Contentious Lucki call not political interference, Nova Scotia mass shooting inquiry finds
Contentious Lucki call not political interference, Nova Scotia mass shooting inquiry finds
Gun policy comments made by then-RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki in a contentious call to Nova Scotia RCMP officers after the mass shooting in 2020 did not amount to political interference, the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC) final report concludes.
"Lucki's audio recorded remarks about the benefits to police of proposed firearms legislation were ill-timed and poorly expressed, but they were not partisan and they do not show that there had been attempted political interference," reads the commissioner's findings in the report's executive summary.
Questions over whether anyone in the federal government interfered with the RCMP's investigation into the mass shooting became a dominating story in Ottawa in June of last year after documents released as part of the MCC alleged that the tragedy was being used by the Liberals to help push forward a new gun ban.
Central to the claims was that in a meeting several days after the killing rampage that left 22 people dead, Lucki allegedly expressed her disappointment with the Nova Scotia division's handling of press briefings, because she wanted them to release specific information on the firearms used by the perpetrator.
In handwritten notes, Nova Scotia RCMP superintendent Darren Campbell wrote that Lucki indicated she promised then-minister of public safety Bill Blair and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s office that the RCMP would release this information, and that this was tied to pending gun control legislation intended to make officers and the public safer.
At the time, the Nova Scotia RCMP — which was under heavy scrutiny for its handling of the case from the start — said releasing additional information would jeopardize the ongoing investigation into the perpetrator’s access to firearms.
Days later, the prime minister announced a ban on 1,500 assault-style weapons, including weapons used in the Nova Scotia shooting. Moving forward on gun control measures was a pre-existing Liberal commitment, dating back to their 2019 election campaign.
At the time, Blair, Lucki and Trudeau all denied that they put any undue influence or pressure on the officers investigating Canada's worst mass shooting.
The MCC's findings appear to have come to the same conclusion but did determine, however, that the meeting "both reflected and contributed to the deterioration of the relationship between [Nova Scotia's] H Division and RCMP national headquarters after the mass casualty."
The report notes that Nova Scotia RCMP leadership and the communications personnel who were on the contentious call "experienced considerable personal and professional strain in the aftermath of the mass casualty," and at the same time national leadership including Lucki were "concerned by what they perceived to be inadequate internal briefing practices and poor public communications."
"The damage from this meeting did not resolve with time," the report states.
Lucki has said repeatedly that she regretted the way she approached the meeting, and the impact her approach had.
This controversy largely played out on Parliament Hill, seeing a House of Commons committee hold a series of hearings in search of a full airing of the facts around the allegations. It also became part of the commission's extensive hearings, and in October 2022, partial recordings of the tense meeting were released.
Though, in the context of the thousands of pages released Wednesday, this was a minor takeaway in a sea of findings on the RCMP's failures before, during, and after the tragedy.
One of the most significant recommendation's made by the commission is for the federal government to advance further gun control efforts, including reforming the classification system for firearms and prohibit "all semi-automatic handguns and all semi-automatic rifles and shotguns that discharge centre-fire ammunition and that are designed to accept detachable magazines with capacities of more than five rounds."
A Liberal proposal to further tighten gun laws to include “red flag” provisions and restrict legal access to handguns remains before Parliament, after a proposed amendment to enshrine in law a definition for "assault-style" weapons, became a point of contention.
Lucki retired as RCMP commissioner just two weeks before the report was released. The commission said it had secured a personal promise that she'd champion implementing the MCC's recommendations, and it is now expecting her successor to uphold that commitment.
On Thursday, interim RCMP commissioner Mike Duheme said while he can't change what happened, he's committed to seeing the national police force improve.
Reacting to the report's findings on Parliament Hill on Thursday, Blair said he thinks the report "correctly" concluded "that there was no partisanship, and certainly no interference in this case."
"I know that there had been some speculation and even some innuendo about that at the time, but quite frankly, I think that’s a distraction from the real issues," Blair said. "This is a tragic event for the families and the communities in which this took place, and it demands the best response from all orders of government, from the RCMP, from all of us."
A New Democrat MP is trying to convince his colleagues to change the rules that govern the House of Commons in a series of ways he says would instill 'democratic controls' on the prime minister's 'unfettered' powers.
