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

The head of the RCMP is adamant the police service he oversees is different from the one that was de‐ nounced a year ago for fail‐ ing to keep Nova Scotians safe during the worst mass shooting in modern Cana‐ dian history.

"Judge us by the results we're going to have as we move forward," said Commis‐ sioner Mike Duheme from Millbrook, N.S., on Wednes‐ day.

"We're not the same RCMP we were when the inci‐ dent happened."

The commissioner was in the province to give an up‐ date following the public in‐ quiry into the April 2020 tragedy, in which a gunman killed 22 people, including a pregnant woman, over the span of 13 hours.

A lawyer representing some of the families of the victims said her clients were "underwhelmed."

"There's a lot of vague‐ ness and ambiguity," said Sandra McCulloch, a lawyer with Patterson Law

Following outrage from the victims' families, an in‐ quiry was struck to examine how a rampage of that mag‐ nitude 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.

"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 Mass Casualty Com‐ mission found the RCMP was woefully unprepared to han‐ dle the events of April 18 and 19, 2020. The lack of pre‐ paredness caused chaos and confusion on the ground, with the responding officers unclear of the command structure, it found.

WATCH | RCMP commis‐ sioner hoping to 'rebuild trust' with N.S. families

The report's harshest con‐ demnation was saved for the RCMP's decision to withhold information from the public. That included that the gun‐ man had left Portapique - the rural area where his rampage began - and that he was dis‐ guised as a police officer and driving across the province in a replica vehicle.

Some victims' families, es‐ pecially those who were killed on the morning of April 19, have been vocal that they believe their loved ones would still be alive if the RCMP had broadcast public warnings.

"The RCMP's failure … de‐ prived community members of the opportunity to evalu‐ ate risks to their safety and to take measures to better protect themselves," wrote the commissioners.

"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."

WATCH | RCMP asked how many Mass Casualty Commission recommenda‐ tions have happened

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

The RCMP said it is fo‐ cused on the 33 under its di‐ rect control. The force said it's already changed its over‐ all approach to managing crises, including alerting the public, and has deployed software to track the loca‐ tions of its officers out in the field.

The police service said other recommendations are still a work in progress.

McCulloch said she wan‐ ted to hear more details Wednesday.

"There's a lot of overtures to being responsible or tak‐ ing responsibility for recom‐ mendations and change," she said.

"Specific, hard changes that really respond to mis‐ takes or omissions - I think that there's disappointment we're not hearing more about that."

Duheme argued changes take time.

"I would love to have them all in place by tomor‐ row," he said.

"Change of this nature will take time. We want to make sure that we get this right. We want to rebuild the trust and confidence of Canadi‐ ans."

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.

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

Some of the Mass Casu‐ alty Commission's recom‐ mendations involve direction that 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.

WATCH | Brother of N.S. mass shooting victim reacts to RCMP promises

The commissioners felt the depot model "is inade‐ quate 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.

WATCH | What a public inquiry revealed about the Nova Scotia mass shooting