Bill Blair, RCMP's Brenda Lucki rebuke allegations of interference in NS shooting probe | FULL
Portapique survivor of N.S. mass shooting dies
A man who survived the mass shooting in Portapique, N.S., in April 2020 has died suddenly.
RCMP responded to Leon Joudrey’s home on Sunday where they found him deceased. They say his death is not considered suspicious.
Joudrey lived in Portapique at the time of the mass shooting.
The killer’s common-law spouse, Lisa Banfield, ran to Joudrey’s home for help the morning of April 19, 2020, after she had spent the night hiding from Gabriel Wortman.
Joudrey spoke with CTV News on several occasions after the tragedy.
“I'm the lucky one, I survived,” Joudrey told CTV News in an interview a month after the 22 murders.
CTV News last spoke with Joudrey on Oct. 26. He said he had spent almost two years living anywhere other than Portapique, but that he had to return to maintain his home and land off Orchard Beach Road, after unsuccessfully trying to sell the property.
“Living here is a complete nightmare,” he told CTV News. “All I see is my friends that died, and fires, and SWAT teams and I don't even want to be here anymore.”
In addition to having difficulty selling his property, Joudrey said he was also under financial strain. He had been unable to work at his former forestry job for two years, and said his disability benefits through his employer would run out in early 2023.
He said the whole experience had taken a toll on his mental health and that he spent a month in a psychiatric hospital. He said he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, but that no one followed up with him after his release.
“Well, they kind of forgot about me,” he told CTV News on Oct. 26. “I kind of fell through the cracks in the mental health system and it was about four months before they did any follow-up or checks with me."
Joudrey said he was seeing a psychiatrist and had recently connected with a psychologist.
One of the lawyers representing many of the families of the victims and survivors told CTV News last week that Joudrey’s struggle is indicative of what many are going through.
“A number of them feel, just forgotten about,” Sandra McCulloch said. “There are people who are survivors of the mass casualty event that are still having a hard time; they're still not fully supported."
The issue of supporting survivors is one she raised at the Mass Casualty Commission examining the tragedy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fXZoGqdvII&ab_channel=CTVNews
'I can't go back': Gunman's neighbour still haunted by N.S. shooting rampage
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'I can't go back': Haunted by mass shooting, man who sheltered gunman's girlfriend scared to go home
Leon Joudrey says he has been unable to return home to Portapique, N.S.,
after 13 people were killed in the community the weekend of April 18,
2020.
HALIFAX -- A month after the worst killing spree in Canadian history, the man who took in the shooter's girlfriend during the rampage says the events of that weekend put him through "hell" and he's too scared to return home to Portapique, N.S.
“I’m the lucky one. I survived … but I still have to deal with the aftermath of it,” says Leon Joudrey.
A forestry worker for more than 30 years, Joudrey says he only feels safe in the woods after the weekend of April 18, when a gunman went on a killing spree, claiming the lives of 22 people in several Nova Scotia communities.
Joudrey has been living in a trailer on a Nova Scotia backroad for the past month -- unable to stomach the thought of returning to his home in Portapique, where the gunman also had a home and where he started his rampage.
Gabriel Wortman killed 13 people and burned a number of homes in the community of Portapique.
Joudrey says it’s too much for him to bear.
“No, I can’t go back to the house now -- scared,” he says.
'All hell broke loose'
A good friend of Greg and Jamie Blair -- who were among the 22 victims -- Joudrey spent part of the evening at their home the night of April 18.
He came home around 10 p.m. and remembers hearing gunshots shortly after, but says he didn’t think much of it, as it’s fairly common to hear that sound in the rural community.
An early riser, Joudrey got up around 3:30 a.m. on April 19 to walk his dogs. That’s when he saw a message on his phone about fires in the area.
“I went for a drive. It’s only a few hundred yards out to Portapique Road … seen a little bit of flame and a SWAT vehicle and I knew it was Gabriel’s house,” recalls Joudrey.
“I figured they were there looking for him because I knew what he was like.”
Joudrey says he had had run-ins with Wortman before, and decided he didn’t like the 51-year-old denturist.
He knew Wortman had purchased old police cars at an auction, but never saw them adorned with police decals.
Unnerved by the fire and police presence, Joudrey returned to his home and grabbed his shotgun.
“Got my shotgun, with my phone, went in my bedroom with my dogs, because if SWAT’s around, ERT (Emergency Response Team), you stay in your house.”
He stayed there until early the next morning, when he heard someone pounding on his door.
It was Wortman’s girlfriend, who had just spent hours hiding from her boyfriend in the woods.
“She came in, told me stuff went on, just that he went crazy, is what she said,” recalls Joudrey. “She couldn’t call 911. I called 911. They came, three vehicles, about six of them with SWAT, guns, and all hell broke loose then.”
Joudrey describes the scene as confused and chaotic, with guns drawn -- some pointed at his dogs.
“They came to my house after they took Gabriel’s girlfriend and they asked if anybody was in my house. I said, ‘no.’ Another guy asked if there was anybody in my garage. I said, ‘no.’ They leave. They didn’t clear anything. They just got in their vehicles and left and left me there.”
Joudrey eventually flagged down other police officers, who told him to get out of Portapique.
It wasn’t until hours later, when someone phoned to check on him, that he learned what exactly had transpired overnight.
“I thought we all slept through these fires. That’s the only thing I knew took place, was two fires,” says Joudrey. “I knew they were looking for Gabriel, but I didn’t know why.”
Wortman was eventually shot and killed by police outside a gas station in Enfield, N.S., roughly 13 hours after his rampage began.
Calls for public inquiry
As Joudrey tries to deal with the loss of his friends and neighbours, he is also seeking answers as to why he was left in the midst of the chaos for hours, and told nothing.
He has expressed those concerns to Nova Scotia’s Serious Incident Response Team -- which is responsible for investigating all serious incidents involving police in the province -- but was told his complaint is outside SIRT’s mandate because he wasn’t injured.
Joudrey believes the province should call a public inquiry to answer those questions -- and more.
As for why the shooter didn’t come to his house, Joudrey says he suspects it’s because Wortman knew he was a hunter who had guns in his home.
“He knew I had firearms, which are legal of course, but he knew I was confrontational and I might interrupt his plan. That’s the only thing I can think of.”
He doesn’t believe he will ever be able to return to Portapique -- saying it has changed forever by a loss greater than most can fathom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm9pdquSKRk&ab_channel=ohdear
FR LEON JOUDREY 29 video
Automatic reply: Auto: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All Hallows Eve N'esy Pas?
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 Premier of Ontario | Premier ministre de l’Ontario<Premier@ontario.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:33 PM |
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Van Bynen, Tony - M.P.<Tony.VanBynen@parl.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:33 PM |
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Michaud, Kristina - Députée<Kristina.Michaud@parl.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:33 PM | ||
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Bonjour, Nous accusons réception de votre courriel. Votre demande sera traitée dans les plus brefs délais et nous communiquerons avec vous pour y donner suite. Pour rencontrer un membre de notre équipe, veuillez prendre rendez-vous par téléphone au bureau de circonscription le plus près. Si vous décidez d'appeler à l'un de nos bureaux en attente d'une réponse courriel, veuillez-nous en aviser.
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Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada<mcu@justice.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 2:33 PM |
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Thank you for writing to the Honourable David Lametti, Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada.
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Merci d'avoir écrit à l'honorable David Lametti, ministre de la Justice et procureur général du Canada.
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From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 14:31:44 -0300
Subject: Fwd: Auto: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety
and National Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All
Hallows Eve N'esy Pas?
To: "Ron.McKinnon" <Ron.McKinnon@parl.gc.ca>, "Kristina.Michaud"
<Kristina.Michaud@parl.gc.ca>, paul.chiang@parl.gc.ca, "pam.damoff"
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From: "Perspectives (POEC/CEDU)" <Perspectives@poec-cedu.gc.ca>
Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2022 13:46:38 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: Attn Colleen McKeown I just called Trust
that Greg DelBigio and a legion of RCMP members should remember me
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
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From: keepcanada <keepcanada@protonmail.com>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:16:24 +0000
Subject: Auto: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety and
National Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All Hallows
Eve N'esy Pas?
To: david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Your amazing Canada, thank you so much. We have added this link to
organize helpers! If you are wanting to help please fill out a form so
we can delegate loglogistic and location!! Freedom together !
http://register.adopt-a-
Sent with [ProtonMail](https://
https://davidraymondamos3.
Friday, 28 October 2022
Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - October Surprise 2022 - with the help of
Paul Palango and his pals
Automatic reply: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All Hallows Eve N'esy Pas?
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Nicole Colleen O'Byrne<nobyrne@unb.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 1:17 PM |
| To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com> | |
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Rogers, Churence - M.P.<Churence.Rogers@parl.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 1:16 PM |
| To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com> | |
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Thank you for contacting the office of Member of Parliament Churence Rogers.
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Berthold, Luc - Député<Luc.Berthold@parl.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 1:16 PM | ||||||||||||||||||
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(English follows)
Bonjour,
Je vous remercie de m’avoir fait parvenir votre message. Vos commentaires sont importants pour moi, afin de bien comprendre les enjeux qui sont importants pour les gens de Mégantic-l’Érable et du Canada.
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From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 13:16:11 -0300
Subject: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National
Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All Hallows Eve N'esy Pas?
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From: "DOJ: Attorney General" <attorneygeneral@doj.nh.gov>
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 15:35:02 +0000
Subject: DOJ: Automatic Response
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
We appreciate your taking the time to submit a question or concern.
Because of the volume of emails we receive, we are unable to respond
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NH To File Amicus Brief in Support of Lobster and Fishing Industry in the Northeast
Concord, NH – Today, the State of New Hampshire filed a notice of intent to file an Amicus Curiae Brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in support of the northeast lobster and fishing industry in Maine Lobstermen's Association v. National Marine Fisheries Services, No. 22-5238.
In September 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ruled in favor of the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS), upholding their Biological Opinion and the subsequent regulatory decisions based on it, which would impose significant new restrictions and regulations on New England's lobster industry.
"This ruling, if upheld, would devastate New England's lobster industry with restrictive regulations brought on by the federal government," said Governor Chris Sununu. "This is a bipartisan issue New Hampshire and Maine are aligned on, and we as state officials have an obligation to stand up and provide the leadership necessary to fight Washington and to preserve the lobster and fishing industry in our states."
Automatic reply: N.S. Mass Casualty Commission bans sharing video and audio of the testimony of RCMP Cst. Greg Wiley's testimony???
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| Perkins, Rick - M.P. | Sat, Sep 3, 2022 at 10:31 PM |
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| Duheme, Michael | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 4:33 PM |
Justice Minister<JUSTMIN@novascotia.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 4:32 PM | ||||||||
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Thank you for your email to the Minister of Justice. Please be assured that it has been received by the Department. Your email will be reviewed and addressed accordingly. Thank you.
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Ministerial Correspondence Unit - Justice Canada<mcu@justice.gc.ca> | Mon, Oct 31, 2022 at 4:32 PM |
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From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 16:32:47 -0300
Subject: Re: N.S. Mass Casualty Commission bans sharing video and
audio of the testimony of RCMP Cst. Greg Wiley's testimony???
To: "Perkins, Rick - M.P." <rick.perkins@parl.gc.ca>
Cc: "heather.decoste@
<heather.decoste@
"Maureeen.E.Doherty@rcmp-grc.
<Maureeen.E.Doherty@rcmp-grc.
<Mark.Flynn@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Sean.Mcgillis@rcmp-grc.gc.ca"
<Sean.Mcgillis@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Brenda.Lucki"
<Angie.Boucher@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
<Brigitte.Voitel@rcmp-grc.gc.
