New documents released Tuesday from the April 18-19, 2020, massacre investigation have accounts of three senior officials and officers who say the guns used by the gunman were mentioned in a meeting with RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki. Lia Scanlan, former communications director for Nova Scotia RCMP, wrote in a scathing email to Lucki that during the April 28, 2020 meeting with Nova Scotia commissioner and senior officials, Lucki briefed the team on ‘The pressures and the conversation with [then public safety] Minister Blair “, which the group clearly understood to be related to the forthcoming arms control legislation. “I remember feeling disgusted as I realized this was the catalyst for the debate,” Scanlan said in an email dated April 14, 2021, about a year after the shooting. “I could not believe what you were saying, the leader of our organization, and I was ashamed to know what was going on. It was horrible, unprofessional and extremely derogatory.” Lia Scanlan was Communications Officer for Nova Scotia RCMP in April 2020. (Andrew Vaughan / The Canadian Press) On May 4, 2020, Prime Minister Justin Trindade announced a ban on about 1,500 brands and models of weapons, including two of the weapons used in the Nova Scotia mass shooting. At the time, police had not released the specific brands and models used in the attacks. Scanlan’s email echoes controversial notes released last week by Supt. Darren Campbell on the same subject. Campbell’s claim that Lucki had made commitments to Trudeau and Blair before the new arms control legislation triggered a political storm in Ottawa resulted in an impending parliamentary hearing on allegations of possible political interference. Both Blair and Trinto denied any wrongdoing and said the RCMP was making its own decisions about disclosure. In her email to Lucki, Scanlan said she suspected the April 28 meeting may have been about guns, as she was asked if Campbell could talk about guns less than two hours before a press conference she gave. day. Prior to April 28, Scanlan said there had been talks between the Nova Scotia RCMP team and the national headquarters about the caliber of the weapons used in the shooting, but the Nova Scotia team felt that these details could not be discussed. public from a research point of view. Scanlan wrote that within the Nova Scotia division, they had committed to sharing any new information with the victims’ families in front of the media to prevent their re-victimization, and that the details of the weapon had not yet been shared with them. Campbell’s remarks also indicated that he believed this information could jeopardize the investigation into how the shooter acquired his weapons.
NS reality “very different” from Ottawa: Scanlan
Scanlan wrote that at the time of Lucki’s meeting, the Nova Scotia Mounties were facing global scrutiny in dealing with the loss of their colleague Const. Heidi Stevenson, and stories of “incredible” horror for the 22 victims. “Suffice it to say that what we were experiencing in Nova Scotia, day in and day out, probably looked and felt very different from the advantage in Ottawa.” In addition to Scanlan’s letter, the committee also published handwritten notes from former Assistant Commissioner Lee Bergerman, who has since resigned as Commander of the RCMP of Nova Scotia and as Chief Supt. Chris Leather, who was second in the hierarchy in April 2020. Bergerman’s notes listed who attended the meeting and included the phrase “angry about the lack of details about the weapons,” but not who made the comment. Leather’s notes stated that the meeting with Lucki was about “the firearms used” and noted an “adjustment to include firearms information in the speech notes”. He also noted that one issue that arose was concern about the “flow of information”. Neither Bergerman nor Leather’s notes referred to what Lucki had said about Blair. Michael Scott of Patterson Law, the company that represents the families of most of the shooting victims, said he was concerned about possible political interference. He said it would be useful for those at the April 28 meeting to confirm “exactly what was said” in order to remove any discussion on this point. “Then we will have some real questions about the involvement of the RCMP from the Ottawa headquarters in this investigation, because we would be very concerned about using the mass loss incident as some kind of political opportunity,” Scott told reporters at survey on Tuesday. Michael Scott is a Patterson Lawyer whose company represents more than a dozen families of Portapique victims. (CBC) The Justice Department kept four critical pages of Campbell’s notes containing information about the April 28 meeting until four weeks ago, when they shared them with the Commission of Inquiry. The federal Department of Justice said the pages required an assessment of whether they were privileged. Scott said it was “particularly worrying” that the Mounties had not informed the Commission of this revision of the privilege. “The fact that it’s these four, specifically these four pages, I think speaks for itself,” Scott said. Last week, Lucki also denied interfering in the police investigation, but did not respond to a request for comment before the Liberals’ plan to introduce new gun control legislation in May 2020. Campbell and Lucky are expected to be called as witnesses in the investigation later next month. They have also been summoned to appear before a parliamentary hearing in Ottawa in late July.
