former public security minister Bill Blair He was asked again on Wednesday whether his government had interfered in the investigation into the April 2020 shootings. Nova Scotia — a question that has drawn political attention in Ottawa for more than a week.
Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office are accused of pressurizing the RCMP commissioner Brenda Luckey to issue details about the types of weapons used by the gunman, with two rcmp Officials alleged that Lucky told them the information was related to an upcoming gun law.
The government announced a ban on assault-style weapons on May 1, 2020, with the cabinet approving an order-in-council implementing the change.
Conservatives have accused liberals of using a tragedy to advance their agenda. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh said in a statement last week that it is completely unacceptable for the government to “use this horrific act of mass murder to garner support for its gun policy.”
Nova Scotia mass shooting: Blair ‘of course’ to remain in cabinet amid claims of interference
But that’s not how another mass shooting survivor sees it.
In December 1989, Heidi Rathjen was a student at Montreal’s cole Polytechnique when a gunman killed 14 women and injured 14 others.
She said the response to the mass shootings should be “political and immediate”.
“Conservatives and the gun lobby are falling down on themselves by claiming that[the order-in-council]was some sort of devious self-serving political move that exploits a tragedy, while on assault weapons for most Canadians The right thing to do is to impose sanctions. To stop the mass shootings,” she said in an email to the Canadian press.
“If it is a tragedy to prompt the government to take long-awaited action on gun control, it may be a sad commentary on politics, but it is certainly beneficial to public safety.”
Rathjen, who leads an advocacy group called Polysuviant, said the government “would have loved” to respond quickly to what happened at the Polytechnique.
“Unfortunately, it took six years of advocacy before a proper gun control law was passed, and families of victims are still fighting for a complete ban on assault weapons — even three decades later.”
Blair said his office had worked with the RCMP on the banned weapons list for months before the announcement, but those talks had “no relation” with discussions about the shooting spree.
“The RCMP was certainly involved in those discussions from the very beginning because they are responsible for administering the Canadian firearms program,” he said.
Allegations of government interference came to light through evidence released by a public inquiry into the shooting. A letter to Luckey, written by Darren Campbell and RCMP’s Director of Strategic Communications Lia Scanlan, about the meeting 10 days after the shooting.
Scanlan’s letter, which was written nearly a year later, said that Luckey “referred to pressure and conversations with Minister Blair, which we clearly understood was related to the upcoming passage of the gun law.” Scanlan’s perception that the commissioner was under political pressure made him feel disgusted.
“It was appalling, unfair, unprofessional and extremely petty,” Scanlan wrote.
Luckey has admitted that he “expressed disappointment with the flow of information” at the meeting.
Blair and Luckey have denied that there was any pressure to release a list of weapons used in the shooting, and neither they nor the Nova Scotia RCMP provided that information before it was reported by the media in November 2020. disclosed to the public.
Former police officer Michael Arnfield says if the alleged interference did take place, it is not clear how it will affect operations or the investigation.
But more importantly, they say, the “juicy political scandal” is diverting attention from investigations into why and how a man disguised as a police officer and armed with illegal weapons can avoid the police and last longer. The killing was able to continue. 13 hours.
“The great conversation in the RCMP about administrative, systemic problems has been eliminated,” said Arnfield, a professor of criminology at Western University.
Blair said he had questions for Lucki when he spoke, and noted that the government “heard the concerns from the people of Nova Scotia very clearly” about the RCMP’s actions.
He said that therefore the public inquiry _which he initially opposed_ has been tasked with tracing the RCMP’s communications.
The force released limited information to the public on Twitter during the shooting.
It sent a tweet to Portapique on April 18 with a warning of a “firearms complaint”, even though the communications officer on the call that night knew several people had been killed and the gunman’s whereabouts were unknown.
Thirteen people were killed that night and many buildings were gutted. The next morning, the gunman killed another nine as he drove through rural areas of the province, evading police until just before noon.
The investigation heard that it took 27 minutes to obtain Scanlan’s approval that morning, for a tweet warning the public that the gunman was driving a fake RCMP cruiser and wearing a police uniform.
During that time, Kristen Beaton and Heather O’Brien were murdered on the side of the highway in Debert, pregnant when N.S. Beaton was killed. Her husband, Nick Beaton, and O’Brien’s daughter, Darcy Dobson, led the call for a public inquiry into what went wrong in July 2020.
“When you took out (an inquiry) the oxygen you gathered at the bereavement’s families to get answers about what was wrong with the RCMP, it deviates from the original motivation of the investigation,” Arnfield said. Said questions about what went wrong, “the interest of life and death for the Canadian people.”
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