<Nathalie.Drouin@justice.gc.ca
<Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca>, mcu <mcu@justice.gc.ca>, PREMIER
<PREMIER@gov.ns.ca>, info <info@masscasualtycommission.
<info@gg.ca>, "Ian.Shugart" <Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>, "ian.fahie"
<ian.fahie@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Mark.Blakely"
<Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "warren.mcbeath"
<warren.mcbeath@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>, "chris.marshall@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<chris.marshall@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<rcmpns-grcne@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "mike.lokken"
<mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "michael.omalley@rcmp-grc.gc.
<michael.omalley@rcmp-grc.gc.
<Michelle.Boutin@rcmp-grc.gc.
"fin.minfinance-financemin.
<fin.minfinance-financemin.
<Frank.McKenna@td.com>, "Katie.Telford" <Katie.Telford@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>,
"kris.austin" <kris.austin@gnb.ca>, "michael.macdonald"
<michael.macdonald@
<Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
<Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>, "Ellis, Stephen - M.P."
<stephen.ellis@parl.gc.ca>, "MaryAnne.McCormick@rcmp-grc.
<MaryAnne.McCormick@rcmp-grc.
<Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Blair, Bill - M.P."
<Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>, "Bergen, Candice - M.P."
<candice.bergen@parl.gc.ca>, "mla@esmithmccrossinmla.com"
<mla@esmithmccrossinmla.com>, "Mike.Comeau" <Mike.Comeau@gnb.ca>,
"Mitton, Megan (LEG)" <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>, premier
<premier@ontario.ca>, Office of the Premier <scott.moe@gov.sk.ca>,
"michelle.stevens@novascotia.
"heather.fairbairn@novascotia.
"elizabeth.macdonald@
<elizabeth.macdonald@
<Gary.Andrea@novascotia.ca>, "dkogon@amherst.ca" <dkogon@amherst.ca>,
"jmacdonald@amherst.ca" <jmacdonald@amherst.ca>,
"darrell.cole@amherstnews.ca" <darrell.cole@amherstnews.ca>,
"lifestyle@thecoast.ca" <lifestyle@thecoast.ca>, "tmccoag@amherst.ca"
<tmccoag@amherst.ca>, "dpike@amherst.ca" <dpike@amherst.ca>,
"JUSTMIN@novascotia.ca" <JUSTMIN@novascotia.ca>, andre
<andre@jafaust.com>, "jeff.carr" <jeff.carr@gnb.ca>,
"andrea.anderson-mason" <andrea.anderson-mason@gnb.ca>
<Ross.Wetmore@gnb.ca>, "Stewart, Jake - M.P."
<jake.stewart@parl.gc.ca>, "Moore, Rob - M.P." <Rob.Moore@parl.gc.ca>,
"Williamson, John - M.P." <John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>,
"Justweb@novascotia.ca" <Justweb@novascotia.ca>, "barb.whitenect"
<barb.whitenect@gnb.ca>, "Boston.Mail" <Boston.Mail@ic.fbi.gov>,
"hugh.flemming" <hugh.flemming@gnb.ca>, motomaniac333
<motomaniac333@gmail.com>, "Fraser.Logan@rcmp-grc.gc.ca"
<Fraser.Logan@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, paulpalango
<paulpalango@protonmail.com>, NightTimePodcast
<NightTimePodcast@gmail.com>, nsinvestigators
<nsinvestigators@gmail.com>, "Pineo, Robert" <rpineo@pattersonlaw.ca>,
andrew <andrew@frankmagazine.ca>, Newsroom
<Newsroom@globeandmail.com>, oldmaison <oldmaison@yahoo.com>,
"martin.gaudet" <martin.gaudet@fredericton.ca>
<Roger.Brown@fredericton.ca>, "blaine.higgs" <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>,
"Bill.Hogan@gnb.ca" <Bill.Hogan@gnb.ca>
What are you hiding???
On 9/4/22, Perkins, Rick - M.P. <rick.perkins@parl.gc.ca> wrote:
> Wow. Why a stupid decision. What are they hiding?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Rick Perkins, MP
> South Shore-St. Margaret’s
> Official Opposition Shadow Minister, Fisheries, Oceans and the Canadian
> Coast Guard
> 613-995-6182
> 902-527-5655
> ______________________________
> From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
> Sent: Saturday, September 3, 2022 10:31:10 PM
> To: heather.decoste@
> <heather.decoste@
> Maureeen.E.Doherty@rcmp-grc.
> Mark.Flynn@rcmp-grc.gc.ca <Mark.Flynn@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>;
> Sean.Mcgillis@rcmp-grc.gc.ca <Sean.Mcgillis@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
> <Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; Angie.Boucher@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <Angie.Boucher@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>
> <Brigitte.Voitel@rcmp-grc.gc.
> <Nathalie.Drouin@justice.gc.ca
> <Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca>; mcu <mcu@justice.gc.ca>; PREMIER
> <PREMIER@gov.ns.ca>; info <info@masscasualtycommission.
> <info@gg.ca>; Ian.Shugart <Ian.Shugart@pco-bcp.gc.ca>; ian.fahie
> <ian.fahie@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; Mark.Blakely <Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>;
> warren.mcbeath <warren.mcbeath@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <washington.field@ic.fbi.gov>; chris.marshall@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <chris.marshall@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <rcmpns-grcne@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; mike.lokken <mike.lokken@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>;
> michael.omalley@rcmp-grc.gc.ca <michael.omalley@rcmp-grc.gc.
> Michelle.Boutin <Michelle.Boutin@rcmp-grc.gc.
> fin.minfinance-financemin.fin@
> <fin.minfinance-financemin.
> <Frank.McKenna@td.com>; Katie.Telford <Katie.Telford@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>;
> kris.austin <kris.austin@gnb.ca>; michael.macdonald
> <michael.macdonald@
> <Michael.Duheme@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <Sean.Fraser@parl.gc.ca>; Perkins, Rick - M.P. <rick.perkins@parl.gc.ca>;
> Ellis, Stephen - M.P. <stephen.ellis@parl.gc.ca>;
> MaryAnne.McCormick@rcmp-grc.
> Kevin.leahy <Kevin.leahy@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; Blair, Bill - M.P.
> <Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>; Bergen, Candice - M.P. <candice.bergen@parl.gc.ca>;
> mla@esmithmccrossinmla.com <mla@esmithmccrossinmla.com>; Mike.Comeau
> <Mike.Comeau@gnb.ca>; Mitton, Megan (LEG) <megan.mitton@gnb.ca>; premier
> <premier@ontario.ca>; Office of the Premier <scott.moe@gov.sk.ca>;
> michelle.stevens@novascotia.ca <michelle.stevens@novascotia.
> heather.fairbairn@novascotia.
> elizabeth.macdonald@
> Gary.Andrea@novascotia.ca <Gary.Andrea@novascotia.ca>; dkogon@amherst.ca
> <dkogon@amherst.ca>; jmacdonald@amherst.ca <jmacdonald@amherst.ca>;
> darrell.cole@amherstnews.ca <darrell.cole@amherstnews.ca>;
> lifestyle@thecoast.ca <lifestyle@thecoast.ca>; tmccoag@amherst.ca
> <tmccoag@amherst.ca>; dpike@amherst.ca <dpike@amherst.ca>;
> JUSTMIN@novascotia.ca <JUSTMIN@novascotia.ca>; andre <andre@jafaust.com>;
> jeff.carr <jeff.carr@gnb.ca>; andrea.anderson-mason
> <andrea.anderson-mason@gnb.ca>
> Jake - M.P. <jake.stewart@parl.gc.ca>; Moore, Rob - M.P.
> <Rob.Moore@parl.gc.ca>; Williamson, John - M.P.
> <John.Williamson@parl.gc.ca>; Justweb@novascotia.ca <Justweb@novascotia.ca>;
> barb.whitenect <barb.whitenect@gnb.ca>; Boston.Mail
> <Boston.Mail@ic.fbi.gov>; hugh.flemming <hugh.flemming@gnb.ca>
> Cc: motomaniac333 <motomaniac333@gmail.com>; Fraser.Logan@rcmp-grc.gc.ca
> <Fraser.Logan@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>; paulpalango <paulpalango@protonmail.com>;
> NightTimePodcast <NightTimePodcast@gmail.com>; nsinvestigators
> <nsinvestigators@gmail.com>; Pineo, Robert <rpineo@pattersonlaw.ca>; andrew
> <andrew@frankmagazine.ca>; Newsroom <Newsroom@globeandmail.com>; oldmaison
> <oldmaison@yahoo.com>; martin.gaudet <martin.gaudet@fredericton.ca>
> Roger.Brown <Roger.Brown@fredericton.ca>; blaine.higgs
> <blaine.higgs@gnb.ca>; Bill.Hogan@gnb.ca <Bill.Hogan@gnb.ca>
> Subject: N.S. Mass Casualty Commission bans sharing video and audio of the
> testimony of RCMP Cst. Greg Wiley's testimony???
>
> https://davidraymondamos3.
>
> Saturday, 3 September 2022
>
> N.S. Mass Casualty Commission bans sharing video and audio of the
> testimony of RCMP Cst. Greg Wiley's testimony??? SURPRISE SURPRISE
> SURPRISE
>
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?
>
>
> MCC Day 64 - Commissioners' Publication Ban On Cst. Wiley Testimony
> 261 views
> Sep 3, 2022
> Adam Rodgers
> 714 subscribers
> In another late Friday afternoon news release, the MCC has issued a
> decision to ban the publication of any audio or video of Cst. Greg
> Wiley's testimony on Tuesday. Cst. Wiley is a key witness, having
> visited Gabriel Wortman 16 times over the course of a few years. This
> decision is unsupported by any publicly available evidence.
> The Commissioners have threatened to have anyone who violates the
> order charged criminally under s.127 of the Criminal Code. I discuss
> that section and what it would take for a media organization to
> overcome the Order made by the Commissioners.
>
> 7 Comments
>
> David Amos
> SURPRISE SURPRISE SURPRISE
>
> hmackenzie7
> We are paying attention to these damn Friday releases of info. Such
> corruption and hypocrisy makes me sick. Thank you for taking the time
> for these reports and best of luck in your baseball games!
>
> Brian Henley
> Cripes...this is bizarre...incomprehensible ... thank you, Adam, for
> bringing this to light.
>
> Jean Campbell
> Each day I grow sadder. What a joke this MCC is.
> Thank you for taking the time to post these videos Adam.
>
> Tracy Wing
> My son was shot and killed by the police 4 years ago, I received many
> Friday 4:00 pm calls or emails - they are hoping I don't answer- We
> are watching and paying attention!
>
> Janes Blond
> This isnt trauma informed. This is a cover up
>
> donna lynes
> this appaling.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?
>
>
> WYLIE & A LOOK BACK IN TIME
> 240 views
> Streamed live 3 hours ago
>
> Little Grey Cells
> 3.47K subscribers
>
> 1 Comment
>
> David Amos
> Welcome back to the Circus
>
> https://www.cbc.ca/news/
>
> Testimony from key RCMP officer at mass shooting inquiry can't be broadcast
>
> Mass Casualty Commission made surprise announcement Friday afternoon
> Ruth Davenport · CBC News · Posted: Sep 02, 2022 7:12 PM AT
>
> RCMP Const. Greg Wiley visited the gunman's Portapique home 16 times
> in the years before the deadly rampage of April 2020. (David Bell/CBC)
>
> The comission investigating the mass shootings in Nova Scotia in April
> 2020 has made a surprise decision just before the long weekend to
> block the testimony of a key witness from public broadcast.
