N.S. shooting inquest needs to include feminist lens, officials told
Calls for transparent review as research shows many killers have past of domestic violence
Linda MacDonald hates the phrase “senseless shooting.”
She says she rejects the idea that it’s impossible to make sense out of dramatic acts of violence — the kind that took place three months ago in Nova Scotia.
The shooter who killed 22 people in and around Portapique, N.S., appears to have had a history of violence against women, most specifically his commonlaw spouse. Research shows one of the few common elements between perpetrators of mass shootings is a history of domestic violence.
It may not be the only factor in the killings that took place in Colchester County in April — the RCMP say the preliminary findings of a psychological autopsy have described Gabriel Wortman as an “injustice collector” — but it’s enough for MacDonald to submit that any inquest into the massacre needs to include a feminist “lens.”
It’s a call that’s gained increasing public traction in recent weeks and months, as pressure mounts for the provincial and federal governments to begin a promised inquest into the killings — and scrutiny intensifies around what form that inquest could and should take.
Advocates for the approach say it could set an example for how to handle such tragic events in the future.
“We can’t be sitting around in the dark about the history of what happens before we get to these crimes and we can’t be calling them senseless anymore,” says MacDonald, the co-founder of Persons Against Non-State Torture (NST), a campaign to raise awareness about abuse — or “torture” — by families or groups.
“We get the fact that mass shootings and misogyny and femicide are all connected. (A feminist lens on the inquiry) is a way of preventing these atrocities down the road.” NOVA SCOTIA continued on A8
So what is a feminist lens? What would it mean in this instance?
Practically, says MacDonald, the feminist perspective would be served first by including it — in black and white — in the mandate of the inquiry; then by including on the inquiry panel, someone who has a background in feminist analysis, and a knowledge of misogyny and femicide.
That’s what it would take to learn needed lessons from the Portapique shooting, says NST co-founder Jeanne Sarson.
“A feminist analysis has to acknowledge that misogyny is attached — if you will — to all of our perceptions about how Canadian society wants to deal with violence against women and girls,” says Sarson. “How will this inquiry impact the future? How will Nova Scotians want to deal with violence against women and girls?”
In a 2019 Pepperdine University study analyzing mass shootings in the United States, researchers found a significant portion of mass shooters had a history of either domestic violence or stalking.
“There are very few commonalities among the diverse profiles of mass shooters, but a history of domestic violence is one that appears too often to ignore,” the study found.
Based on their data, author Jacob Shawn Dunlop argued that, “the next mass attack may be preventable through prudent policy. This paper argues that policy-makers should prioritize better enforcement of existing federal domestic violence laws, (and) restrict firearm access to felon and misdemeanant-level stalkers.”
MacDonald and Sarson are not alone in their call for a feminist perspective in the Nova Scotia case.
In a letter last week, more than three dozen senators urged the federal and provincial government to use a feminist lens in a “transparent and comprehensive inquiry” into the shootings. Almost as many faculty members from the law school at Dalhousie University in Halifax did the same in a recent letter to Nova Scotia Premier Stephen McNeil.
“No assessment, no analysis will bring back those who have died. But in my experience working with those who’ve been victimized, there are usually two main things they want to know,” says Sen. Kim Pate, one of the signatories to the Senate letter to ministers in both the federal and Nova Scotia governments.
“And that is: Why? Why them? And how can we prevent it from happening to other people?
“And if we don’t look at the role of misogyny, the role of violence against women in these early indicators … when we don’t take it seriously, then we do a serious injustice to trying to predict how to stop these kinds of patterns from unfolding again in the future.”
Wayne MacKay, a professor emeritus at the Schulich School of Law at Dalhousie University, is one of 34 people to sign the letter from law school faculty urging the government to conduct, with all due haste, “a transparent, impartial and independent assessment of why and how this incident occurred.”
But, argues, MacKay, the framework of that inquiry is important too.
One of the province’s delays in announcing an inquiry, along with arguing jurisdiction with the feds, is Nova Scotia Justice Minister Mark Furey’s stance that he would like to take a restorative justice approach to the inquiry.
Restorative justice, according to the Department of Justice’s own description, is an approach that focuses on addressing the harm caused by a crime by providing an opportunity for the parties directly affected by the crime — victims, offenders and communities — to identify and address their needs in the aftermath of a crime.
That’s a bad idea here, said MacKay, for a few reasons.
One is that a restorative approach — bringing the offender and the offended community together — is questionable in the circumstances surrounding Portapique, where the killer is dead, and so are most of his victims.
The other major problem is that the restorative approach is generally a very secretive process.
“I'm particularly concerned that the lack of public commitment and the more behindclosed-doors approach will not be adequate to restore public confidence in the government, the police and the various other agencies,” said MacKay, “not only in their relation to their response, but in relation to what they did that may have laid the foundation for the problem in the first place.”
The problem at the moment, said MacKay, is that all the public has is an open-ended commitment from both levels of government to have some kind of inquiry. Nobody knows the nature of that inquiry, or the timing.
“I think it’s been way too long, for at least that much clarity to be provided the families in particular.”
On April 18 and 19, Wortman killed 22 people, torched homes and shot pets during a 13-hour rampage that began in Portapique, and continued throughout Colchester County before police killed him at gas station near Enfield, N.S., almost 100 kilometres away.
Apicture of the killer has since emerged as a man with a history of violence against women. In 2013, then-neighbour Brenda Forbes, 62-year-old veteran of the Canadian Forces, told police about reports that Wortman had held down and beaten his common-law spouse behind one of the properties he owned in Portapique.
Forbes previously told The Canadian Press she first became aware of Wortman’s proclivity for domestic violence in the early 2000s, shortly after moving to Portapique, when his common-law spouse came to her door one night asking for help, saying Wortman was beating her and she needed to get away.
Later in 2013, she learned from three witnesses that Wortman had been seen strangling and hitting his partner behind one of his properties. Other neighbours have reported similar incidents of violence.
Forbes — who has said she ended up moving out of Portapique due to fears of violence from Wortman — reported what she had seen and heard to the RCMP, including the fact that she’d seen illegal weapons at his house. RCMP have since said the killings were carried out with guns that Wortman did not have a licence for.
On the evening of April 18, Wortman’s killing began after an assault on his common-law wife, authorities have also said. She managed to escape captivity and hide out in the woods surrounding the property until finding police the next morning.
More than three dozen senators called for a feminist lens in a ‘transparent and comprehensive inquiry’ into the shootings