https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVMqGngld2M&ab_channel=NighttimePodcast
the Nova Scotia Mass Shooting - Oct 16, 2022 - with Paul Palango
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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
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCBcCAHkcAU&ab_channel=LittleGreyCells
gun ban
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The Dan Brien "tapes" - April 28, 2020 - Parts 1, 2 & 3
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Dep. Commissioner Brian Brennan - Dan Brien & the "deleted" tapes Sept 9, 2022
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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.
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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
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