>
> RCMP Const. Greg Wiley is set to testify Tuesday afternoon, but in a
> decision released Friday afternoon, the Mass Casualty Commission ruled
> that his testimony via video link would not be disseminated as either
> audio or video via the normal webcast.
>
> "In order to receive the best information possible from Cst. Wiley, we
> have directed that Cst. Wiley's testimony not be webcast and a
> transcript be posted on the website," wrote the commission in its
> decision.
>
> The Attorney General of Canada made an application for accommodation
> for Wiley, citing personal health reasons.
>
> Wiley is the officer who visited the gunman's Portapique home 16 times
> in the years before the deadly rampage of April 2020.
>
> He told investigators in an interview that he never saw anything alarming.
> Accommodation granted for 'best information'
>
> The gunman had a stash of illegal weapons and a replica RCMP cruiser,
> which were used in the killings of 22 people.
>
> The commission also plans to question Wiley about his involvement in
> the case of Susie Butlin, a Tatamagouche woman who was killed by her
> neighbour in September 2017 after reporting him to RCMP for sexual
> assault and harassment.
>
> When Butlin called the RCMP in August 2017 to report harassing
> messages from her neighbour, Wiley was assigned as the lead
> investigator. He discussed the messages with Butlin, and determined
> there was no basis to lay a criminal charge.
>
> The commission wouldn't take questions Friday afternoon, but senior
> commission counsel Emily Hill released a video statement noting the
> public and media could still attend the proceedings on Tuesday.
>
> "The difference in this case is that video will not be posted after on
> our website or published by the media or by the public," they said.
>
> "This is in response to an accommodation request … accommodations are
> granted to ensure the commission receives the best information from
> witnesses."
> Other accommodations
>
> Hill said the request concerns personal health information and the
> commission could not discuss specifics.
>
> This is the most significant accommodation the commission has made for
> any witness who has testified.
>
> In May, the commission allowed two senior RCMP officers to answer
> questions in recorded sessions rather than testifying in front of a
> roomful of participants and lawyers.
>
> Some lawyers representing families of the victims boycotted the
> commission proceedings because they were not permitted to directly
> question Andy O'Brien, now retired, and Staff Sgt. Brian Rehill.
> Neither session was live streamed.
>
>
> ABOUT THE AUTHOR
> Ruth Davenport
>
> Producer, CBC Nova Scotia
>
> Ruth Davenport is a producer for CBC Nova Scotia. She has been
> covering news in Halifax for 20 years.
>
> CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices
>
>
> https://globalnews.ca/news/
>
>
> N.S. shooting inquiry bans sharing video, audio in testimony of RCMP
> officer
> By Karla Renić Global News
> Posted September 2, 2022 6:22 pm
>
> Click to play video: 'Inquiry into N.S. shooting enters final phase'
> The public inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting resumed Monday,
> when the commission began the third and final phase of its work.
> Graeme Benjamin has more on what to expect as the inquiry nears its
> conclusion.
>
> The inquiry into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting will hear from an
> RCMP officer who made repeated visits to the gunman’s home next week,
> but media will not be allowed to broadcast any video or audio from
> that appearance.
>
> The Mass Casualty Commission has granted an accommodation to Const.
> Greg Wiley, stationed in Bible Hill, N.S., who had repeated contact
> with the gunman in the years leading up to the massacre in April 2020.
>
> The inquiry has previously heard that Const. Wiley was a friend of
> Gabriel Wortman, and had investigated him after police received a
> report that he was threatening to kill his parents. Wiley told
> commission investigators he had a good rapport with the killer and
> visited his residence around 15 times, but never noticed anything
> unusual.
>
> Read more: RCMP who responded to N.S. mass shooting linked to murder
> case under federal review
>
> Wiley is also among three officers named in a 2018 police review of
> the gaps in the RCMP’s response to the murder case of Susie Butlin.
>
> Now, Wiley has been granted special arrangements to facilitate his
> testimony, allowing him to appear virtually, but the testimony will
> not be streamed on the commission website.
>
> The commission has also agreed that video and audio can’t be shared or
> published in any way, including by the media.
>
> Read more: N.S. mass shooting probe told cultural shift needed to
> address gender-based violence
>
> This is the first accommodation of this type for the inquiry.
>
> “Accommodations are granted to ensure the commission receives the best
> information from witnesses,” said Emily Hill, the senior commission
> counsel Friday evening.
>
> “Because accommodation requests contain personal health information,
> we cannot discuss the specifics of these requests.”
>
> Violations of the ban could result in a charge under Section 127 of
> the Criminal Code, the commission said.
>
> However, the testimony will be available for media and the public to
> watch in real time.
>
> The public can request a Zoom link to view Wiley’s testimony by
> emailing heather.decoste@
>
> https://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/
>
>
> No public broadcast for RCMP officer's testimony about N.S. mass shooter
> Commissioners Leanne Fitch, Michael MacDonald, chair, and Kim Stanton,
> left to right, listen to testimony at the Mass Casualty Commission
> inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19,
> 2020, in Halifax on Monday, July 11, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew
> Vaughan Commissioners Leanne Fitch, Michael MacDonald, chair, and Kim
> Stanton, left to right, listen to testimony at the Mass Casualty
> Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April
> 18/19, 2020, in Halifax on Monday, July 11, 2022. THE CANADIAN
> PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
>
>
> Lyndsay Armstrong
> The Canadian Press
> Staff Contact
> Published Sept. 3, 2022 3:10 p.m. ADT
>
>
> HALIFAX -
>
> The testimony of an RCMP officer once described by another police
> officer as a "friend" of the man behind the 2020 mass shooting in Nova
> Scotia will not be publicly broadcast when he appears before the
> inquiry investigating the rampage.
>
> The commission probing the mass shooting in rural Nova Scotia that
> left 22 people dead issued a written decision on Friday saying Const.
> Greg Wiley will answer questions via video, but his testimony will not
> be available to the public in real-time. Instead, a transcript of his
> remarks will be posted to the commission's website.
>
> He will be the first witness to speak before the mass casualty
> commission whose testimony will not be aired on the livestream that
> has been used throughout the proceedings.
>
> "In order to receive the best information possible from Const. Wiley,
> we have directed that Const. Wiley's testimony not be webcast and a
> transcript be posted on the website," the decision reads.
>
> The request for accommodation was made by the federal Attorney General
> and means that video and audio of Wiley's answers "shall not be
> disseminated, released, published, or shared."
>
> The commission said Wiley's scheduled Zoom appearance can be viewed by
> inquiry participants, media and members of the public who request to
> watch the virtual testimony. Live audio access to the proceedings will
> also be available by phone.
>
> Wiley is the officer who was asked in 2010 to look into whether
> Gabriel Wortman -- the gunman behind the deadly shooting spree -- had
> firearms at his home in Portapique, N.S. when Wortman had threatened
> to kill his parents.
>
> The investigation into the alleged death threat did not lead to any
> charges.
>
> In his interview last year, Wiley told the commission's investigators
> he had a good rapport with Wortman and that they often had brief
> "chinwags" at the killer's residence. Wiley estimated he visited
> Wortman in the "ballpark" of 15 occasions over the years, but he said
> he hadn't noticed anything unusual.
>
> According to a report shared by the inquiry in May, the Halifax
> Regional Police service led the 2010 investigation into Wortman's
> threats against his parents. The investigating officer, now-retired
> sgt. Cordell Poirier, had referred to Wiley as a "friend" of Wortman,
> the report said. Poirier had said he asked Wiley on several occasions
> to visit Wortman's Portapique residence to check for firearms and to
> determine if a search warrant was needed.
>
> Wortman's spouse, Lisa Banfield, told the inquiry on July 15 that
> Wiley had come to the Portapique property in June 2010 to see if there
> were guns at the residence. Wiley's visit came after Wortman's
> threats.
>
> Banfield said Wiley was shown antique guns in the house during a visit
> that lasted 10 minutes.
>
> During his interview last year with lawyers for the public inquiry,
> Wiley was unable to recall details of the June 2010 investigation. In
> a followup letter to the inquiry, a lawyer for the RCMP said Wiley no
> longer had his notes from that time.
>
> Wiley is also connected to a 2017 murder case that is under federal review.
>
> Susie Butlin, from Bayhead, N.S., had complained to the RCMP about
> being sexually assaulted and harassed by Ernest Ross Duggan before he
> killed her in September 2017. In August of that year, Wiley received
> Butlin's complaints of harassment and was assigned as lead
> investigator.
>
> According to the internal police report, Wiley "determined there was
> no basis for charges" and advised her to block Duggan on Facebook.
>
> The investigation into Butlin's death is now under a federal civilian
> review examining the RCMP's response to her complaints and the
> adequacy of its handling of sexual assault investigations.
>
> Wiley is scheduled to answer questions from the commission on Tuesday
> afternoon.
>
> The commission has previously allowed accommodations for RCMP
> witnesses. In May it allowed two senior Mounties to answer questions
> in recorded sessions instead of testifying before lawyers and
> participants.
>
> This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 3, 2022.
>
> This story was produced with the financial assistance of the Meta and
> Canadian Press News Fellowship.
>
From: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2022 12:32:33 -0300
Subject: Methinks the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National
Security are gonna have a Hell of a hearing on All Hallows Eve N'esy Pas?
To: "stephen.ellis" <stephen.ellis@parl.gc.ca>, "rick.perkins"
<rick.perkins@parl.gc.ca>, "Raquel.Dancho" <Raquel.Dancho@parl.gc.ca>,
"taleeb.noormohamed" <taleeb.noormohamed@parl.gc.ca>,
news-tips <news-tips@nytimes.com>, clifford.small@parl.gc.ca,
contactmistersunshinebaby@
<rob.moore@parl.gc.ca>, rokaku8 <rokaku8@gmail.com>, nsinvestigators
<nsinvestigators@gmail.com>, "pierre.poilievre"
<pierre.poilievre@parl.gc.ca>, "Mark.Blakely"
<Mark.Blakely@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Mike.Comeau" <Mike.Comeau@gnb.ca>,
"kris.austin" <kris.austin@gnb.ca>, NightTimePodcast
<NightTimePodcast@gmail.com>, "Nathalie.G.Drouin"
<Nathalie.G.Drouin@pco-bcp.gc.
Cc: motomaniac333 <motomaniac333@gmail.com>, "Brenda.Lucki"
<Brenda.Lucki@rcmp-grc.gc.ca>, "Bill.Blair" <Bill.Blair@parl.gc.ca>,
"Marco.Mendicino" <Marco.Mendicino@parl.gc.ca>, premier
<premier@ontario.ca>, pm <pm@pm.gc.ca>, "Katie.Telford"
<Katie.Telford@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>
Friday, 28 October 2022
Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - October Surprise 2022 - with the help of Paul Palango and his pals
Did Ottawa interfere in the investigation of the Nova Scotia mass shooting?
293 Comments
Trudeau's Latest Scandal, Covering Up Voice Recording
1,092 Comments
Someone Is Lying, So Who Is It?
Cons MP/Pubic Safety critic Raquel Dancho call on Minister Bill Blair & Commissioner Lucki to resign
22 Comments
---------- Original message ----------
From: "Dancho, Raquel - M.P." <Raquel.Dancho@parl.gc.ca>
Date: Sat, 19 Feb 2022 07:30:10 +0000
Subject: Automatic reply: RE Trudeau Invoking the Emergency Act and Freeland defending her liberal democracy byway of her bankster buddies
To: David Amos <david.raymond.amos333@gmail.com>
Hello,
We appreciate you taking the time to contact the Office of Raquel Dancho, Member of Parliament for Kildonan—St. Paul.