Monday morning, the Public Service Alliance of Canada announced it had reached a 'tentative' agreement with the federal government for the 120,000 picketing Treasury Board workers who, since April 19, had been engaged in one of the largest strikes in Canadian history. Here's a rundown of the developments from Parliament Hill as they happened.
The House committee studying foreign election interference heard from top 2019 and 2021 Liberal and Conservative campaign directors on Tuesday, with party officials from both camps speaking about the need for politicians to come together to address any "legislative gaps" ahead of the next vote.
In the 2023 federal budget, the government is unveiling continued deficit spending targeted at Canadians' pocketbooks, public health care and the clean economy.
U.S President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have announced updates on a number of cross-border issues, after a day of meetings on Parliament Hill.
Danielle Smith's win in the Alberta election hands her the most starkly divided province confronting any premier in Canada, writes commentator Don Martin.
Special rapporteur David Johnston didn't recommend public inquiry knowing it was a pathetically insufficient response for a foreign democratic assault of this magnitude, writes Don Martin in an exclusive column for CTVNews.ca.
To frame a few new illustrations on pages tucked inside a passport as proof of a Liberal plot to purge the Canadian historical record seems like a severe stretch, writes Don Martin in an exclusive column for CTVNews.ca.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino is a bright former federal prosecutor, who was destined to be a star in Justin Trudeau's cabinet. But in an opinion column on CTVNews.ca, Don Martin argues Mendicino has taken a stunning fall from grace, stumbling badly on important issues just 18 months into the job.
It's the most peculiar of elections with the frontrunner and her main opponent being the same person, writes columnist Don Martin. 'In the looming Alberta showdown, it's Premier Danielle Smith versus her mouth.'
As more Canadians pass their family cottages down to the next generation, 'major shifts' in the ownership of recreational homes will occur, according to Re/Max. But amid concerns around the cost of housing, some may be wondering whether they can afford to keep that family cottage. Here's what younger generations need to know about inheriting a recreational property and the market today.
As wildfires continue to ravage across Canada, an expert warns that people who live through such natural disasters could experience serious mental health issues in the long term.
The number of people in Canada with inflammatory bowel disease is increasing rapidly and is expected to grow to 470,000 by 2035, according to a new report from Crohn's and Colitis Canada.
Pierre Poilievre is off to Manitoba to rally Conservative supporters ahead of a byelection that Maxime Bernier is hoping will send him back to Parliament. The far-right People's Party of Canada leader lost his Quebec seat in the 2019 federal vote and lost again in the 2021 election.
With firefighting resources in the Halifax-area spread thin amongst multiple fires that began Thursday afternoon, the municipality’s largest fire that started Sunday remains 50 per cent contained.
As the rainbow flag flew at schools across Ottawa on Thursday, the public school board says some parents kept their children home from school due to possible Pride activities.
The highlight of Game 1 for Jamal Murray came when he dribbled into the middle, planted his surgically repaired left knee in the paint, made a full clockwise turn, then faded away and swished a mid-range jumper.
Accessible Community Counselling and Employment Services, a charity that supports internationally trained engineers like Zaitsev, said the dropping of the Canadian experience requirement is a welcome development.
With firefighting resources in the Halifax-area spread thin amongst multiple fires that began Thursday afternoon, the municipality’s largest fire that started Sunday remains 50 per cent contained.
Gatineau police arrested an 18-year-old man in connection to the investigation into a hidden camera discovered in the washroom at an elementary school.
As wildfires continue to ravage across Canada, an expert warns that people who live through such natural disasters could experience serious mental health issues in the long term.
The wildfires plaguing residents in Alberta and Nova Scotia are part of a larger trend that's driving up the cost of home insurance as extreme weather becomes more common, insurance experts say.
Accessible Community Counselling and Employment Services, a charity that supports internationally trained engineers like Zaitsev, said the dropping of the Canadian experience requirement is a welcome development.
The elevated walkway in Winnipeg's Fort Gibraltar that collapsed during a school field trip, sending 16 children and one adult to hospital, was last repaired a decade ago.
The U.S. Department of Justice has informed former Vice President Mike Pence 's legal team that it will not pursue criminal charges related to the discovery of classified documents at his Indiana home.
