Ottawa, N.S. set up watchdog to monitor progress on Mass Casualty Commission recommendations

Two months after a commission investigating the worst mass shooting in Canadian history made sweeping calls to reform the RCMP and improve community safety, it’s still not clear how many of its recommendations the federal government will adopt.

On March 30, the heads of the Mass Casualty Commission released a final report with 130 recommendations over more than 3,000 pages. The commission was struck to investigate the deaths of 22 people at the hands of a gunman in Nova Scotia.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino told reporters in Ottawa Wednesday the government will have a “concrete update in the very short term.”

“I’m going to keep a very open mind about what recommendations will be implemented,” he said.

The minister was announcing, in tandem with the Nova Scotia government, the creation of an independent body to monitor the progress of both governments on enacting the report’s recommendations.

They announced that retired Nova Scotia Court of Appeal justice Linda Lee Oland will chair what will be called the “Progress Monitoring Committee.”

The Mass Casualty Commission had recommended that both levels of government establish an accountability body by May 31.

Mendicino said Oland has an “understanding of how these reforms can be taken from what are words on a page and translated into a reality that will mend trust and reform the RCMP.”

Phasing out depot would be a ‘significant decision:’ Mendicino

The minister was asked multiple times Wednesday whether the government will commit to all of the report’s recommendations.

For example, the report recommends phasing out the historic RCMP training centre in Regina, known as the depot, and establishing a three-year, degree-based model of police education for all police services in Canada. Politicians in Saskatchewan already have rejected the notion.

Mendicino called it a “significant decision” needing more consultation.

He said he is “absolutely committed to moving as quickly as we possibly can” on consultations, “but in the right way.”

Most of the commissioners’ recommendations were aimed at reforming the RCMP.

The commission report denounced the police service for failing to warn community members of the danger they were in, depriving them of potentially life-saving information.

It said the force has long been plagued by an “incapacity to respond quickly, publicly, or effectively to acknowledge, seek to understand, and rectify its mistakes or shortcomings.”

One of the defining recommendations calls on the federal public safety minister to commission an independent review of the RCMP, to examine the force’s approach to contract policing and work with contract partners, such as the province of Nova Scotia.

“Parliament, the RCMP and Public Safety Canada must act decisively to implement our recommendations in these areas if the RCMP’s contract policing business line is to have a future in providing the democratic, rights-responsive, equality-regarding police services that Canadians rightly expect,” the report reads.

Mendicino said the government has committed already to further gun law reform — one of the report’s recommendations — and added the RCMP has made changes to its emergency alert system.