Our office receives 100’s of emails each week:
• If you are a Kildonan–St. Paul constituent, please reply to this email with your name and current address with postal code. This will ensure we expedite your correspondence. We may also be reached by phone at the Winnipeg office at 204-984-6322. We would be pleased to assist you.
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• Individuals outside of Kildonan—St. Paul should contact their local MP to address their concerns. You can find out who your MP is at this link: Find Members of Parliament - Members of Parliament - House of Commons of Canada (ourcommons.ca)<https://www.ourcommons.ca/members/en>
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RCMP release audio of tense call with Lucki after N.S. massacre
675 Comments
Full Testimony: RCMP's Brenda Lucki on alleged political interference in N.S. massacre investigation
265 Comments
Future Meetings
https://www.ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/SECU/StudyActivity?studyActivityId=11872400
Meeting Requested by Five Members of the Committee to Discuss their Request to Undertake a Study of Development regarding the allegations of political interference in the Nova Scotia Mass Murder Investigation
Virtual Proceeding
October 27, 2022 11:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m.
The Commission will hold a brief virtual proceeding on October 27, 2022 to mark additional documents as exhibits.
Agenda
The Commission will hold a brief virtual proceeding on October 27, 2022 to mark additional documents as exhibits. The additional exhibits will include supporting material for public proceedings that were not previously marked, interview transcripts, Commission correspondence for the public record, and documents produced to the Commission after the completion of public proceedings.
Note
- View the documents section for Research, Foundational Documents and Additional Exhibits that are entered into evidence during proceedings.
- To learn more about the Commission's third and final phase of work, visit the frequently asked questions page.
'Living here is a complete nightmare': Portapique survivor of N.S. shooting struggling with little support
Leon Joudrey, who lives in Portapique, N.S., is interviewed by CTV Atlantic on Oct. 26, 2022.
Leon Joudrey's home is surrounded by terrible memories of the night his friends and neighbours just down the road were killed in Nova Scotia's mass shooting.
“Living here is a complete nightmare, all I see is my friends that died, and fires, and SWAT teams and I don't even want to be here anymore,” he says.
After the April 2020 tragedy, Joudrey spent almost two years living anywhere he could but Portapique.
But he had to return to maintain the house and 3.5 acres of land off Orchard Beach Road after unsuccessfully trying to sell the property.
The modest bungalow, it’s basement recently finished by Joudrey, is where the killer’s common-law-spouse, Lisa Banfield, ran to for help in the early morning hours of April 19, 2020 after she hid from Gabriel Wortman overnight after he assaulted her during an argument.
By that time, Joudrey had already smelled a structure fire burning somewhere in the community. When he took a drive to try to find the source, he encountered an ERT team in a tactical vehicle, and says he was simply ordered over a loudspeaker to leave the area.
Not knowing what was going on, he returned to his house and his two dogs.
Down the road, his friends and neighbours, Greg and Jamie Blair, had already been murdered at their home.
His ex-girlfriend Lisa McCully had also been killed in front of her home.
Joudrey didn’t know about the killings until after another ERT team came to his home to extract Banfield from the community.
He says the officers didn’t even ask his name and left him there while Wortman was still at large.
“I'm the lucky one, I survived,” Joudrey told CTV News in an interview a month after the 22 murders.
However, his experience continues to haunt him and has taken a toll.
“And I was taking stuff out on people and social media, and then the police picked me up one night, took me to the (psychiatric) hospital, and that's where I spent the next month,” he says.
Once he was released from hospital, Joudrey says there was no mental health follow-up, although he says he has been diagnosed with PTSD.
“Well, they kind of forgot about me,” he says. “I kind of fell through the cracks in the mental health system and it was about four months before they did any follow up or checks with me."
Joudrey says he is now seeing a psychiatrist and just connected with a psychologist in the past month. It’s been two-and-a-half years since the tragedy.
One of the lawyers representing many of the families of victims and survivors says Joudrey’s struggle is indicative of what many are going through.
“A number of them feel, just forgotten about,” says Sandra McCulloch.
“There are people who are survivors of the mass casualty event that are still having a hard time, they're still not fully supported."
The issue of supporting survivors is one she raised at the Mass Casualty Commission examining the tragedy.
“I know this does come within the umbrella of the work that the commission is doing, but we have also been concerned that there’s been focus on, and rightfully so, on those who have been lost, and the families they’ve left behind. And there’s been broader focus on our communities in general and how improvements can be made to prevent and address events that may be comparable to this in the future,” she says.
“But there does seem to be those people that may fall in the middle that aren’t as immediately affected by the mass casualty event, in the way that we might first come to think of.”
“Their own experiences, they’re unique,” she adds. “And we’re certainly hoping that the Mass Casualty Commission will be attentive to the recommendations that support individuals like the survivors as well.”
The municipal councillor for the Portapique area at the time of the shootings, Tom Taggart, agrees that some residents in the area are still facing challenges.
“It's as big or a bigger struggle today as it was back then,” says Taggart, now the PC MLA for Colchester North.
He says for some, there is sadness over the loss of what the community once was.
“And now, the community that they had loved so much is gone, in a sense, that little community within that community,” he says. “They’ve lost that (within that subdivision), they’ll never get it back.”
“They were sort of over here, the focus was all on the inquiry and the RCMP, the victims, and these folks are quietly trying to rebuild their lives, and it's not easy,” says Taggart.
Joudrey describes it in another way.
“It's been hell,” he says.
Joudrey says he’s also under financial strain.
It's been almost two years since he was able to work at his former forestry job, and he says disability benefits through his employer will run out in early 2023.
He says he’s now waiting for a letter from his psychiatrist to see if he can return to work.
While $6.2 million was raised in donations to the “Stronger Together” fund administered by the Canadian Red Cross in response to the shootings, the organization says that money was earmarked for family members of those killed in the tragedy.
“In particular with a focus on those who had dependents who relied upon someone who is no longer with us,” says Bill Lawlor with the Canadian Red Cross.
“But certainly if anyone had an inquiry, we would encourage them to reach out to us.”
But that means survivors such as Joudrey did not qualify for the assistance, which the Red Cross says has all been committed and either dispersed or held in trust.
Joudrey wants to sell his property, but isn’t sure he’ll get enough for it to be able to make a new start.
But he doesn’t want to stay in a place that reminds him of the past.
“It’s not the same anymore,” he says.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuujxfGxmno&ab_channel=ohdear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO3WCEeBfrY&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
Leon Joudrey: in his own words
59 Comments
. We can't believe everything that we see...
But I am not as handsome lol
30:30 ..no NDA? Tho I totally get that he doesn't want to put families under duress... From personal experience closure doesn't come without full disclosure regardless of how harsh or disturbing those details may be.. imso 
Guys got the cop haircut and build.. but I'm sure all your average neighbours do too lol..I dunno. But it's a running pattern in this storyline where the only alleged witnesses are folks who've already moved away from the area or are military/cop connected.. plus Leon gets pretty political at the end here..for a non political guy.. and seems to be somewhat hostile toward police.. I mean cops asked him what's in his garage..gunman's on the loose but he doesn't ask them to search his property to make sure the gunman's not lurking around..after all his gf is in this guy's house right? Maybe I'm alone in thinking that Leon's own depiction of himself and what went down actually fit the rcmp profile for the shooter better than Gabe wortman does
Just ain't adding up. Something's off
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPVf6Tp8hRY&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
AFTER STREAM WITH LEON
8 Comments
Leon Joudrey: a decent man with an impossible burden
Leon Joudrey has died.
Joudrey was a decent man, someone who avoided conflict. He liked the woods, worked in forestry, hunted and fished. After his marriage fell apart, he bought a place in Portapique and lived by himself, minding his own business but helping out friends and taking side jobs clearing brush and taking out trees from time to time. People liked him, he liked people. He dated a bit, but he was still suffering emotionally from his failed marriage, so that never went anywhere much.
In a perfect world, or even just in the normal course of events, Joudrey would’ve gone on with his life, found his peace, maybe eventually find a woman he could’ve settled down with.
But it wasn’t a perfect world, and Joudrey’s life wasn’t normal: He had landed in Portapique and into the orbit of the man who would kill 13 of Joudrey’s friends and neighbours the night of April 18, 2020, and then kill nine more people across the province the next morning. And Joudrey’s hapless role in that event became his own undoing.
Portapique
“It was nice,” Joudrey said of Portapique. “You had your own private access to the beach. Yeah, it’s a quiet, quiet community.”
Joudrey knew some of his neighbours well, but others he knew only in passing. Yet it was impossible to live in Portapique without being entwined with the man who had built an elaborate “cottage” on the Portapique River and a large warehouse on Orchard Beach Drive that housed his many motorcycles and other toys. The Halifax Examiner refers to that man as GW.
GW occasionally hired Joudrey to do some work for him, and in the course of that work Joudrey had visited the warehouse twice. He said he only met GW’s girlfriend Lisa Banfield a couple of times, and they just exchanged pleasantries — “Short conversation. Just, ‘Nice day out,’ yeah, whatever.”
But Joudrey was aware that GW treated Banfield badly. “I was there one day when he verbally abused her,” said Joudrey. “Told her to shut her effing mouth and stuff like that. I was like, yeah, she’s a big girl, she can make her own decisions.”
On Remembrance Day, 2019, GW asked Joudrey to cut a trail through the woods, connecting the warehouse to the cottage. But Joudrey understood that the trees weren’t on GW’s property so refused the work. The two argued, and that was the last Joudrey spoke with GW.
But GW remained a haunting presence in Joudrey’s life.
Back in 2018, just after Joudrey moved to Portapique, he attended a community barbecue. There, he met Lisa McCully, who lived with her two kids in a cottage across the road from the warehouse. McCully was smart, a school teacher, and pretty. And Joudrey had his charms.
“Attractive girl,” said Joudrey. “I had a couple of beer. There was a little bit of flirtation that went on. I kissed her and she goes ‘Whoah, you’re moving too fast.’ And that was the end of it.”
Joudrey and McCully each started dating other people, but both relationships ended by the summer of 2019. “Lisa [McCully] started talking to me and started showing more interest,” said Joudrey. “We met on the beach, going for a walk, and then one thing led to another. Just the way couples start.”
But, said Joudrey, he was uncertain how to proceed because he was still reeling emotionally from a divorce, which was also why he broke up with the woman he had been dating before McCully.
Besides, there was something odd about another neighbour, GW.
“I never had anything to do with Gabriel until I met Lisa [McCully],” said Joudrey. “Then Gabriel started talking about it, pulled into my yard a couple times. That’s freaking weird… He kept saying about Lisa being a good woman. I said, ‘oh yeah, we’re going out. We’ll see how things go. I’m still trying to go through a divorce.’”
GW kept repeating, “She’s a good woman, she’s a good woman.”
Joudrey understood that GW was jealous over McCully, so Joudrey asked McCully about it.
McCully told Joudrey that she had once slept with GW — many years previously, before she met Joudrey.
“I went and told him [GW] that we couldn’t be friends anymore because I’m dating you [Joudrey] now,” McCully told Joudrey, as Joudrey recalled the conversation.
“What did you do that for?” responded Joudrey. “You trying to poke the bear?”
Then GW was “a dick to me the last two or three times [I saw him],” said Joudrey. Joudrey broke up with McCully, but the two continued to text each other.
