Lawmakers from the House of Commons’ Public Safety Committee meet on Monday to find out whether there was political interference with the RCMP as it investigated the April 2020 shooting in Nova Scotia.
Just a week after a gunman killed 22 people during a 13-hour shooting, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki held a meeting with top officials in Nova Scotia, which attendees described as tense.
The superintendent in charge of the investigation, Darren Campbell, wrote in his notes that Luckey promised to release information about the weapons used by the gunman to the federal government.
The RCMP communications director, Lia Scanlan, also told the public inquiry into the shootings that then-Public Security Minister Bill Blair and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were weighing in on “what we could and could not say”, although he did elaborate. Didn’t tell me what that meant.
Trudeau and Blair have strongly denied any political interference, and Luckey has repeatedly stated that he felt no pressure from federal officials.
The committee will hear from Luckey at national headquarters along with other senior members of the RCMP, senior officials from the Nova Scotia Mounties, Blair and Deputy Public Safety Minister Rob Stewart.
The list of witnesses does not include Scanlan or Campbell, who are due to appear before a public inquiry into the Halifax shootings on the same day.
Campbell’s notes show that the meeting with Luckey and several others from the RCMP’s national headquarters was a surprise to him.
“I felt the press briefing was honest and forthcoming and that we were able to protect the information to protect the integrity of the ongoing investigation,” he wrote.
It is unclear when the notes were written, although they refer to the meeting as being in the past.
Campbell wrote that Luckie was “obviously upset”, although she did not raise her voice. He said that Lucky accused him of disrespecting him by not following the instructions and this left him confused.
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He believed that disclosing information about the guns used in the killings would jeopardize investigations in both Canada and the United States. Gunman Gabriel Wortman smuggled several handcuffs and assault-style weapons from Maine, including those given to him by a friend. No one in any country has been charged with an arms offense in this case.
“The commissioner said he had promised the Minister of Public Security and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP (we) would release this information,” Campbell’s notes read.
“The commissioner then said that we did not understand, that this was related to the pending gun control law that would make the officers and the public safer.”
On May 1, 2020, the federal government announced that it was fulfilling an election promise by banning 1,500 types of assault-style rifles. During the announcement, Trudeau referred to the Nova Scotia shooting as an example of what was done to prevent the changes.
At the same press conference, Blair was asked whether the list included the types of weapons used by Wortman, and he confirmed that there were some, although he did not provide details. Since the allegations, he has said that he discussed the investigation into the shootings and gun control measures with Luckey, but these discussions were different.
The RCMP also did not release information about the weapons to the public. Media outlets, including The Canadian Press, were arguing in court at the time to look into the information that had been blacked out in police documents used to obtain search warrants in the case. The information was finally released in November through the Access to Information Act.
Campbell’s handwritten notes have been published as part of an ongoing public investigation into the shootings. They were attached as a demonstration to a scathing document outlining dozens of instances in which the RCMP hid or obscured basic information about the case in the three months following the shootings.
This included the number of victims, their relationship to the gunman, the fact that a victim was a child, the number of crime scenes, the reason for the first 911 call on the night the murders began, and when the police discovered the gunman was disguised as An RCMP officer, among other things.
Campbell and Chief Superintendent. Chris Leather was the RCMP’s chief spokesperson during six public briefings held between April 19 and June 4, 2020.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published on July 24, 2022.
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