Interference Allegations in RCMP Investigation
The bad thing about going on vacation for a week is that I have to catch up on all the notable stories I missed. The good thing about going on vacation for a week, besides the obvious, is that any stories that developed while I was away have much more information published about them. That was definitely the case with the story on the RCMP that popped up last week.
Last Tuesday, June 21st, the Halifax Examiner dropped a bombshell of an article. It described findings from the Mass Casualty Commission, tasked with investigating the RCMP response to and handling of the 2020 massacre in Nova Scotia, that alleged the federal government had interfered in the RCMP’s investigation. Handwritten notes by then-Superintendent Darren Campbell alleged that during a meeting a week after the massacre, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told members of the RCMP that she had promised then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that the RCMP would release information about what weapons were used in the massacre in order to further advance the government’s gun control legislation.
Former Communications Director Lia Scanlan was also quoted as saying that Blair and Trudeau had been weighing in on what the RCMP could and couldn’t say during their media briefings and lamented having a commissioner that doesn’t push back against the government. Soon after the meeting took place, the Prime Minister announced a ban on about 1,500 firearms including two of the guns that were used in the mass shooting although this knowledge was not known at the time.
The allegations can be seen in Supt. Campbell's notes here
These allegations resulted in a firestorm with Conservative MPs demanding answers and calling for an investigation, media headlines calling for the resignations of Blair, Trudeau, and Lucki, and culminated in the Public Safety and National Security Committee voting to hold a 4 hour meeting in a month’s time to get some answers. That meeting will call three panels of witnesses: the first including Darren Campbell and other Nova Scotia RCMP witnesses; the second including Commissioner Lucki and her former Deputy Commissioner; and the third including current Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair and his former Deputy Minister of Public Safety Robert Stewart. Conservative members on the committee had wanted to hear from someone in the Prime Minister’s Office but that motion was unsupported.
Blair, Trudeau, and Lucki have all either released statements or denied interfering in the investigation. Blair stated that Campbell must have come to those conclusions himself and that he “made no effort to pressure the RCMP to interfere in any way with their investigation” and “gave no direction as to what information they should communicate”. He continued saying that “those are operational decisions of the RCMP and [he] respect[s] that and [he has] respected that throughout”. In light of Blair’s remarks, several former RCMP officers came out and publicly vouched for Campbell’s character saying that he has a solid reputation, is extremely competent, and has tremendous integrity. Trudeau stated in an interview:
“We did not put any undue influence or pressure. It is extremely important to highlight that it is only the RCMP, it is only police that determine what and when to release information. I will highlight however, that when the worst mass shooting in Canada’s history happened, we had a lot of questions. Canadians had a lot of questions. And I got regular briefings on what we knew, what we didn’t know. And those answers continue to come out, even as the public inquiry is ongoing.”
He also affirmed that he still has confidence in Commissioner Lucki who released a written statement. In her statement, Lucki denied interfering in the investigation and stated her meetings with the PMO and Public Safety Minister were standard procedure and had no impact on the integrity or independence of the RCMP investigation. She also said she regretted her behaviour and approach during the meeting at the crux of the allegations and said her “need for information should have been better weighed against the seriousness of the circumstances they were experiencing”. Lucki is expected to be called as a witness before the Mass Casualty Commission sometime next month. We actually reached out to the MCC to get an exact date but we’ve yet to hear back.
It should be noted that none of the denials issued by Blair, Lucki, or time Prime Minister are denials of the issue at the heart of the allegations. None of them deny making or acquiring promises to leverage the mass shooting to advance the Liberal’s gun control legislation. It should also be noted that the four pages of Supt. Campbell’s handwritten notes that contained the allegations were not handed over to the MCC the first time the federal Department of Justice delivered documents. 132 pages of Campbell’s notes were sent in mid-February and the missing pages were only received by the MCC at the beginning of June. The MCC has been receiving thousands of pages of information on a rolling basis and has staff doing a careful review of all documents received. The Department of Justice has said that the pages in question were being assessed for whether or not they were privileged, however the MCC was not made aware that this assessment was taking place.
So, for now, we’re waiting for answers from either Lucki’s testimony before the MCC or the results of the Public Safety and National Security Committee’s meeting on July 25th. Perhaps this will spur the government to finally reform the RCMP. Current Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino has said that he is deeply committed to enhancing oversight of the RCMP by strengthening the role of the management advisory board. The civilian board is made up of eight members and has a mandate to provide advice, information, and reports on administration of the RCMP to the Commissioner. The board is also able to weigh in on the development and implementation of policies and the effective use of resources. Mendocino recently introduced a bill that would require the RCMP to respond to interim reports from a revamped watchdog within six months; a move made after Commissioner Lucki was taken to court over lengthy delays in responding to interim reports from the complaints commission. That might not be enough to restore trust in the federal police. Other suggestions include having the Commissioner report to parliament and not just the Minister of Public Safety to make it clear that the RCMP are autonomous and independent of the government or having a proper non-political civilian oversight body with a more rigorous mandate.
I would be remiss in saying that perhaps some of the reaction to this has been overblown. While having politicians interfere in a police investigation is always questionable, the level of interference matters greatly. Was the government pushing the RCMP to overlook certain things and focus on others? No, the allegations are that the government had received a promise from the RCMP Commissioner to release certain details about the weapons used. Releasing said details while the investigation was ongoing could have been detrimental to discovering the source of the weapons the killer used since the people who got them for the killer would be likely to go into hiding once they realized their guns had been used to commit mass murder. However, the RCMP had almost immediately named the perpetrator of the killings and so with that knowledge, anyone involved with selling to or acquiring guns for the individual would have tried to hide anyways. It’s fair to wonder how much impact the release of the gun information would have really had on the investigation considering that the people known to have sourced the guns for the killer are still yet to be charged. Leveraging a traumatic event is not a good idea in theory but it’s fair to ask why not. How long should governments wait after a mass shooting to enact gun control before they can be sure they are not “leveraging it for political gain”? Governments should act when it is right to act. Would knowing the guns used in the mass shooting make their gun control more popular? Perhaps, but gun control was part of the Liberal platform, so it should’ve been seen as inevitable, regardless of the tragedy in Nova Scotia. Maybe enacting legislation right after the mass shooting would improve the optics of the government? But people who wanted gun control already would hold a favourable view regardless and the people who thought it was too much would not.
The RCMP should not answer to only one Minister of the sitting government. If that was different, and the RCMP was accountable to all the different stripes in parliament, perhaps this controversy would have been avoided. After the recent lawsuit against Lucki and her comments on systemic racism, it might be time to move on and get a fresh perspective at the top of Canada’s national police force. If Blair or Trudeau are found to have crossed the line in their contacts with the RCMP, then perhaps it’s time for them to go too. Maybe this is all too consistent with how Trudeau’s government has operated, and this is one scandal too many. It is far too early to call for any of this right now. Lucki will testify before the MCC next month and the Public Safety and National Security Committee will have their own meeting next month as well. Let’s see where they go before, we start calling for anything drastic.
We’ll keep you posted with any updates between now and then! Cheers!