The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Victims’ families fought for public inquiry into mass killings
Patsy Bagley will have to wait until 2022 for the answers she needs.
That's when the public inquiry into the April mass killing is scheduled to issue its interim (May 1, 2022) and final (Nov. 1, 2022) reports.
“You can't heal until you get the truth,” said the woman who was married to one of the victims, Thomas Bagley, for nearly half a century.
She, along with the other surviving family members of April's mass killing, are heroes of 2020.
Because if they hadn't fought for a public inquiry, none of us were going to get one.
Without that fully transparent and thorough reckoning with the facts, we would all be haunted by questions.
In July, the provincial and federal justice ministers announced a public review that wouldn't have the power to subpoena witnesses, wouldn't necessarily interview them in public and would keep all documents and information collected confidential. The review, conducted by a threeperson panel, would provide their report to the provincial justice minister, who would then decide how which of the findings would be released.
Provincial Justice Minister Mark Furey was forced to admit no one had asked for a review with such limited scope.
It was the families of the 22 victims of the April massacre who stepped up, reliving their pain in a public campaign through marches and media interviews in which they demanded a public inquiry with a power to subpoena where all the evidence collected is laid bare in a full reckoning.
In the political finger pointing that followed, Premier Stephen Macneil claimed the provincial government wanted a public inquiry “from the very beginning,” Liberal senators broke ranks and on July 28 federal Public Safety Minister Bill Blair announced a public inquiry in a tweet in French.
“It would have been less hard on the families if they'd announced a public inquiry at the beginning,” said Bagley.
“The families are feeling someone is lying. That they're not telling us the whole truth.”
Families want to know why the RCMP never searched the killer's Portapique home after a 2011 bulletin to police agencies across the province from the Truro Police Service warned he had illegal guns and “wanted to kill a cop.”
The RCMP has denied having had any prior relationship with the killer.
A freedom of information request by The Chronicle Herald for correspondence between the federal and provincial governments regarding the public review/inquiry fiasco was responded to with a $12,600 fee estimate.
An appeal of that fee estimate was denied.
“The questions haunt us all the time,” said Bagley.
She has faith that, though delayed, the inquiry will have the ability to shed light on many of the shadows.