Blair, Lucki tell Commons committee they didn't meddle in N.S. shooting probe
CBC
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told a House of Commons committee Monday that they did not interfere in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation into the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia.
"Let me begin, and let me be clear. I did not interfere in the investigation around this tragedy," Lucki told members of the House of Commons public safety and national security committee.
"Specifically, I was not directed to publicly release information about weapons used by the perpetrator to help advance pending gun control legislation."
Controversy erupted last month when the Mass Casualty Commission probing the tragedy released documents that included handwritten notes by RCMP Supt. Darren Campbell. Those notes allege Lucki tried to get investigators to publicly reveal the weapons the gunman used.
The notes also say Lucki indicated she promised Blair and the Prime Minister'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.
Campbell's notes suggest the government wanted the information public to further its gun control agenda. Shortly after the tragedy, the government introduced legislation to ban 1,500 types of assault-style firearms.
Lucki told the committee the controversy was the result of a miscommunication between herself and Nova Scotia RCMP.
Ahead of a RCMP news conference on April 28, 2020, Lucki said, federal government officials asked her which items of information police would reveal in the briefing.
"I provided information to the government about what would be released," Lucki told committee members.
"At that time, I was asked if the information about the weapons would be included. When my communications team told me that it would be, I relayed this information back to Minister Blair's chief of staff and the deputy minister of Public Safety."
But Nova Scotia RCMP later told Lucki that information about the guns would not be revealed at the news conference.
"I felt I had misinformed the minister and, by extension, the prime minister," Lucki said at committee.
Lucki said that while she may have used the word "promise" in a call with officers following the press conference, she did not make a formal promise to government officials about the sort of information the RCMP would reveal.
She said that communications between Nova Scotia RCMP and herself were not up to standard and expressed regret about how she handled the call with her subordinates.
Intelligence regarding foreign interference sometimes didn't make it to the prime minister's desk in 2021 because Canada's spy agency and the prime minister's national security adviser didn't always see eye to eye on the nature of the threat, according to a recent report from one of Canada's intelligence watchdogs.