diabetes… medical malpractice, bad drug interactions, falls in the bathtub … poor food inspection … bad water, malaria, drunk drivers, venereal disease … improper antibiotics, toxic shock syndrome … heck, even bed sores.

When it comes to violence, statistics would indicate you are still many hundreds of times more likely to die at the hands of your spouse than some whacked-out extremist.

According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, the average American is as likely to be crushed to death by televisions or other furniture as they are to die in a terrorist attack.

You get the idea. There are many ways to die. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, sooner or later, something out there is going to kill you.

Now, before I get your conservative-infused dander up, I am not being an apologist for anyone who would commit violence in the name of Islam, or of any religion or ideology, for that matter. Such people need to be identified, isolated and stopped wherever and whenever possible. The question is: at what cost?

The Harper government has made clear — most recently today, with the unveiling of Bill C-51 — that it plans to bring its full force to bear against this looming Islamic wave of death and destruction. It will spend billions more – on top of the billions already spent in the immediate post-9/11 era and in Afghanistan – to protect Canadians from this new and unpredictable peril.

The problem is this: Islamic extremism is predictable — even quite containable. For the most part, the extremists are “over there” and are very unlikely to ever be allowed “over here.”

But what about the self-radicalized ‘lone wolves’, that latest guerrilla tool in the arsenal of radical Islam? In October, two Canadian soldiers were killed by two self-radicalized converts (or so we’ve been told). It was awful and unacceptable, no question. Other examples of this new breed of murderous zealots at work in “The West” (a.k.a. Christendom) are the 11 who were killed at Charlie Hebdo and the three killed in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Let’s accept a basic truth: There’s only so much money we’re willing to give the government to protect us from bad things and, when you get out of bed in the morning, terrorism is very, very far from the top of the list of risks you’ll face.

But what about Marc Lepine (14 killed and 13 others wounded at the Universite de Montreal) and Adam Lanza (26 killed at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut), or even Justin Bourque, the Moncton shooter who killed three RCMP officers and badly injured two others just last year?

Looked at a little differently, why are we willing to spend billions more to protect ourselves from a handful of isolated Islamist madmen — whose targets tend to be pretty easy to predict – versus other depraved psychos within our society who kill for drugs, for organized crime, or to heed the voices in their heads.

Let’s accept a basic truth: There’s only so much money we’re willing to ‘invest’ in having the government to protect us from bad things and, when you get out of bed in the morning, terrorism is very, very far from the top of the list of dangers you’re likely to face.

The budget for the Department of Public Security and Emergency Preparedness is more than $6 billion and growing by leaps and bounds. Add to that the Department of National Defence, which handles our ‘Five Eyes’ clandestine eavesdropping, and the Department of Justice’s secret courts and prosecuting services and you realize the bill for countering terrorism is at least in the realm of $8 to $10 billion per year. And that doesn’t take into account the less obvious costs that come from missed opportunities and the reduced creativity that inevitably comes with constant surveillance.

Few would argue that investing well in shutting down global terror networks and human smuggling organizations — particularly when done in conjunction with our international partners, isn’t money well spent. The possibility of nuclear materials being acquired by terrorist groups requires constant vigilance and investment in good intelligence and good diplomats. And the fact that there has not been a repeat of 9/11 in 13 years — or something worse — suggests that our intelligence services deserve a lot of credit. Indeed, it speaks volumes about their abilities and the effectiveness of current laws that, since 2001 , only a handful of one-off incidents have happened on North American soil.

But before we allow ourselves to be intimidated by our own politicians into believing we have to be terrified — that we have to give up more of our rights and money to protect us from this new “threat” — why don’t we ask the government to do something more about those old, less politically-sexy scary things … like pollution, medical malpractice, drunk drivers, legal semi-automatics in the hands of idiots, and, yes, bed sores (imagine the lives that would be saved by just a few more nurses and orderlies) … you know the stupid preventable stuff that really kills people all too frequently.

FDR famously said that we have nothing to fear but fear itself. Let’s not lose ourselves, and our country, to politically-motivated hysteria.

James Baxter is editor in chief and executive chairman of iPolitics.