Joudrey received the odd stare from GW as they passed each other in their vehicles. McCully’s experience was worse. She told a coworker, another teacher, that GW was harassing her. The coworker related that to her husband, an RCMP cop named Dave Lilly. Here’s how Staff Sergeant Steve Halliday later characterized Lilly’s comments:
[Lilly] believed [GW] and [McCully] had been in some kind of a relationship. And in recent days or weeks, he had been acting very unusual towards her, driving back and down her residence, and as Dave said, and I quote him, ‘Creeping her out.’
On April 18, 2020, Joudrey spent the day working with his neighbours and friends Greg and Jamie Blair, and another man named Ron. They were cutting and hauling brush, burying electrical lines, “just property work.” After the end of a long day, Joudrey went home, but then the Blairs called and invited him for dinner. They ate in the garage with the door open so they could maintain the six-foot distancing required by COVID rules. After supper, Joudrey went back home and fell asleep, exhausted.
In the middle of the night, Joudrey was awakened by gunshots, but he thought nothing of it — probably someone just shooting possums or some such — and fell back asleep. He woke up a little later, around 4am on April 19, and was texting with a friend who told him something was up in Portapique. Joudrey got in his truck and drove down Portapique Road, where he saw GW’s cottage on fire. A police team came up to Joudrey and told him to leave Portapique, but Joudrey wasn’t going to leave his two dogs home alone just because of a fire, so he went back home. En route, he saw that Frank and Dawn Gulenchyn’s house was on fire too. Joudrey didn’t know what to make of that. He fell back asleep.
Then, at about 6:30am, Joudrey was awakened by someone banging on his door. It was Lisa Banfield.
This is what Joudrey told three RCMP officers in an interview starting at 8:36am on Sunday, April 19, 2020 — about two hours after Banfield showed up at his door:
So she opened the door, she had no shoes, she shaking and shivering. I let her in and she’s just freaking. So I give her my coat and my sneakers and she couldn’t even dial 9-1-1. So I called 9-1-1. And told them to come, bring cops down to come get her and the SWAT team showed up.
Cst. Terry Brown questioned Joudrey about that further; their exchange:
BROWN: OKay, ah, Leon, so, uh ah, when she showed up at your house, Did she…, tell me as much as you can about that interaction, what happened, what she said?
JOUDREY: I was half asleep, she came in, said he lost his mind. He had her handcuffed, she hid in the woods, she’s frozen and it’s the first house she got to.
BROWN: Okay.
JOUDREY: Is what she told me, so I gave her my coat and she couldn’t dial 9-1-1. Like I said, I called 9-1-1, the police came. She came out on the deck, they took her, and that’s the only interaction I had with her.
BROWN: Okay, so she said that she was handcuffed?
JOUDREY: Last night.
BROWN: Last night.
JOUDREY: But how she got out of those handcuffs, I don’t know.
BROWN: Okay. So she didn’t have any handcuffs on her when she got to your…
JOUDREY: No, but she said, he beat her up. 9-1-1 asked if she was hurt. I said, no I don’t think so. She looked okay to me, just shook up.
BROWN: Yeah.
JOUDREY: But whether he hit her, I don’t know.
BROWN: Okay. Alright.
JOUDREY: I’m just going with hear-say. But she was only at my place for like…, ten minutes.
BROWN: Okay
JOUDREY: And I didn’t want her there much anyway…, Huh, heh…,
BROWN: Yeah.
JOUDREY: … just considering.
BROWN: Yeah.
JOUDREY: .. the whole night, right.
BROWN: Sure, sure.
JOUDREY: I wanted the police to come and…
BROWN: Yeah. Okay. So um yeah… She gets to your house, she makes…, she says ah, that he lost his mind.
JOUDREY: Yeah.
BROWN: ..um, sorry what else did he, she say? Anything else you can remember at all that she said?
JOUDREY: Uh, she…, he beat her up, he handcuffed her, she got away, she hid in the woods all night.
BROWN: Okay.
JOUDREY: And, she was just freaking, just freaking like…, not really making any sense after that.
BROWN: Very upset, okay.
JOUDREY: Oh, just.
BROW: Yeah. Okay.
JOUDREY: Shaking, but that’s, that’s the only details that I really got out of her.
BROWN: Sure. Okay.
In his May 13, 2022 interview with Mass Casualty Commission investigators, Joudrey told the same story, and elaborated about the phone:
I handed her my phone and she dropped it. So I just picked [it] up and called it myself.
It was only after Joudrey was evacuated to the Great Village Fire Hall that he learned the full extent of the murders in Portapique — and that Lisa McCully, Greg Blair, and Jamie Blair were among the victims. Then, like everyone else in Nova Scotia, Joudrey learned about the murders of April 19 unfolding.
In the days following the murders, Joudrey stayed with people in Truro who were also caring for Lisa McCully’s two children and Greg and Jamie Blair’s two children.
Mental health breakdown
We can’t know what Joudrey experienced in the days, weeks, months, and years after the murders. But it must have been difficult: that so many of his friends and neighbours had been killed likely led to survivor’s guilt. And how did he understand his relationship with McCully and the role that may have played in the murders?
This much we do know: For some period of time, Joudrey couldn’t bring it upon himself to return to his house in Portapique. He was sometimes living in his vehicle, sometimes in and out of hotels in Truro and New Glasgow. He was not well mentally.
Last year, someone told me about an incident involving Joudrey. I was able to confirm some of the details at the time, but not all, but after Joudrey’s death, I’ve been able to confirm some of the other details.
As I understand it, there was some kind of incident at Berry’s Motel in Truro, and the police were called. Joudrey had left, but was later stopped in his vehicle by police. He had blood on his hands — it turned out to be deer blood — so the police checked his vehicle and found weapons. He expressed anger towards specific RCMP officers.
Joudrey was never arraigned on charges, and police who I asked about the incident would not provide details, but my understanding is that this incident led to Joudrey being committed to the Nova Scotia Hospital. He was there for at least several months.
I don’t know when Joudrey was released from hospital, or when he ended up back in Portapique. I’ve been reliably told that he died from suicide.
I’m not inclined to report on someone’s mental health issues. Certainly, Joudrey should not be defined by his struggles, which are both tragic and understandable. He was a decent man, and was in no way at fault for what unfolded during the murders or after. I think of him as GW’s 23rd victim.
That said, I’ve given more detail than I normally would, because Joudrey’s struggles have led to some harmful misinformation and cruelty being released upon Lisa Banfield.
Lisa Banfield testifies at the Mass Casualty Commission on Friday, July 15, 2022. Photo: THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan
Recall that just hours after Banfield showed up at his door, and before he knew the extent of the murders, Joudrey said Banfield was “freaking out” and so cold she couldn’t hold a phone, much less dial 9-1-1. He later told the same to the Mass Casualty Commission investigators. Sure, he didn’t see any obvious other physical injuries to Banfield, but he was only with her fleetingly, less than 10 minutes, and he didn’t want her there in the first place. It’s not like he gave her a complete physical examination.
But then Joudrey started giving interviews, some to conspiracy theorists, and said that Banfield was fine when she came out of the woods, or as Paul Palango put it in a March 31, 2022 Canadaland interview, “fresh as daisies.”
Banfield was so injured by her beating at the hands of GW, and then by her night in the freezing woods, that she was hospitalized for five days. Whatever you think of Nova Scotia’s health care system, we know that it doesn’t needlessly hospitalize someone for five days.
But the counter-narrative had escaped to the world and Joudrey’s comments morphed into a harmful and untrue narrative: Banfield was a liar, and she wasn’t actually in the woods all night. She must have been involved in the murders.
I don’t know why Joudrey said these things. He was struggling with all sorts of terrible inner thoughts. Maybe re-remembering his encounter with Banfield was him trying to make sense out of the horrors and rid himself of his inner demons.
One of the lawyers for the other victims’ families noted the discrepancy between Joudrey’s initial and subsequent accounts of his encounter with Banfield, and asked why Joudrey wasn’t called before the Mass Casualty Commission to testify under oath about it. That question wasn’t answered, but now it’s apparent that commission staff were well aware of Joudrey’s deteriorating mental health, and given the trauma-informed mandate, declined to call him as a witness.
For myself, it has long frustrated me that on the one hand, I shouldn’t out someone’s mental health issues, but on the other hand, those very same mental health issues may have led to the unfair charges made against Banfield.
With Joudrey’s death, I can now set that record straight, but I don’t do so happily. Joudrey is a victim. Remember him as a decent man put in an unimaginably impossible position. ______________________________________________________________________
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https://masscasualtycommission.ca/files/fd-source-materials/COMM0003371.pdf?t=1667295449
https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/767-we-will-never-know-the-truth-about-portapique/
The public inquest into the Portapique massacre is far from revealing. Will we ever get the answers to the many, many questions still remaining? And journalists are being blocked from covering events at the Indigenous delegations’ visit to the Vatican. Paul Palango co-hosts.
Links:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TELlXQGCXGQ&ab_channel=NighttimePodcast
the Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - Oct 30, 2022 - with Paul Palango and Adam Rodgers
Top Chat
....... That is such a damn shame
SAd bunch here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=602k9bEIHjQ&t=147s&ab_channel=AdamRodgers
The Rodgers Brief - This Week in Canadian Law
4 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7lFm-Icf0&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
SECU meeting 40 livestream
4 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sMiaGopph8&t=360s&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
Dep. Commissioner Brian Brennan - Dan Brien & the "deleted" tapes Sept 9, 2022
8 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGRx4fe6Te8&ab_channel=NighttimePodcast
the Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - Oct 23, 2022 - with Paul Palango
2 Comments
Livestream MCC Document dump ... it aint over
1 Comment
Josh Coulter Interview
17 Comments
Victims’ families frustrated by N.S. mass shooting inquiry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMqGngld2M&ab_channel=NighttimePodcast
the Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - Oct 16, 2022 - with Paul Palango
3 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PUd_FcWdpU&ab_channel=NighttimePodcast
Highlights (or lowlights) of Brenda Lucki's "there was no political interference" conference call
9 Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCBcCAHkcAU&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
gun ban
10 Comments
The Dan Brien "tapes" - April 28, 2020 - Parts 1, 2 & 3
30 Comments
Dep. Commissioner Brian Brennan - Dan Brien & the "deleted" tapes Sept 9, 2022
4 Comments
N.S. shooting inquiry sets example for 'how not to run a commission': expert
Expert says delays, shifting focus, inability to cross-examine key witnesses affected public's confidence
The Mass Casualty Commission leading the joint federal-provincial inquiry into the April 2020 shootings in Nova Scotia wrapped up seven months of public hearings in September.
"Because of its unique attempts to do what it did — without really providing a very good reason for why they did it — I think it could establish a precedent of how not to run a commission," said Ed Ratushny, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Ottawa.
"It's the kind of thing that is a backward step in terms of the things that public inquiries bring to society."
The commission is standing by the format of the inquiry that is expected to cost around $47 million in provincial and federal funds by the time the final report is released in March 2023.
On its website, the commission says "the focus of a trauma-informed approach is to minimize the potential for further harm and re-traumatization, and to enhance safety, control and resilience." The approach means the commission doesn't refer to the gunman by his name, for example.
Emma Cunliffe, the commission's research and policy director, said she wouldn't change how the commission has interpreted its trauma-informed mandate because it helped build the "most accurate and complete" factual record.
"It's allowed individuals to participate in our process who may not otherwise have been able to do so," Cunliffe said.
On April 18, 2020, a gunman killed 13 people in the small community of Portapique, N.S., and burned homes before fleeing in a replica cruiser. He would kill nine more people the next day, including a pregnant woman and an RCMP officer, as he drove south through the province before being killed by police at an Enfield, N.S., gas station.
Ratushny, who has worked with inquiries extensively as a commissioner and participating counsel, has echoed concerns raised by the victims' families and their lawyers.