Nearly four years after Jeffrey Epstein's suicide, the AP has obtained more than 4,000 pages of documents related to his death from the federal Bureau of Prisons under the Freedom of Information Act.
Border Patrol medical staff declined to review the file of an 8-year-old girl with a chronic heart condition and rare blood disorder before she appeared to have a seizure and died on her ninth day in custody, an internal investigation found.
Clashes between police and supporters of Senegalese opposition leader Ousmane Sonko left nine people dead, the government said Friday, with authorities issuing a blanket ban on the use of several social media platforms in the aftermath of the violence.
The Biden administration is retaliating for Russia's suspension of the New START nuclear treaty, announcing Thursday it is revoking the visas of Russian nuclear inspectors, denying pending applications for new monitors and cancelling standard clearances for Russian aircraft to enter U.S. airspace.
Ukrainian air defences shot down more than 30 Russian cruise missiles and drones in Moscow's sixth air attack in six days on Kyiv, local officials said Friday. The Ukrainian capital was simultaneously attacked from different directions by Iranian-made Shahed drones and cruise missiles from the Caspian region.
Pierre Poilievre is off to Manitoba to rally Conservative supporters ahead of a byelection that Maxime Bernier is hoping will send him back to Parliament. The far-right People's Party of Canada leader lost his Quebec seat in the 2019 federal vote and lost again in the 2021 election.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is welcoming Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to Canada Friday as the federal Liberals keep quiet about a democratic backslide in his country.
Bill Blair is blaming Canadian Security Intelligence Service director David Vigneault for the fact he didn't receive a memo warning about the alleged targeting of Conservative MP Michael Chong and his family by a Chinese diplomat.
The number of people in Canada with inflammatory bowel disease is increasing rapidly and is expected to grow to 470,000 by 2035, according to a new report from Crohn's and Colitis Canada.
Racial bias built into a common medical test for lung function is likely leading to fewer Black patients getting care for breathing problems, a study published Thursday suggests.
Researchers at Carleton University's Department of Electronics in Ottawa created a ground-breaking testing device to detect early signs of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s through biomolecular activities in a person’s saliva.
Twitter's head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, told Reuters on Thursday that she has resigned from the social media company, which has faced criticism for lax protections against harmful content since billionaire Elon Musk acquired it in October.
Deep in an open coal mine in southern Greece, researchers have discovered the antiquities-rich country's oldest archaeological site, which dates to 700,000 years ago and is associated with modern humans' hominin ancestors. The find announced Thursday would drag the dawn of Greek archaeology back by as much as a quarter of a million years, although older hominin sites have been discovered elsewhere in Europe. The oldest, in Spain, dates to more than a million years ago.
More than 20 years after British comedian Ricky Gervais gave insufferable middle-manager David Brent global fame, an Australian version of the hit show 'The Office' is being made, this time with a female lead.
Netflix shareholders voted on Thursday to reject multi-million dollar pay packages for the company’s top executives including for co-CEOs Ted Sarandos and Greg Peters.
Early access for 'Diablo IV' began Thursday night -- but the rollout of the highly anticipated action role-playing video game didn't come without speedbumps, notably for PlayStation users.
The wildfires plaguing residents in Alberta and Nova Scotia are part of a larger trend that's driving up the cost of home insurance as extreme weather becomes more common, insurance experts say.
As more Canadians pass their family cottages down to the next generation, 'major shifts' in the ownership of recreational homes will occur, according to Re/Max. But amid concerns around the cost of housing, some may be wondering whether they can afford to keep that family cottage. Here's what younger generations need to know about inheriting a recreational property and the market today.
The latest sanctions, if any, that the NBA plans to levy against Memphis guard Ja Morant for his second instance of displaying a gun on social media will be announced shortly after the finals, Commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday.
Bianca Andreescu beckoned the partisan Court 14 crowd for noise as she looked to put the finishing touches on a second-round win over American wild-card Emma Navarro.
America apparently needs more car seats. So, when Volkswagen unveiled the ID. Buzz, a retro-styled electric van, last year, it noted that the version for the North American market would be longer and would have three rows of seats.
An Indianapolis 500 fan whose vehicle was damaged when a tire flew off a racecar and out of the track during the race will receive a new car, an Indianapolis Motor Speedway spokesperson said.
