NS shooting inquiry launches public proceedings

Almost two years after the shocking rampage that ended with 22 Nova Scotians murdered and the killer shot dead by police, the Mass Casualty Commission has launched the public proceedings segment of its investigation.

The Commission was formed after a two-day killing spree across rural Nova Scotia in April, 2020, which allegedly saw victims beaten, burned and shot to death. The federal government was quick to initiate gun control measures after the murders (the Order in Council bans of May, 2020), but the Mass Casualty Commission has been slower-moving. The Commission (which includes a former Chief Justice of Nova Scotia, the former police chief of Fredericton, NB, and a Toronto-based lawyer—see the lineup here) is just now getting into the public proceedings.

Not that there hasn't been legal fallout from the murders already; RCMP have charged three of the killer's associates with illegally providing him ammunition (the killer had no PAL and held his firearms illegally—with police knowledge, his neighbours allege). Those charges are now mired in controversy, with the killer's brother-in-law alleging his charges are only made to distract from police inaction. The killer's former common law wife also faces charges of illegally supplying ammunition; her lawyer says she will not cooperate with the Mass Casualty Commission until those charges are dropped.

Aside from those charges brought by Nova Scotia's RCMP, the Commission's activities (including lots of work by investigators and lawyers) have run up a $13-million bill to date, but the public has seen very little visible return on that money. That may change now, as the Commission has set up at the Halifax Convention Centre, livestreaming the public proceedings.

The RCMP says it has cooperated with the Commission so far; in coming days, some of the officers involved with the response to the killings may be called to testify. The Commission has a list of 61 potential witnesses, but there is still questions over who it plans to call on. Family members of the victims are particularly unhappy about this, as they have been about other aspects of the investigation. Expect much of the testimony to consist of summaries of the commission's investigators' reports.

The Commission says the hearings will run three or four days a week until sometime in May; an interim report into the killings comes at end of May, with final report in November, and more public meetings expected in between those.

Remember, this Commission is not formed to bring criminal charges. The goal is to find out exactly what happened throughout the Portapique killing spree, and make recommendations to government to avoid a similar tragedy in the future. Will those recommendations include gun control? Maybe, but as the killer was not legally licenced and obtained the majority of his arsenal through the US, and with police allegedly ignoring neighbours' complaints about those illegal firearms, perhaps the recommendation will be that police focus on first enforcing the laws on the books, before introducing ineffective new legislation.