Recommendations must be fast-tracked
Columnist hopes Mass Casualty Commission's findings will spur action
The report into the worst mass murder in Canadian history is scathing and unforgiving, as well it should be.
Anything short of damning criticism and demands for a major overhaul of the RCMP would have made a mockery of the inquiry.
The RCMP failed us and failed us badly on April 18 and 19, 2020. The price paid by the families of 22 victims is the steepest anyone could pay. They will live with the anguish of those failures forever.
It also failed Lisa Banfield, the common-law spouse of the shooter, who was abused and victimized again by RCMP who laid charges against her.
A report that stopped short of a wholesale condemnation of the RCMP’s handling of the whole thing would be an insult to those people. It would also be an insult to all Nova Scotians, whom the RCMP also failed in those 13 hours.
The Mass Casualty Commission’s final report gave a timeline of what happened before, during and after the event.
It criticizes a wide swath of RCMP operations, absence of leadership, poor communication, failure to alert the public to danger, inadequate training of officers and lack of accountability.
All these failures resulted in a murderer who was able to go on a 13-hour rampage through the province in a replica RCMP police cruiser.
The report provides 130 recommendations, 75 of which apply to policing in Canada.
There was also discussion of the role of domestic violence, something the report calls an epidemic in Canada. It delved into the importance of listening to the community that raised red flags about a violent man. There was also a discussion on how the guns were obtained.
The report is 3,000 pages and
available on the commission's website. There is also a 300page summary of their findings and recommendations. Families, media and the RCMP were provided with the report before it was released.
In a spectacular lack of attention to the gravity of this report, the interim commissioner, Michael Duheme, didn’t read it before it was released. The optics of this speak volumes.
Given the rocky road of this inquiry, which was mired in controversy before it even got off the ground, it has come up with some solid insights into
the gross inadequacies of the RCMP.
If things weren’t agonizing enough for those distraught families, they were forced to make public protests to escalate the investigation into a fullblown inquiry. Governments wanted a lower-grade review, another failure by institutions responsible for public safety.
There were times when the trauma-informed inquiry seemed more concerned about the trauma of police officers than the trauma of victims.
The union representing RCMP didn’t want its first responders to testify and called the inquiry performance theatre.
Now the task is to make changes happen. We’ve had reports on mass casualties before and recommendations have not been acted upon in any substantial way.
Will this one be any different? Will the 130 recommendations be left to sit on some shelf gathering dust as others have?
I hope to God not, but if history is anything to go by with inquiries into mass murders in Canada, you’ll have to forgive my skepticism.
Whatever body is struck to implement the changes, it should not be led by the RCMP, which has demonstrated its inadequacies, arrogance and inability to fix itself. There is a deep rot in the culture of that organization.
Having measurable recommendations to which governments and the RCMP can be held accountable is an important first step.
We need to hold their feet to the fire on this. We need to see timelines and plans of action for implementation.
This is where the rubber is going to hit the road in this inquiry. It’s a big job to change the culture, people and processes of a historic and iconic policing organization.
Any delay or foot-dragging will be another failure that will endanger lives.