Families and friends listen to a tribute to victims before the Mass Casualty Commission delivers its final report on March 30 into the April 2020 mass shootings, when a gunman who at one point masqueraded as a police officer caused the country's worst mass shooting during a 12-hour rampage, in Truro, N.S.POOL/Reuters
Nova Scotia has appointed a retired judge and a senior civil servant to conduct a review of the province’s reliance on the RCMP, which follows a scathing public inquiry into how the Mounties responded to the 2020 mass shootings.
The government announced Friday that it had hired retired N.S. Supreme Court justice Clare MacLellan and a senior Department of Justice official, Hayley Crichton, as co-chairs of a committee that will “conduct a comprehensive review of the policing structure in Nova Scotia.” The province’s Justice Department also announced that it will hire other committee members and a consultant in coming weeks.
The review is expected to take at least two years.
Earlier this year, the Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission’s report into the killings raised lingering questions about whether the responding officers knew the region and its people well enough to marshal an effective response. During the chaos three years ago, a gunman prowled through the province’s rural areas for 13 hours while killing 22 people.
“We are committed to making our communities safer, and a big part of that work is ensuring our policing services are effective, efficient and structured in a way that best serves Nova Scotians,” said Justice Minister Brad Johns.
In the RCMP’s rural policing model, Mountie cadets are trained at a central Saskatchewan grounds. Federal subsidies are then used to spread these police officers across the country by encouraging them to work under contracts signed with provincial public-safety officials.
Mounties often lack familiarity with the regions they are assigned to and are encouraged to take on new assignments elsewhere every few years. Such dynamics hamper the effectiveness of the police force, according to the public inquiry into the May, 2020 mass shootings.
In urging a provincial review, the March report from the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC) said that many Mounties did not know Nova Scotia communities well.
“The RCMP’s career model undervalues rural general-duty policing,” the report said, adding that this approach “creates a disconnect between RCMP members and the communities they serve.”
A past effort to review policing in Nova Scotia had started in 2020, but it was placed on hold for the MCC’s work. Andrew Preeper, a Justice Department spokesman, said in an e-mail that this “preliminary work” was used to inform some of the measures announced Friday.
In addition to the Mounties, Nova Scotia has 10 municipal police forces. Mr. Preeper said the province will now be asking police agencies and community organizations to put forward names of people who could round out the review committee.
Mr. Preeper said that Premier Tim Houston and Mr. Johns had previously expressed support for a review committee.
The RCMP’s current round of contracts expires across the country in 2032. The federal government is also embarking on a review of the models used by the police service.
Currently, only Ontario and Quebec have standalone provincial police forces; Canada’s eight other provinces rely on the RCMP.
Some jurisdictions in Western Canada have, however, started to look at moving on from the Mounties.
The National Police Federation (NPF), the police union for RCMP officers, is resisting these efforts. The Globe and Mail reported earlier this year that the NPF has gathered more than $1-million to spend on political advertising campaigns in Alberta and British Columbia as part of a push to shore up RCMP support.
In Nova Scotia, the police union has also launched an “Our NS RCMP” website in a bid to bolster the Mountie image.