N.S. shooting tragedy 'happened for absolutely nothing' if RCMP doesn't learn: commissioner

The commissioner of the RCMP says the police ser‐ vice he oversees is differ‐ ent from the one that was denounced a year ago for failing to keep Nova Sco‐ tians safe during the worst mass shooting in modern Canadian history.

After a gunman killed 22 people, including a pregnant woman, in Nova Scotia in April of 2020, an inquiry was struck to examine how the tragedy could have unfolded.

Almost exactly a year ago, the Mass Casualty Commis‐ sion released its final report, which took aim at the RCMP's response to the crisis on al‐ most every level. It called out a lack of preparation, a lack of communication and a lack of leadership and recom‐ mended Ottawa rethink how the RCMP operates.

On Wednesday, Commis‐ sioner Mike Duheme provided an update from Millbrook, N.S. on the nation‐ al police force's response to the Mass Casualty Commis‐ sion's recommendations, promising "meaningful change."

"As an organization, if we don't learn from this, this tragic incident happened for absolutely nothing ... I don't want that to happen," Duheme told CBC News in an interview ahead of Wednes‐ day's announcement.

"We want to prove to peo‐ ple that we can change as an organization."

The federal-provincial public inquiry made 130 rec‐ ommendations, more than half involved policing in Canada.

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The RCMP said it is fo‐ cused on the 33 under its di‐ rect control. The force said it's improving its overall ap‐ proach to managing crises, including alerting the public, and has deployed software to track the locations of its officers out in the field.

In documents shared with the public on Wednesday, the RCMP said implementing those "represents a signifi‐ cant challenge for the RCMP, we do not feel it is impossi‐ ble."

"Police work doesn't have a blueprint - we train our folks the best we can. But certain environments, or cer‐ tain calls we go to, are so dy‐ namic and fluid that mem‐ bers have to think on their feet, adjust according to a threat that's perceived, and then react accordingly. And that's sometimes what you can't capture in training," Duheme said.

"But for the most part, we are better off today than we were two years ago, or four years ago."

Promises of change in the past

Canadians have heard promises of change from the RCMP before.

The RCMP has an uneven record when it comes to im‐ plementing recommenda‐ tions and guidelines follow‐ ing tragedies. For example, a review of the 2014 shooting spree in Moncton, N.B., that left three members of the Codiac RCMP detachment dead and two others wounded, made recommen‐ dations around scene con‐ tainment and crisis manage‐ ment. But Mounties testifying before the Nova Scotia in‐ quiry said they weren't aware if those recommendations had actually been imple‐ mented.

Duheme believes won't happen again.

Since he took over the top job 10 days before the Mass Casualty Commission report came out, he's set up a Re‐ form, Accountability and Cul‐ ture unit within headquar‐ ters, which includes a team dedicated to addressing the MCC and other external re‐ views. that

"We're heading in a differ‐ ent direction," he said.

Some of the Mass Casu‐ alty Commission's recom‐ mendations involve direction from Ottawa, including call‐ ing an independent review of the RCMP's model and phas‐ ing out the police service's training academy in Regina, known as Depot, and imple‐ menting a degree-based sys‐ tem instead.

The commissioner felt the depot model "is inadequate to prepare RCMP members for the complex demands of contemporary policing."

It's unclear yet how the federal government will re‐ spond to the Mass Casualty Commission's report.

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