The hearings began in February after the victims' families fought for a more transparent public inquiry model rather than a review. The commission's mandate included not only looking at what happened during the massacre, but its root causes and what could be done to prevent something like it in the future.
Ed
Ratushny, an emeritus professor of law at the University of Ottawa,
says he's disappointed and confused by how the Mass Casualty Commission
carried out the inquiry into the April 2020 mass shooting in Nova
Scotia. (CBC)
The commission took months to gather documents, set up advisory committees and start interviewing witnesses behind closed doors before the inquiry even began — a delay that Ratushny said was "a big mistake."
"They just got off on the wrong foot and they never got on track at all," Ratushny said.
The commission has said the interviews completed behind the scenes were needed to build a foundation of evidence that could be supplemented by live testimony to fill in any gaps.
Commission investigators described their initial plans in many of these conversations with witnesses.
"We want to … flush out the information for the greater good of the commission's inquiry, and so we don't have to bring you back in the future," investigator Paul Thompson told RCMP Const. Terry Brown in a March interview.
Sixty people testified in person during the public hearings and more than 230 were interviewed overall. Thousands of documents were submitted from the RCMP and various levels of government.
Ratushny said it's clear the commission looked for answers, but in a way "that did not generate confidence."
"That independent panel has to have public confidence or the commission's been wasted," he said.
The first major crack in that public confidence came quickly: in the first weeks of the inquiry, family lawyers pushed to hear live testimony from both front-line and senior RCMP officers, and key civilians such as the gunman's partner, Lisa Banfield.
The National Police Federation, which represents regular and reservist RCMP members below the rank of inspector, had argued the 18 officers being asked to testify by family lawyers could be re-traumatized by doing so.
Many of the lawyers' requests were granted, but others were not. Some people who did eventually testify were granted accommodations like appearing virtually, writing answers in an affidavit, or only being questioned by commission counsel.
Cross-examination 'crucial'
While the commission offered to consider questions from family lawyers and put them to witnesses with accommodations, Ratushny said cross-examinations are "crucial" in situations where there's conflicting evidence.
"With each answer, you have to consider, 'Well, doesn't that leave out this? What about this?' It's fluid. It's ongoing. That's the whole purpose of the cross-examination, to get the witness engaged in aspects that didn't show up in their main testimony," Ratushny said.
Family lawyers have also criticized the quality of the commission's questioning, saying it didn't ask obvious followup questions, resulting in incomplete interviews that formed the basis of the inquiry. Transcripts of many commission interviews show investigators zeroing in on certain themes or assuring people they wouldn't go into areas already covered by police statements.
In April, commission counsel Jamie VanWart focused solely on the shooting at the Onslow, N.S., fire hall while questioning Portapique resident Richard Ellison and two volunteer firefighters.
Onslow
fire Chief Greg Muise, Deputy Chief Darrell Currie, and Portapique
resident Richard Ellison, left to right, field questions about the
incident at the Onslow Belmont fire hall at the inquiry in Halifax on
Monday, April 11, 2022. RCMP officers shot at the fire hall believing
the shooter responsible for the rampage was located there. (Andrew Vaughan/Canadian Press)
At one point, Ellison testified the gunman had shown him his illegal firearms like a kid at Christmas "showing me a pair of skates."
VanWart then asked "what could have been done better" at Onslow — never asking Ellison more about the firearms.
In May, Sgt. Andy O'Brien testified he'd jumped into help from home in the early hours of the RCMP response in Portapique after having four to five drinks of rum in the four hours before 10 p.m. AT.
Commission counsel Anna Mancini, the only lawyer to question him directly, asked O'Brien whether his judgment was impaired that night. When he said no, Mancini replied OK and moved on.
O'Brien later said it would have been easier for him to be at the command post with other RCMP senior officers, but "I wasn't working." Mancini again didn't challenge that statement, but said OK and moved on.
The commission conducted an hour-long phone interview with key witness Sean Conlogue, the gunman's friend in Maine who was the source for two handguns the shooter carried with him on the day of the rampage.
After
police shot and killed the gunman at a gas station in Enfield, N.S.,
they found five firearms in his possession, three handguns and two
rifles. He obtained three of them in Houlton, Maine. (Mass Casualty Commission)
Commission investigator Paul Thompson told Conlogue he wouldn't "go over every little bit of detail" the American had shared with RCMP and the FBI, and did not ask him about what he knew about the gunman's firearm smuggling.
Conlogue did mention that an FBI member had walked him out of a meeting and "said some things to me that … had taken the world off of my shoulders."
It's unclear what the FBI told Conlogue because Thompson didn't ask him about it. Thompson only commented, "Yeah, I would think so."
Despite the family lawyers' concerns about questioning, the chair of the commission has repeatedly said its approach was thorough.
Commissioner Michael MacDonald said in March the accommodations fit its trauma-informed mandate and created conditions where the commission could get the "best, most reliable evidence."
Ratushny has taken issue with the commission's interpretation of trauma-informed. He noted the orders-in-council setting out the terms of the inquiry stated they must be "trauma-informed and be attentive to the needs of, and impact on, those most directly affected and harmed."
To the average person, he said, this means the commission should consider that the victims' families might need help throughout the process and the inquiry should be "gentle" with them.
Instead, Ratushny said it seems the commission considered trauma-informed through the lens of "that police officer must feel so badly about this."
He said to deny cross-examination of Banfield especially seemed "very unusual," as she was perhaps the most important witness.
Lisa
Banfield, the common-law wife of gunman Gabriel Wortman, testifies at
the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova
Scotia on April 18-19, 2020, in Halifax on Friday, July 15, 2022.
Wortman, dressed as an RCMP officer and driving a replica police
cruiser, murdered 22 people. (The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan)
Banfield did four interviews with police after the massacre, a video walk-through of Portapique, and five interviews with the commission. She spoke many times about the years of physical and emotional abuse she endured from the gunman.
Ratushny said courts have many examples of how to support abuse victims during testimony, but they must testify and be cross-examined.
"It's not a court, but they're doing exactly the same thing as the … courts are doing. They're trying to find the facts," Ratushny said.
Michael Scott of Patterson Law, the firm representing most victims' families, told reporters in July that a better trauma-informed approach would have been bringing Banfield in once to testify in public, rather than repeated lengthy interviews.
Ratushny said he was surprised to hear how many times this happened, since most lawyers wouldn't allow it.
"They can't be … questioning you and then questioning you again and again and again. That's not fair, quite frankly, unless you want to correct certain things," Ratushny said.
But counsel for the federal Justice Department, the National Police Federation and Banfield have praised the commission's format.
Nasha Nijhawan, a lawyer for the federation, told the inquiry that traditional criminal or civil legal processes aim "for the truth at any cost" and are inflexible to the needs of those impacted by trauma. At the beginning of the public hearings, she said the commission "can do better," and be creative without sacrificing the ability to discover what happened.
Banfield's lawyer, Jessica Zita, told the commission last month that the experience has been a "humanizing process" for Banfield and helped her process the situation.
Too many side panels, experts, advisory committees
The vast majority of witness interviews and other documents were never brought up in public hearings, which family lawyer Tara Miller said relegated important evidence to "paper fact-finding" that would never be fully explored.
Sandra McCulloch of Patterson Law also suggested the commission had issues with pacing. McCulloch said too much time was spent "far afield" on expert panels exploring side issues related to policing theory, community safety, or the experiences of marginalized communities rather than taking the time to explore the tragedy itself.
Ratushny agreed, and said it seems like the commission was in some "academic wonderland … and they forget that there's a reality going on out there."
He added there are already many "excellent precedents" of how inquiries can be done — like the one examining the outbreak of E.coli in the Ontario town of Walkerton's water supply that cost just under $10 million.
The Mass Casualty Commission seems to be at the high end of what Canadian inquiries have cost in the past, which range from $1 million to more than $50 million.
Numbers show the largest percentage of the funds — nearly $10 million of the $25.6 million spent by March 2022 — are going to salaries and benefits for the commission's staff of 68 people. This also includes the per diems of the three commissioners.
Barbara McLean, investigations director for the commission, said in an email recently it hasn't requested additional funding despite extending the submission of the final report by nearly five months to next spring.
She said the funding committed by both the Nova Scotia and federal governments totals up to $47 million and the commission is approved to spend up to this amount.
MacDonald
speaks at the opening of the inquiry's public hearings on Feb. 22,
2022. He served as chief justice of Nova Scotia until his retirement in
2019. (Brett Ruskin/CBC)
During proceedings in April, commission chair MacDonald acknowledged the process and sheer scale of the effort may at times be frustrating. He said it may often seem like there's too much information, or the format doesn't provide answers quickly enough for some.
But he said the commission's mandate is much broader than a criminal trial, and it is focused on coming up with meaningful recommendations for public safety while not laying blame.
The commission's final report is due March 31, 2023.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices
Recording of RCMP meeting that sparked political interference allegations released
Commissioner Brenda Lucki says request to release gun info came from office of public safety minister
The RCMP has finally released a recording of a controversial phone meeting in which the head of the RCMP dresses down staff in Nova Scotia for communications following the mass killings in the province.
The meeting, held days after the mass shootings, has been at the centre of accusations that the Prime Minister's Office and then public safety minister Bill Blair interfered politically with RCMP operations in order to benefit the Liberal government's pending gun legislation.
Four Nova Scotia RCMP staff members have testified at the Mass Casualty Commission that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki reprimanded staff during the meeting on April 28, 2020, for not including information at a news conference earlier that day about the makes and models of the guns that were used in the killings of April 18 and 19 that year. They have all said publicly they believe political interference was a factor.
While the controversy over the comments has brewed for months, it wasn't until September that word of a possible recording emerged at the public proceedings. The recording, made by Dan Brien, director of media relations with the RCMP, was believed to have been deleted from his phone.
But it was recently recovered and released publicly Thursday by the commission.
Request came from minister's office
Lucki says in the recording, "it was a request that I got from the minister's office" and that she told the minister the information would be released, and then it wasn't.
LISTEN | Excerpts from RCMP commissioner's conversation with staff
Lucki has previously said that Blair never directed or ordered her to disclose the makes and models of the guns.
"Does anybody realize what's going on in the world of handguns and guns right now?" Lucki says during the meeting. "The fact that they're in the middle of trying to get a legislation going, the fact that that legislation is supposed to actually help police and the fact that the very little information I asked to be put in speaking notes at around 11:30 this morning ... could not be accommodated?
"So does anybody wonder why I feel frustrated, like I'm not being heard, which makes me feel disrespected?... Or is it just — am I being over-sensitive?"
RCMP
Supt. Darren Campbell was the support services officer at the time of
the shootings, the third-highest ranking Mountie in Nova Scotia. He was
among the officers who alleged that Lucki had made commitments to
Trudeau and Blair. (CBC)
She goes on to say she feels "bad" for having the conversation because she doesn't want to make the other staff feel bad.
"But … it's disheartening for me to try to manage our RCMP, which is bigger than Nova Scotia, and trying to at least give the prime minister a bit of information before he hears it on the news."
Lucki says she expected the line about the guns to be included as "part of the narrative" at the news conference, but the issue only came up during reporters' questions.
"It was only by fluke. Had the question not been asked, nothing about the guns would have been mentioned."
Apology to prime minister
Lucki also says she was promised a chronology of events during the mass killings as well as a map for the minister and prime minister, but didn't receive it on time.
"I have apologized to the minister, I'm waiting for the prime minister to call me so I can apologize," she says.
