Federal report examines gaps in RCMP response to N.S. mass shooting

It was a tragedy. 

It was a crime. 

It was a galvanizing event in Nova Scotia history. 

And the worst mass shooting in Canadian history was also a fatal workplace incident that was investigated by the federal government. RCMP officer Const. Heidi Stevenson was among the 22 people killed and her colleague, Const. Chad Morrison, was wounded.

The 13-hour rampage in April 2020 was the subject of a lengthy public inquiry, which culminated in a final report released in 2023, which condemned the RCMP's failures in its response to the mass shooting and called for dramatic reforms.

But the workplace incident report has never been made public. Until now. 

The report’s existence was only disclosed in the spring of 2024, when senior RCMP officers updated their efforts to respond to the criticism of their actions four years earlier.

Following that RCMP news conference, CBC requested a copy of the workplace incident report through an access to information request to Employment and Social Development Canada (ESDC). An unredacted copy of the full report was delivered to CBC News in Halifax last November.

Then, in late December, federal officials said the unredacted report had been sent in error and should be returned. The department offered a redacted version instead.

The report looks at more than the attacks on the two RCMP officers. It also explores what the RCMP did and didn’t do on that weekend. While it covers much of the same ground as the report from the public inquiry, it is more tightly focused on the RCMP.

The mass shooting that began in Portapique, N.S., is the third time the conduct of the RCMP in a deadly crisis has been the subject of intense scrutiny in the last two decades.

In May 2005, four RCMP officers were shot and killed while executing a search warrant in Mayerthorpe, Alta. The incident raised serious questions about how the RCMP handles crises in rural areas, a concern echoed in the events in Portapique 15 years later.

In June 2014, three RCMP officers were killed by a gunman in Moncton, N.B. The analysis of that deadly episode pointed to lapses in training and inadequate equipment, deficiencies that were raised again six years later in Portapique.

The RCMP was found guilty of workplace safety violations in the aftermath of the Moncton murders and fined a total of $550,000. Individual Mounties also launched civil suits against the force.