What RCMP Reforms the Inquiry Into the NS Mass Killing Calls For

Among a long list of recommendations, the final report of the inquiry into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting has called for an overhaul of the RCMP.

On April 18–19, 2020, Gabriel Wortman killed 22 people, injured three others, and set fires to multiple houses at locations across Nova Scotia before he was shot and killed by police.

The 3,000-page report on the incident published by the inquiry, titled “Turning the Tide Together,” contains a total of 130 recommendations, 75 of which were directed at the RCMP.

The report identified several failings in the way the RCMP failed to respond to the incident. It found that the Mounties who initially responded to the incident ignored multiple witnesses telling them that the shooter was driving a replica police car. The RCMP did not alter the public to this fact until nearly 12 hours later.

The report said this “failure” was the product of deficiencies in the RCMP’s process for “capturing, sharing, and analyzing information received during a critical incident response.”

The RCMP had not prepared for the best way to notify community members of the danger and “execute a large-scale evacuation of civilians from a hot zone while and active threat was in progress.” An Alert Ready message was never issued to the wider public, which the commissioners said was the result of a “lack of knowledge.”

The commissioners also said the RCMP’s focus on finding and stopping Wortman, “led to the exclusion of rescue-oriented tasks such as systematically finding, warning, and evacuating community members or searching for victims.” The RCMP took too long to conduct a “systematic search” for additional fatalities, and failed to give families timely next-of-kin notifications.

The report says issues such as “interoperability” between different emergency responders must be improved, and there should be an “overhaul” of police education across the country.

“This transformation must begin with recruiting and education, and from there extend to all aspects of the RCMP’s work,” the report says.

Reforms

The report recommended the RCMP phase out the depot model of police colleges—which involved a 26-week training program— by 2032, instead creating a three-year degree-based model of police education for all police services in Canada.

When asked about the recommendation on Thursday, Interim RCMP Commissioner Mike Duheme pushed back against the idea of “shutting down Depot without having a proper analysis from the RCMP and other people,” adding that the force will have to have a deeper dive.”

An external, independent review of the RCMP—including a review of the contract system under which the RCMP gives policing services to rural areas of Canada—should also be commissioned by the federal minister of public safety. The report said that following this, RCMP tasks and responsibilities should be reassigned to other agencies, including, potentially, to new policing agencies.

“This may entail a reconfiguration of policing in Canada and a new approach to federal financial support for provincial and municipal policing services,” the report said.

The RCMP’s national communications policies should also be revised to clearly state that the objective is to provide accurate information about its operations, particularly in responding to media questions in a timely and complete manner.

The RCMP should also commission an external expert review of its initial critical incident response training for front-line supervisors to be completed within six months. According to the report, the review should assess the rate of compliance with mandatory training requirements among front-line supervisors, and whether existing training adequately equips the supervisors to exercise initial command until an accredited critical incident commander takes over.

Other recommendations for the RCMP include ensuring every critical incident commander has a “ready go duty bag” with a police radio, RCMP cellphone, and laptop at all times when on call; all staff at the RCMP Operational Communications Centre have access to 911 call recordings and be trained in how to play them back; and that the RCMP should publish an annual report explaining what it learned from operational debriefings and what changes it has made in response to after-action reports in the previous year.