"I already have a request sitting in my phone that the minister wants to speak with me, and I know exactly what it's gonna be about. And ... there's not much I can say except that, once again, I dropped the ball. So that's gonna be the fourth time I'm gonna say that to him."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said the government did not put any "undue" pressure on the RCMP.
Timing of recording's release unhelpful
In a statement Thursday, the RCMP said senior management was made aware of the recording in June, and the commission was informed promptly. The statement said the RCMP is now preparing an explanation to the commission with information about the circumstances surrounding the recording and its recovery.
Senior counsel for the Mass Casualty Commission, Emily Hill, said the commission received word from the Justice Department on July 8, 2022, that a recording may exist. The commission has requested an affidavit from the RCMP explaining how the audio of the meeting came to be provided at this late date.
Michael Scott of Patterson Law, whose firm represents more than a dozen families of the 22 victims in the killings, said he has questions about why the recording was provided so late, nearly a month after the commission's public proceedings finished.
"It would have been really helpful to have that recording back when we could ask witnesses questions about it."
Michael Scott, a lawyer for Patterson Law, represents more than a dozen victims' families. (Eric Woolliscroft/CBC)
Scott said he's having a hard time reconciling Lucki's testimony — which he characterized as saying there had been "no particular interest" in the firearms being mentioned — with the recording.
While Scott said he may not go so far as to say there was political interference, it is "concerning" when powerful people use their position to push certain objectives that may not be appropriate.
He also questioned why the most senior people in the RCMP spent so much time, 10 days after the killings, focused on strategic communications. Issues like pushing through gun legislation were a "distraction" that potentially affected the RCMP's ability to do other things, like getting information to victims' families and investigating, he said.
"Do you not have more important things to do than worrying about the public perception?" he said. "We would have thought that perhaps there were bigger fish to fry."
Media 'chew us up … and spit us out'
Lucki was criticized for the meeting during testimony at the commission.
Lia Scanlan, former communications director for the Nova Scotia RCMP, wrote in a 2021 email to Lucki that what was said during the meeting was "appalling, unprofessional and extremely belittling."
In the recording, Lucki's tone is firm and sometimes sympathetic, but it is clear she is upset with the communications from the Nova Scotia division to RCMP headquarters and the public.
"I don't want to hurt people when they're hurting.… I know people are working as hard as they can, but we have a responsibility, and every time we've dropped the ball on … providing information, you know, who's … filled that gap? The media's filled the gap, retired members who haven't been in the field for 10, 15, 20 years are filling that gap. Why? Because we — we are not filling that gap," she says.
Lia
Scanlan was the head of communications for Nova Scotia RCMP in April
2020, and testified the meeting with Lucki was 'appalling,
unprofessional and extremely belittling.' (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)
"To watch the media chew us up, eat us up and spit us out, and to watch what, or to hear what the minister and the prime minister had to say about the RCMP's inability to communicate, I will never forget it."
Sharon Tessier, the RCMP's director general of national communication at the time, eventually took responsibility at the meeting for leaving Lucki with the impression that the information about the guns would be included in the speaking notes for the news conference.
"Of course, this is just, like, the biggest cluster ever," she says in the recording. "It all got bunged up because, I don't know if it's because … we had so many people inserting themselves, and so, I take full responsibility for telling you they were in his notes. That was my understanding."
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
with files from Angela MacIvor
Wednesday, 12 October 2022
Friend of N.S. mass killer allegedly threatened Frank reporter
https://davidraymondamos3.blogspot.com/2022/10/enjoy-ya-bastards.html
Wednesday, 5 October 2022
ENJOY YA BASTARDS
Friend of N.S. mass killer allegedly threatened Frank reporter: ‘I don’t like to kill people, but I think I’m going to have to’
A friend of the Nova Scotia mass killer has been charged with threatening a Frank magazine reporter this past summer for writing a story about him that he didn’t like.
Robert Arthur Doucette, 56, helped Gabriel Wortman build his Portapique palace. He’s the same man who told Mounties the Dartmouth denturist was building huge fires with heavy equipment to get rid of dead bodies in the middle of the night long before Wortman dressed up in an RCMP uniform, got into a fake police car and went on a killing spree that left 22 people dead.
“Doucette is an associate of Gabriel Wortman and has been mentioned several times at the Mass Casualty Commission (looking) into the April 2020 events in Portapique,” RCMP Const. Jamal Gray said in an application for a search warrant in the case.
“Doucette contacted (Frank reporter Paul) Palango as he wanted to tell his side of the story.”
Palango, a former investigative reporter and editor with the Globe and Mail, interviewed Doucette on July 1, said Gray, a Mountie with the Lunenburg County detachment. Palango had been writing extensively on the mass murders for Frank, which went belly up last month. He has also penned a book about the killings.
“Doucette is not happy about the article Palango wrote about him,” Gray said.
Doucette called Palango on Aug. 6 about half an hour after midnight, “made several threatening statements and made Palango believe that he was on his way to his residence,” he said.
“Doucette said that the article made it look like he was helping Gabriel Wortman. Doucette says that he now has to carry a gun with him, and that he almost had to use it the day before.”
Doucette told Palango he knows the journalist has dealt with hit men in the past. “But they’re not like me,” he said, according to the warrant application.
“Doucette also said, ‘I don’t like to kill people, but I think I’m going to have to.’ Doucette told Palango that when he disappears it is going to be because of Doucette. Doucette also told Palango that he was going to do it better than Gabriel Wortman. Doucette told Palango that he was only six miles from his house. Doucette then said that he was actually in Hubbards.”
'We had to leave'
Palango and his wife, Sharon McNamara, left their home and drove to the RCMP station in Cookville, Gray said in information to obtain a warrant filed in Dartmouth provincial court.
“We had to leave,” Palango said in an interview Thursday.
Their home, a 15-minute drive west of Hubbards, didn’t seem safe, he said.
“I wasn’t even really dressed,” said Palango, 72.
“We just got outside, got in the car. Then I was in evasion mode – get out of here.”
Mounties took the threat “absolutely seriously,” he said.
'Sharon was terrified'
“Sharon was terrified. In fact, we ended up sleeping in the car for a while in the parking lot (of the RCMP detachment) under the light. Put back the seats and had a nap until the police came back around 5:30 a.m. and said they’d searched our property, and everything was OK.”
Halifax Regional Police thought they tracked Doucette down before dawn at a motel room on Lakecrest Drive in Dartmouth.
“Doucette is inside his room at Lake City Motel, but is refusing to come to the door and speak with them,” Gray said.
“HRP shined their flashlights in the window and Doucette came to the window and looked at them. Once Doucette saw that it was the police, he quickly closed the blinds and has not shown himself again.”
'Seen with a large black gun'
Police returned to the motel that afternoon, but other residents said Doucette was not there. Investigators also learned the room they’d checked earlier was the wrong one, and that Doucette “was seen with a large black gun” two days earlier, Gray said.
“I have spoken with Doucette and (he) believes that Palango has painted him in an unfavourable light and has told lies in the article,” said the investigator.
“Doucette says he has received death threats. Doucette’s casual comments about killing people and having to carry a gun, along with his statements that he was going to do it better than Gabriel are of great concern for public safety. We also have one individual who says they have seen Doucette with a handgun, this information is of unknown reliability.”
During a search before sundown that day of Doucette’s motel room, police seized a Crossman 357 black pellet gun and two pellets.
Mounties charged Doucette with uttering threats. He’s slated to return to Bridgewater provincial court Nov. 2. The same man embarassed Palango by feeding him a fake tape about Wortman.
'I was only Gabriel's ... carpenter'
In an interview Thursday, Doucette said he’s “done with reporters asking me (expletive) questions.”
Doucette said he fielded multiple death threats from bikers, and family members of Wortman’s victims over a month and a half because of Palango’s stories about him that hinted he helped the mass killer smuggle weapons into Canada from the United States.
“He implied I was Gabriel Wortman’s (expletive) accomplice,” Doucette said. “I was only Gabriel’s (expletive) carpenter. I wasn’t involved in the (expletive) smuggling.”
Judges sentenced Doucette on 14 charges between 1995 and 2016 including refusing the breathalyser, failure to stop at an accident, breaching court orders, uttering threats, mischief, various assaults, resisting arrest, escape/being at large, and dangerous operation of a motor vehicle.
Nova Scotia mass shooting inquiry more about covering up than finding answers, says author Palango
Nova Scotians can expect a particular kind of truth to come out of the Mass Casualty Commission, says Paul Palango.
It won’t be the unvarnished truth about what caused the deadliest mass shooting in the country’s history. What Nova Scotians will get, says the longtime investigative reporter, is a comfortable truth that suits both provincial and federal governments but especially the RCMP.
“What has happened is that we’re two years down the road and they’re still playing hide the pea,” said Palango. “It’s an organized coverup.”
Palango has been reporting on the April 18 and 19, 2020, tragedy for nearly two years and has a book due out in April from Penguin Random House. The title is 22 Murders; the subtitle includes the word coverup.
The boiled-down truth, he says, is that the RCMP were completely overwhelmed as the tragedy unfolded. Overwhelmed and negligent, but just how so is a “secret that needs to be pried out of the grasp of the Mounties and two levels of government.”
The public inquiry that’s tasked with getting to the bottom of the tragedy is set to get underway Tuesday. Last week, the law firm representing the families of the victims in the inquiry came out publicly with serious concerns about how the process has unfolded thus far. Patterson Law issued a statement saying it did not know who will be called as witnesses, how they will be asked to give evidence and whether lawyers representing the families will be allowed to question them or make any kind of submissions at the proceedings.
Those concerns mirrored Palango’s. The former Globe and Mail editor, who has written lately for Frank Magazine, references the commission group sessions where family members sit with Crown prosecutors and get to see the evidence that will come out in the inquiry. That evidence, known as the foundational documents, included tens of thousands of pages of information related to the RCMP’s response to the April 2020 mass shooting.
“Each foundation paper is a subject: the replica police car, etc.,” explains Palango, who has an inside source at these sessions. “Hours are spent going paragraph by paragraph around the table. Everyone who is invited gets to put in their two cents on everything.
The most comfortable truth
Palango argues this isn’t so much a search for the truth but rather a consensus about what might be the most comfortable truth.
Summaries of the foundational papers will be released to the media during the inquiry. Palango predicts a “three-day splash of horrible headlines and then the families can say whatever they want.”
That will essentially be the end of it, he argues.
“Once the families signed off on the completed foundation papers, there is little to no room for further debate. No second thoughts. The families have been snookered. Whatever comes out, for better or worse, they have agreed to.”
Palango has written three previous books about RCMP corruption and along the way has developed a solid list of inside RCMP sources. Evidence of a coverup in this case is clear to see, he argues. He points to: the federal and provincial governments’ initial plan to hold a closed-door review (until public backlash forced a joint inquiry); the investigations conducted by the province’s police watchdog Serious Incident Response Team; and the reported cases of conflict of interest among senior RCMP officials involved in the inquiry.
He says SIRT should have tried to get to the bottom of why it took the RCMP 12 hours to request a public alert of a shooter at large. Instead, the Mounties conducted an internal investigation in the matter. The two incidents SIRT did investigate were flawed, he said. The first involved the circumstances of the gunman’s death and the other probed the RCMP misidentifying the gunman and opening fire on a person at a fire hall in Onslow.
More to the story
Video obtained by Palango shows there’s more to the story than the details released in SIRT’s investigation into the gunman’s death. Like the RCMP version of events, the police watchdog reported that officers happened on the gunman at the Irving Big Stop gas station in Enfield where he was shot and killed April 19. The report makes no mention of the video capturing the gunman earlier in the morning at a Petro Canada in nearby Elmsdale, where he had attempted to get gas and fled. A tactical van and several officers are on the opposite side of the pump at the same station.
