RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, front centre, arrives for a change of command ceremony for incoming B.C. RCMP Commanding Officer, Deputy Commissioner Dwayne McDonald, in Langley, B.C., on Sept, 20.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki’s media director made and deleted a recording of her calling out her commanding officers in Nova Scotia for failing to publicly release information about guns used during the country’s deadliest mass shooting.
On Tuesday, a newly released RCMP affidavit disclosed details about how an internal investigation by the police force only recently unearthed a recording of a crucial conference call, which was held among Mounties on April 28, 2020, or just days after 22 people were killed by a gunman.
This summer, revelations about the existence of the tense RCMP call first gave rise to a chorus of criticisms over whether the federal Liberal government interfered with police operations. Released notebooks and letters documented how Nova Scotia Mounties had left that conversation suspecting that Commissioner Lucki was under pressure from Ottawa officials to get her officers to publicly reveal sensitive details about gunman’s weapons.
Commissioner Lucki referenced the Liberal government’s pending gun control measures during the call. But these allegations of political interference made by RCMP Nova Scotia officers occurred months before audio of the call was released publicly by the mass-casualty commission last week. It was not initially clear how or why the public inquiry acquired a copy after the commission completed its testimony phase last month.
On Tuesday, RCMP Superintendent Jeffrey Beaulac explained how this crucial recording was deleted and then undeleted. In a sworn affidavit released by the public inquiry, the deputy chief security officer in Ottawa says the Mounties were able to digitally reconstruct a copy of the recording this month after discovering the data resided on a phone controlled by Dan Brien, the Mounties’s top media-relations manager.
While RCMP investigators had been trying to find a copy of the recording since controversy erupted in June, they faced delays after Mr. Brien went on a medical leave this summer. The phone was given to the RCMP’s digital forensic examination teams in mid-October.
Lessons were learned from Nova Scotia mass shooting, RCMP deputy commissioner says
In his affidavit, Supt. Beaulac says that Mr. Brien taped the conference call in 2020 but this is now under investigation because the recording had never been authorized. “In the absence of someone being lawfully authorized to record a meeting, or notifying other participants in a meeting that it is being recorded, video- or audio-recording a meeting can result in an unlawful collection of personal information contrary to the Privacy Act,” Supt. Beaulac writes in the affidavit.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair have denied interfering with the RCMP’s operations or unduly pressing Commissioner Lucki to have her subordinates release information about the weapons of the gunman in the N.S. mass shooting. Commissioner Lucki has said she only ever engaged with routine information-sharing with federal officials. Parliament’s public-safety committee of MPs, however, voted this week to ask Mr. Blair and Commissioner Lucki to appear again in coming days to answer questions about the newly released recording.
Supt. Beaulac’s affidavit says that when the controversy first erupted on June 24, Mr. Brien told his RCMP colleagues that there was a tape “done on a personal device and it was no longer available as it was on an old phone that had been stolen.” Supt. Beaulac’s affidavit says Mr. Brien conveyed that “the recording was done in error.”
But by mid-July, after Mr. Brien went on medical leave, the superintendent’s RCMP security team probed the matter as an “unauthorized recording of an RMCP operational meeting on an employee’s personal mobile device.”
On Sept. 7, the RCMP retrieved two laptops and a mobile phone from Mr. Brien. The recording did not surface on these devices.
Investigators then interviewed Mr. Brien on Sept. 20. During that conversation he said that he inadvertently recorded that conference call and had initially forgotten about it but that he “was still in possession of the device on which the April 28, 2020, call was recorded.” However he also said that he had “deleted the app that was used to record the call” due to space limits on his phone.
The affidavit says Mr. Brien also “confirmed that the recording was not made on a phone that was later stolen, but that in June, 2022, he may have thought so.”
Mr. Brien agreed this month to have that phone examined by the RCMP National Division Digital Forensic Services unit. On Oct. 12, Mr. Brien “provided consent for the RCMP to search his personal mobile device for the recording of the April 28, 2020, call,” Supt. Beaulac’s affidavit says.
The next day, the digital forensics team found a copy of the recording and provided it to the mass-casualty commission early last week, which released the audio to the public days later.
In July, the mass-casualty commission was told by the federal Department of Justice that a partial recording of the contentious call may exist. Supt. Beaulac’s affidavit says that Mr. Brien remains on leave from the RCMP.
“I am informed that on July 7, 2022, Mr. Brien went on sick leave from his employment and as of today’s date he has not returned to the workplace.”