What RCMP Reforms the Inquiry Into the NS Mass Shooting Is Calling For

RCMP members pack up after the search for Gabriel Wortman in Great Village, Nova Scotia, on April 19, 2020. (John Morris/Reuters)

The final report of the inquiry into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass shooting calls for an overhaul of the RCMP, among a long list of other recommendations.

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

The 3,000-page report on Wortman’s rampage published by the Mass Casualty Commission, titled “Turning the Tide Together,” contains a total of 130 recommendations, 75 of which are directed at the RCMP.

The report identified several failings in the way the RCMP responded 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 alert 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.”

“In our process, it was apparent that the organizational structure of the RCMP both contributes to these failings and makes it challenging to hold the organization accountable for its work,” the commissioners said in the report.

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 [an] 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,” it says.

Reforms

The report recommended the RCMP phase out the depot model of training—which involves a 26-week program at Depot, the RCMP Academy in Regina—by 2032, and instead create a three-year degree-based model of police education for all police services in Canada.

When asked about the recommendation upon the release of the report on March 30, 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” into what exactly the commissioners are recommending.

An external, independent review of the RCMP—including a review of the contract system under which the force gives policing services to rural areas of Canada—should also be commissioned by the federal minister of public safety, the report said, and 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 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 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.