Last June, it came to light that there were serious conflicts of interest among senior members of an internal team tasked with providing information to the mass shooting inquiry. The man in charge of the team was Chief Supt. John Robin, who’s married to Halifax RCMP Chief Supt. Janis Gray. Another member was retired RCMP Staff Sgt. Mike Butcher, the husband of Nova Scotia assistant commissioner Lee Bergerman. They’ve since been replaced. Both Gray and Bergerman have retired.
Opportunity to raise concerns
Palango’s also concerned about the inquiry’s focus on restorative principles and commitment to being “trauma-informed in everything we do,” to quote the commission website. The commission has said that this does not mean it will avoid disagreement or difficult questions and answers, but rather it’s committed to providing support to the people who may need it.
But Palango’s convinced it’s a sign that information will be hidden.
“The families have been snookered. Whatever comes out, for better or worse, they have agreed to.” - Paul Palango, author of 22 Murders
Commission senior counsel Emily Hill sent a statement to The Chronicle Herald last week saying that throughout the hearings, there will be opportunities for the families and other participants to raise their concerns with gaps in the record and suggest witnesses to be interviewed.
“A public inquiry is not a trial, nor is it about assigning blame,” Hill wrote.
“Public inquiries are about change. The commission’s work is to determine what happened and why and how it happened in order to make recommendations that will help make sure it does not happen again.”
Palango says that doesn’t cut it.
“Twenty-two months down the road, there is possible evidence of gross, if not criminal, negligence by the RCMP, yet there has been no investigation.”
'No evidence to lead any reasonable person to believe' Nova Scotia mass shooter was police agent
Gabriel Wortman is
spotted on video surveillance changing his clothes in Millbrook on April
19, 2020. “Due to the persistent rumour that the perpetrator was a police informant or agent for the RCMP, the commission undertook an investigation as to whether there was an evidentiary basis for this rumour,” says the Aug. 13 report by Stephen Henkel, an investigator “with extensive experience in the recruitment, handling and debriefing of confidential human sources and police agents” who has worked with Criminal Intelligence Service Ontario and spent more than three decades with the Toronto Police Service.
While he doesn’t name the publication, Henkel points to a June 19, 2020 Macleans magazine article written by Paul Palango, Stephen Maher and Shannon Gormley entitled “The Nova Scotia shooter case has hallmarks of an undercover operation,” as the root of the rumour.
“The authors of that article relied on ‘police sources’ who provided information based on, what appears to be, speculation and assumptions,” Henkel said in his seven-page report.
“There is no evidence to lead any reasonable person to believe that the perpetrator was an informant or involved in undercover operations for the RCMP.”
Method of payment doesn't square
While Wortman did drive to the Brinks outlet in Burnside to pick up $475,000 in cash weeks before he murdered 22 people in April 2020, Henkel said “the method in which he received such cash is not indicative of him being a police informant.”
Confidential sources “are not sent to businesses and asked to produce identification in order to receive payment,” Henkel said. “This would go against the methods and practices of source handling and of protecting the confidentiality of a police informant.”
On March 30, 2020, the Dartmouth denturist withdrew $475,000 and collected the cash from Brinks. Most of the money, $400,000, came from the CIBC account of Atlantic Denture, Wortman's business. The rest came from an account at the same bank for Northumberland Investments, which Wortman controlled, according to Henkel.
Killer 'initiated contact' with bank
Wortman “initiated contact with CIBC via email” about redeeming his guaranteed investment certificates on March 20, 2020, said the investigator.
“In an interview with the RCMP, (Wortman’s Toronto lawyer friend) Kevin von Bargen relayed to investigators that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the perpetrator was convinced the world economy was going to collapse,” Henkel said.
“It was von Bargen’s opinion that this is what led the perpetrator to withdraw significant amounts of cash.”
That’s supported by email exchanges between Wortman and von Bargen, as well as representatives of CIBC, Henkel said.
“The evidence obtained to date confirms that the perpetrator, as a private citizen, requested the redemption of his GICs and CIBC facilitated the transfer of the $475,000 cash to him, using Brinks as an intermediary.”
Wortman’s lack of a cell phone would make it tough for him to be a police informant, according to Henkel. “Although not insurmountable, this would certainly pose logistical issues for communication if the perpetrator was a confidential source or agent.”
RCMP took 'extraordinary steps' to address the issue
The Mounties have long denied any special relationship with Wortman.
“It is the policy of law enforcement agencies, in keeping with the Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions related to informer privilege, to never comment on whether someone was or was not a confidential informant,” Henkel said.
He went on to say, “it is extraordinary that the RCMP addressed the issue.”
Decisions from the country’s top court on informer privilege “prevents the RCMP from acknowledging whether someone is or is not a confidential source,” Henkel said. “In this instance, however, the RCMP took the extraordinary steps to confirm in writing that the perpetrator was not an RCMP informant or agent.”
Recruiting, handling and debriefing confidential sources “is conducted in a manner that is secretive, with the goal being the protection of the identity of the ‘informer,’” Henkel said.
Even inside policing agencies, access is tightly controlled, he said. “Information regarding an informant is something that would not be accessible to commission investigators.”
'Assumptions and speculation'
The Macleans article “contains assumptions and speculation based on the experience of ‘police sources,’ that do not accurately reflect the police practices handling and payments of confidential informants,” Henkel said. “Therefore, the writer is skeptical as to whether this rumour actually originated from a police source with knowledge of the perpetrator.”
While he had “insufficient information” to determine where the $475,000 came from originally, the investigator said “it is clear from the evidence reviewed and corroborated through independent interviews and subpoenas, that the cash withdrawn from CIBC was at the direction of the perpetrator. There is no evidence uncovered by the commission to suggest that the $475,000 was a payment by the RCMP to a confidential informant.”
Palango responds
In an interview Wednesday, Palango defended his work.
“First of all, it would have been nice to have this discussed during the eight months of the inquiry, if it was such an issue,” said the former Globe and Mail investigative reporter who had been writing extensively about the mass murders for Frank magazine until it went belly up earlier this month.
“What we reported was based on what our police sources said and
speculated, that’s quite right,” Palango said. “But it was never limited
to Wortman being the confidential informant or police agent. I made it
quite clear over the last two and a half years that Wortman or someone
close in his circle appeared to have a relationship with the police,
according to police sources.”
They were ignored.
Etc Etc Etc
False online rumour claims RCMP chief is married to Bill Morneau's cousin
The rumour's lifespan shows how far and fast false reports spread online during an election
But it's not true. Morneau and Lucki's husband aren't related.
The unfounded rumour appears to be based on hearsay and was first mentioned by a Twitter account with fewer than 500 followers, offering no evidence of a link between the two officials. The rumour was then amplified to reach an audience of tens of thousands of Canadians on Facebook and Twitter in a matter of days.
Asked about the rumour by CBC News, both the RCMP and Morneau responded with statements confirming there was no family relationship between Lucki's husband, Ray Gauthier, and Bill Morneau.
"These allegations are false," said a spokesperson for Bill Morneau's campaign team in an email to CBC News.
Acting Sgt. Caroline Duval, an RCMP spokesperson, told CBC the force had confirmed that Gauthier is not related to Morneau.
CBC News also reviewed publicly-available family trees for both Morneau and Lucki's husband, as well as several family obituaries, and could find no link between the two.
Primed to go viral
This kind of rumour is primed to go viral because it fits into an existing belief system, said Christopher Schneider, an associate professor of sociology at Brandon University in Manitoba who studies social media and policing.
"There's already an existent narrative that this particular meme and rumour can be placed neatly into, whether it's real or false," Schneider said. "They want to believe that there's some sort of dirt, or something going on with the investigation, or that there is corruption there."
He added that the specifics of the rumour are believable but hard to verify — which makes it even more likely to be shared.
"It's also not completely implausible. It's not a meme that says, 'Brenda Lucki has two heads and secretly hides one of her heads.' The idea that she could be married to somebody's cousin doesn't seem out of the realm of possibility," Schneider said.
The rumour also emerged as the RCMP is facing questions about its own internal affairs, after senior intelligence officer Cameron Ortis was charged with violating Canada's official secrets act.
First tweeted by account with just a few hundred followers
The first mention of the rumour that CBC managed to find on social media appeared on Aug. 26. In a response to a tweet about the RCMP and SNC-Lavalin, an unidentified person who goes by "Kim" claimed that they had obtained information from a retired RCMP officer.
"[Minister of Public Security] Ralph Goodale has tied the hands of the commissioner, who is married to a relative of Bill Morneau," this person claimed, offering no evidence.
In fact, in a later tweet, the user expressed frustration over being unable to find any information about the family of Lucki or Gauthier. When contacted via Twitter, the person running the account refused to speak with CBC. The initial tweet was shared 29 times.
That tweet is the earliest instance of the allegation that CBC News could find online. All of the early tweets and Facebook posts propagating the rumour either cite this tweet, or other posts referencing it, as evidence. No earlier traces of the rumour have been found and the original tweeter seems to indicate that they obtained their information from an in-person conversation, not from an online source.
The unfounded rumour had a limited spread immediately following its first mention. CBC News managed to find a handful of tweets referencing it, as well as some Facebook posts, none of which garnered a large number of reactions.
But on September 10, the false story began picking up steam. The rumour began popping up in response to reporters' tweets about a Globe & Mail story alleging that the Trudeau government had refused to lift cabinet confidentiality on the SNC-Lavalin issue, blocking RCMP inquiries into whether the SNC-Lavalin case amounted to obstruction of justice.
The Globe also reported that the RCMP were pausing their inquiries because of the federal election campaign.
Mentions of the rumour also appeared in responses to a tweet by an obscure Canadian conspiracy website on Sept. 13. Some of those responses claimed Lucki herself was Morneau's cousin; the website subsequently tweeted out the cousin rumour later in the day.
From there, the story reached a larger audience beginning September 15, when memes featuring pictures of Lucki and Morneau and the false rumour of their connection started to emerge. Several partisan commentators and pages on both Twitter and Facebook shared these memes, generating thousands of shares and comments.
This meme puts the false rumour into an easy-to-share format, which spread quickly on social media. (Image: Facebook)
Exact numbers are difficult to determine because many different versions of the memes and posts pushing the rumour were shared across social media platforms.
The story was posted on Sept. 16 by Alberta Canada Campaign, a Facebook page that's part of a network of partisan pages created by former Conservative Party organizer Larry Brandt. The post was shared 3,300 times. (Incidentally, the person listed as the administrator of Alberta Canada Campaign, Maureen Gow Zelmer, was also one of the first people to post the rumour to Facebook on Aug. 26.)
"A rumour like this quickly gains a life of its own," Schneider said. "Even while news journalists investigate this and debunk it, that does not necessarily deter the circulation and the virality, because in certain circumstances, people want to believe this."
Clarifications
- This story has been updated from a previous version to clarify that statements from the RCMP and Bill Morneau were issued in response to questions from CBC News.Sep 18, 2019 7:36 PM ET
The explanation that Joudrey gave as to why he was able to fall back to sleep after hearing gunshots seems plausible. However, he says he later woke up and received a text message from a friend warning that something was up in Portapique so he gets into his truck to investigate. He runs into a police team that tell him to leave Portapique and he witnesses two houses on fire before returning home where upon he falls back to sleep.Really? How could he sleep after all that?
Thank you for writing that Tim.
Worth noting: I followed all the testimony a lot more than most people. But before now, I never saw Joudrey’s initial interview with the RCMP. I only knew Paul Palango’s version- which did not square at all what I did know. Palango’s version is the default narrative out there.