RCMP misses key deadline for response to Nova Scotia's mass casualty of 2020

'Action plan' was to have been delivered last month

The RCMP has blown past a deadline for responding to a scathing public inquiry into the deaths of 22 Nova Scotians at the hands of an armed killer in 2020.

The force had promised to release a “public strategy and action plan” by the end of 2023, outlining how it would implement sweeping reforms called for by the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC).

The commission was highly critical of the RCMP’s response to the shootings, and last March issued 130 recommendations, most of them bearing on the conduct of the RCMP.

A Mountie spokesman confirmed the force did not meet its deadline.

“The RCMP continues to work to finalize its action plan and strategy with all efforts being made for it to be publicly available early in the new year,” said spokesperson Robin Percival in Ottawa.

In a Sept. 26 briefing note to Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc, the RCMP committed to the end-of-2023 deadline, noting that “significant investment will be required to fully realize the transformative change the MCC envisaged.”

The delay will impact the work of a group specially appointed to monitor progress on implementing the 130 recommendations, known as the Progress Monitoring Committee, headed since May 31 by retired Nova Scotia judge Linda Lee Oland.

Oland’s group has been given three years and a budget of $1.6 million to track what action is being taken. The committee has met twice, and Oland told a Dec. 12 news conference: “I don’t see anybody dragging their feet so far.”

But she acknowledged the 130 recommendations might not be completed within the three-year time frame. She provided few details about what has been achieved so far.

Oland has agreed to serve only for the first year of the progress committee. Public Safety Canada initially consulted family members of the deceased, among other groups, about who should head the committee but the exercise produced “no viable options,” says a May 26 briefing note for LeBlanc.

“Feedback from families affected by the tragedy registered that the Chair should be someone most affect[ed] by the mass casualty event, and that the Chair should not be a government official or appointee,” says the note from Shawn Tupper, deputy minister.

The lack of stakeholder consensus may explain the shortened, one-year appointment of Oland. She has not responded to a request for an interview.

The briefing notes from RCMP and Tupper were obtained under the Access to Information Act.

The monitoring committee includes members of victims’ families, a local mayor, RCMP officials, a local police official, delegates from Public Safety Canada and the Nova Scotia government, and Indigenous and African-Canadian representatives. They’re to meet again in the spring.

Oland receives a daily rate of $1,250 for meetings and preparation, while non-government members receive $800 per day. The costs of the monitoring committee, including its secretariat, are being shared by the federal and Nova Scotia governments.

Dean Beeby, an independent Ottawa journalist, is author of Mass Murder, Police Mayhem (Formac, 2023), about the 22 murders in Nova Scotia on April 18-19, 2020.