RCMP head made officer feel ‘stupid’
Commissioner pressed local officials on releasing information about weapons, Mountie tells probe
The risks to a police investigation into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting seemed “irrelevant” to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki when she pressed local officials about why they didn’t release information on the firearms used, Mounties told a parliamentary committee Tuesday.
The House of Commons standing committee on public safety is probing allegations of political interference by the government into the RCMP investigation of the shootings.
The probe is focusing on an April 28, 2020, teleconference involving Lucki and Nova Scotia RCMP officials, in which Lucki expressed displeasure that details on the firearms had not been released at a news conference that day by Supt. Darren Campbell.
According to Campbell’s handwritten notes, Lucki said she had “promised” the office of then-public safety minister Bill Blair and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP would release the information, and that it was tied to bolstering the government’s pending gun control legislation.
Twenty-two people died in a 13hour shooting rampage across several Nova Scotia communities in April 2020, the worst mass shooting in Canadian history. Police eventually killed the shooter.
Nova Scotia RCMP did not release details about the firearms at the time because officials said it could have hampered their investigation.
“The commissioner was upset. The commissioner made me feel as if I was stupid and didn’t seem to understand the importance of why this information was important to go out, the information specific to the firearms as it was related to the legislation,” Campbell, who is now with the New Brunswick RCMP, told the public safety committee Tuesday.
“She didn’t seem to appreciate or recognize the importance of maintaining the integrity of the investigation.”
The Nova Scotia RCMP’s director of strategic communications, Lia Scanlan, who was also on the April 2020 call, was asked at committee Tuesday if it was her impression that Lucki understood the risks that disclosing the information could have on the investigation.
“Yeah, my takeaway, my experience from that conversation was that the risks seemed irrelevant,” she testified.
Scanlan said she didn’t want to speak on behalf of Lucki as to what her thought process might have been. However, she added, “As a police officer, I think she would have a clear understanding of what it means to compromise the integrity of an ongoing investigation, especially the largest mass casualty in Canadian history.”
Lee Bergerman, the former head of the Nova Scotia RCMP, previously told the committee that Lucki referred to “pressure from the minister” during the call to release the information on the firearms.
Lucki and Blair, who now serves as minister of emergency preparedness, have denied there was any pressure to release information or political interference.
Lucki told the committee last month that she been asked by Blair’s then-chief of staff, Zita Astravas, if information on the firearms would be released at the news conference, and Lucki confirmed it would be.
When that did not end up happening, Lucki said she felt she had “misinformed the minister and by extension, the prime minister,” and wanted to convey that to Nova Scotia RCMP.
She said she made the link between the firearms information and the federal government’s pending gun control legislation because a ban on assault-style weapons was included in Blair’s ministerial mandate letter.
Campbell said Tuesday that when Lucki mentioned the legislation in the teleconference, “quite frankly I didn’t want to hear anything more about it, and I didn’t ask.”
He said he felt “deflated … sad and disappointed” after the meeting, while Scanlan testified she was “embarrassed to be a part of it.”
The existence of the teleconference only became public after the Mass Casualty Commission — the inquiry looking into the massacre — released Campbell’s notes in June. Those notes were initially withheld by the federal government when it turned over a much larger batch of documents to the commission earlier this year.
Deputy justice minister François Daigle told the committee Tuesday that the department was tasked with reviewing more than 2,400 pages of handwritten notes from senior RCMP officers to give to the commission.
He said that 35 pages — including the four pages of Campbell’s notes about the meeting — had been flagged as containing “potentially privileged information” which could include legal advice or cabinet confidences.
“Unfortunately, we did not alert the commission to the fact that we had not produced the additional 35 pages because they were being further reviewed,” Daigle said.
He said the process of reviewing documents does not involve the office of the justice minister, and the withheld pages were eventually turned over on May 30.
The Conservatives are pressing for the committee to hear from more witnesses, including Astravas.
The party’s public safety critic, Raquel Dancho, told reporters that calling for the resignations of Blair or Lucki is not “off the table,” but said the committee needs to hear more testimony first.
“We do believe that clearly there was some sort of inappropriate pressure,” Dancho said.
The Conservatives also charged that Lucki “acted against the public interest” when she shared details about the firearms with government officials in April 2020, despite RCMP witnesses at committee saying that information was meant to remain within the police force.