Members of the Ottawa House Public Safety Commission will meet on Monday to investigate whether there was political interference with the RCMP in investigating the April 2020 shootings in Nova Scotia.
More than a week after the shooters killed 22 people in a 13-hour shootout, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucky met with a top officer in Nova Scotia.
Darren Campbell, who was in charge of the police investigation, wrote in his memo that Lucky had promised the federal government to disclose information about the weapons used by the shooters.
RCMP Communications Director Lia Scanlan also said at a hearing investigating the shootings that then Minister of Public Security Bill Blair and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau didn’t go into details, but said, “What we can’t say. We are considering. ” What that means.
Trudeau and Blair categorically denied that there was political interference, and Lucky reiterated that he did not feel pressure from federal authorities.
The Commission will be lucky to hear from other senior RCMP members of the National Headquarters, Senior Officer of the Nova Scotia Cavalry, Blair, and Deputy Minister of Public Security Rob Stewart.
The witness list does not include Scanlan or Campbell, who will appear before a hearing investigating the shooting in Halifax on the same day.
Campbell’s memo outlines that a meeting between Lucky and several others from RCMP’s national headquarters came as a surprise to him.
“I felt that the press conference was honest and upcoming and that I was able to protect the information to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” he wrote.
It mentions it as a past meeting, but it’s not clear when the memo was written.
Campbell wrote that Lucky didn’t speak up, but was “obviously upset.” He accused him of despising her for not following her instructions, and said this confused him.
He believed that revealing information about the guns used in the killings would jeopardize investigations in both Canada and the United States. Gunmanga Briel Wortman smuggled many pistols and assault-style weapons from Maine, including those given to him by his friends. No one in either country has been charged with a weapons crime in this case.
“The Commissioner said to the Minister of Public Security and the Prime Minister’s Office that RCMP (we) had promised to disclose this information,” Campbell’s memo read.
“Then, the Commissioner said we didn’t understand that this was tied to a pending gun control law that would make officers and the public safer.”
On May 1, 2020, the federal government announced that it would fulfill its election promise by banning 1,500 types of assault-type rifles. During the announcement, Trudeau mentioned Nova Scotia’s shootings as an example of what the changes were intended to prevent.
Blair was asked at the same press conference if the list included the type of weapon used by Wartman, and did not provide details, but confirmed that some were included. Since the allegations, he has discussed shooting investigations and gun control measures with Lucky, but said the discussions were separate.
RCMP also did not disclose information about weapons to the public. The media, including the Canadian Press, had alleged in court at the time to confirm the black-filled information in the police documents used to obtain the case’s investigation warrant. The information was finally released in November through the Law on Access to Information.
Campbell’s handwritten notes are published as part of an ongoing inquiry into the shooting. They were attached as exhibits in a bitter document outlining dozens of cases where RCMP hid basic information about the incident or obfuscated it three months after the shooting.
This included the number of victims, the relationship with the shooter, the fact that one victim was a child, the number of crime scenes, the reason for the first 911 call on the night the killing began, and police shooters. This includes when you learn that you are being disguised as follows: Above all, RCMP Officer.
Campbell and Assistant Commissioner. Chris Leather was RCMP’s main spokesperson for six public briefings from April 19th to June 4th, 2020.
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