Why it took 4 months to recover the recording of a controversial RCMP meeting

The Mounties' national head of media relations is under investigation for recording part of a controversial meeting involving the RCMP commissioner in the wake of the Nova Scotia mass shooting — but has been on sick leave since the day he met with lawyers for the federal government.

A new affidavit from RCMP Supt. Jeffrey Beaulac of Ottawa, released Tuesday by the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC) leading the inquiry into the mass shooting, details the Mounties' internal process of finding the recording.

Beaulac states in the document that on or around June 24, 2022 "RCMP senior management" learned that Dan Brien, the RCMP's director of media relations, had recorded at least part of the April 28, 2020, call with Commissioner Brenda Lucki and the Nova Scotia RCMP team.

It wasn't until September that word of a possible recording came out publicly through the MCC hearings. The commission obtained the recording from the RCMP earlier this month and released the recording publicly late last week.

An email from the MCC to accredited media on Tuesday states that "the Commission requested an affidavit from the RCMP explaining how the audio of this meeting came to be provided at this late date."

However, inquiry documents show that the commission was notified about the recording in July.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Michael Scott, a lawyer with Patterson Law who represents many of the victims' families.

"Public proceedings are done. We've received this recording after the close of public proceedings and now we've … received an affidavit that raises more questions than it answers."

The June 24 revelation from Brien came just days after Supt. Darren Campbell's notes from the 2020 meeting became public through the inquiry.  The notes said Lucki had "promised the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister's Office" that the RCMP would release details of the firearms used by gunman Gabriel Wortman to kill 22 people on April 18 and 19, 2020.

This created a storm of accusations that the Prime Minister's Office and then-public safety minister Bill Blair interfered politically by pressuring Lucki to release the details in order to help boost the Liberal government's pending gun legislation.

The affidavit from Beaulac said that on June 24 Brien spoke with his direct manager, Jolene Bradley, and told her the recording "was done in error and it was not his common practice to record meetings" but was recorded on a personal phone that "he no longer had use of."

The same day, Brien also told RCMP Chief Supt. Michael O'Malley that he couldn't access the phone the recording was on as it "had been stolen." O'Malley was the officer in charge of the force's internal team that coordinates RCMP's involvement with the shooting inquiry.

The affidavit states that on July 7, federal government lawyer Lori Ward said her team met with Brien and he told them "he would on occasion record interviews that the commissioner gave" so he'd have a record of what was said. Brien again said that he believed the recording was lost, since it was "on a device that he no longer has."

Ward shared that information in a letter to the inquiry on July 8, and added that their legal team asked Brien to try to confirm whether he still had the device with the recording or what happened to it.