RCMP commissioner ‘made me feel like I was stupid’, says Mountie, investigates accusations of political interference by Liberals

The risks of a police investigation into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting seemed “irrelevant” to RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki when she pressed local officials on why they didn’t release information about the firearms used, she said. Mounties to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday.

The House of Commons standing committee on public safety is investigating allegations of government political interference in the investigation of the RCMP shootings.

The investigation centers on an April 28, 2020 teleconference involving Lucki and Nova Scotia RCMP officials, in which Lucki expressed displeasure that the superintendent had not released details about the firearms at a news conference. that day. Darren Campbell.

According to Campbell’s handwritten notes, Lucki said he had “promised” then-Minister for Public Safety Bill Blair’s office and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP would release the information and was linked to enforcing pending gun control legislation. of the government.

Twenty-two people were killed in a 13-hour shooting across multiple Nova Scotia communities in April 2020, the worst mass shooting in Canadian history. Police eventually killed the shooter.

Nova Scotia’s RCMP did not release details about the firearms at the time because officials said it could have hindered their investigation.

“The commissioner was upset. The commissioner made me feel like I was stupid and didn’t seem to understand the importance of why it was important to publish this information, the information specific to firearms in relation to legislation,” Campbell, who is now with the New Brunswick RCMP, said. to the public safety committee on Tuesday.

“She did not seem to appreciate or acknowledge the importance of maintaining the integrity of the investigation.”

Nova Scotia RCMP Director of Strategic Communications Lia Scanlan, who was also on the April 2020 call, was asked in committee on Tuesday if she felt Lucki understood the risks that disclosure might have. of information in research.

“Yes, my conclusion, my experience from that conversation was that the risks seemed irrelevant,” he testified.

Scanlan said he didn’t want to speak for Lucki about what his thought process might have been. However, he added: “As a police officer, I think I would have a clear understanding of what it means to compromise the integrity of an ongoing investigation, especially the largest number of victims in Canadian history.”

Lee Bergerman, 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 firearms information.

Lucki and Blair, who now serves as minister for emergency preparedness, have denied there was any pressure to release information or political interference.

Lucki told the committee last month that Blair’s then-chief of staff, Zita Astravas, asked if information about the firearms would be released at the news conference, and Lucki confirmed that it would.

When that didn’t happen, Lucki said he felt he had “misinformed the minister and, by extension, the prime minister”, and wanted to convey that to the Nova Scotia RCMP.

He said he linked the firearms information to the federal government’s pending gun control legislation because a ban on assault weapons was included in Blair’s ministerial mandate letter.

Campbell said Tuesday that when Lucki brought up the legislation on the teleconference, “Frankly, I didn’t want to hear any more about it and I didn’t ask.”

He said he felt “bumpy…sad and disappointed” after the meeting, while Scanlan testified that she was “ashamed to be a part of it.”

The existence of the teleconference only became public after the Mass Victims Commission, the inquiry investigating 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 on Tuesday that the department was tasked with reviewing more than 2,400 pages of handwritten notes from senior RCMP officers to hand over to the commission.

He said 35 pages, including the four pages of Campbell’s notes on the meeting, had been marked as containing “potentially inside information” that 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 reviewed further,” Daigle said.

He said the document review process does not involve the justice minister’s office, and the withheld pages were finally delivered on May 30.

The Conservatives are pushing for the committee to hear more witnesses, including Astravas. The party’s public safety critic, Raquel Dancho, told reporters calling for Blair or Lucki to resign is not “off the table” but said the committee needs to hear more testimony first.

“We think there was clearly some kind of inappropriate pressure,” Dancho said.

The Conservatives also accused Lucki of “acting against the public interest” when he shared details about the firearms with government officials in April 2020, despite RCMP witnesses on the committee saying the information should remain. within the police force.

Chief Superintendent of the Nova Scotia RCMP. Chris Leather told the committee last month that they had reached an “agreement” with the province’s police watchdog, the Serious Incident Response Team (SIRT), to keep the information confidential. The watchdog was conducting its own investigation because the shooter had been killed by police.

Campbell testified Tuesday that he didn’t think it was appropriate for Lucki to share that information. But the former director of SIRT recently told The Canadian Press that he gave the RCMP no such directive regarding firearms reporting.

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