A woman pays her repects at a roadblock in Portapique, N.S. on April 22, 2020.Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press
A proposed class-action lawsuit from families of victims of Canada’s deadliest mass shooting formally added the Nova Scotia government as a defendant this week, while accusing the RCMP of disrespecting the body of a father killed in the rampage.
The legal action, launched against the national police force in June, has already levelled several criticisms against the Nova Scotia RCMP over their handling of the tragedy that claimed 22 lives in April.
In a new amendment, the families allege the RCMP towed away a vehicle to be analyzed as evidence with a victim’s body still inside, “rather than ensuring that the body was first removed and cared for in the appropriate manner before the vehicle was seized.”
Sandra McCulloch, a lawyer with Patterson Law in Truro, N.S., who is representing the families, said that’s a reference to Joey Webber, who was killed by the gunman while running an errand on the morning of April 19.
“From his family’s perspective, his body was treated with a great deal of disrespect,” she said. “They’re greatly troubled by that disrespect. It was salt on the wounds of a terrible tragedy. It’s indicative of the whole mindset of the RCMP coming out of this.”
Ms. McCulloch said many Nova Scotians have come forward with videos and information about the police operation to capture the killer, Gabriel Wortman.
“We’ve had a lot of good contributions from the public already,” Ms. McCulloch said. “The whole purpose of this process is to get answers and achieve accountability where balls have been dropped.”
The province was added to the legal action because it contracts the RCMP to provide policing and is ultimately responsible for police accountability in Nova Scotia, Ms. McCulloch said.
“The government of Nova Scotia bears some responsibility for their role in oversight, and ensuring policing actually happens properly in the province,” she said.
Both the RCMP and the Nova Scotia Department of Justice said they couldn’t comment on the lawsuit. The province is working with the federal government to establish a public inquiry into the tragedy, which includes appointing commissioners and establishing the terms of reference.
“To date, the RCMP has not yet been served with a civil claim in respect of the incidents of April 18 and 19, 2020, but will review and consider any such claim once served. With this in mind, we will not be responding to allegations in any such claim,” the Nova Scotia RCMP said in a statement .
The lawsuit alleges a series of failures by the RCMP to investigate previous complaints about the gunman, and failure to prevent the rampage from spreading, including using Twitter to warn the public instead of the provincial emergency alert system. It alleges the RCMP knew soon after arriving in Portapique, where the shooting began, on the night of April 18 that the gunman was driving a car that looked like a police cruiser, information that was kept secret for hours.
The next morning, the RCMP contacted federal bureaucrats in Ottawa about a shooter on the loose, while most Nova Scotians were still in the dark. At around 8:30 a.m., three hours before the gunman was killed, Cumberland-Colchester MP Lenore Zann says she got a call from a liaison in the Office of the Prime Minister telling her to alert the public.
“They said they’d become aware of a shooter that was armed and dangerous, they felt I should be aware of it and was there any way I could alert my constituents,” said Ms. Zann, who represents the riding where the killings occurred.
“It was the most bizarre experience I’ve ever had. None of us knew this was happening. None of us had heard anything from the RCMP.”
The proposed class action alleges the national police force also “failed to use all resources available to it to enable it to track, locate and stop” the gunman, including a helicopter to do both nighttime and daytime searches.
The RCMP’s Air Services branch has 35 aircraft, spread across 19 bases nationally – four fewer than it had in 2014. One helicopter stationed in Moncton serves the four Atlantic provinces. That aircraft was undergoing routine maintenance and was not available during the 13-hour manhunt.
Instead, a helicopter from the Nova Scotia Department of Lands and Forestry was called in to assist RCMP in the search for the gunman.
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Greg Mercer