Persistent problems

Report portrays RCMP as a force that has failed to learn from mistakes

Disorganized, dysfunctional and dangerous.

This is the assessment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police when its members responded to the worst mass killing in the country’s history on the night of April 18 and the morning of April 19, 2020, in Portapique, N.S.

And with the country’s top police already facing criticism over issues of racism and sexual harassment, and other jurisdictions looking to take back policing operations from those in the red serge tunics and Stetson hats, the Mass Casualty Commission has newly called for the country’s top police force to be scrubbed from its head to its toes.

It’s certainly not the first time that an inquiry, commission or publicly funded examination has recommended an overhaul.

Three years after killer Gabriel Wortman’s actions claimed 22 victims’ lives — and with the government once again in search of a new RCMP commissioner following Brenda Lucki’s February retirement — the new report says the force shows persistent signs that it is unable or unwilling to examine its mistakes and make meaningful changes.

“More than two years after the event, RCMP leadership had done very little to systematically evaluate its critical incident response to the deadliest mass shooting in Canada’s history,” the report notes.

And it urges the force to “adopt a policy of admitting its mistakes, accepting responsibility for them and ensuring that accountability mechanisms are in place for addressing its errors.”

The recommendations are moth micro and macro — from ensuring police commanders overseeing such mass-casualty responses have a “ready-to-go” bag with critical equipment on hand at all times, to conducting a “comprehensive external review of the RCMP” and then restructuring to focus on what it does well and give up those tasks it is ill-equipped to perform.

Testifying before the commission last year, Lucki apologized for the performance of her force, which was exposed in testimony as being understaffed and resourced, and poorly organized in the remote area of northeastern Nova Scotia where the killings occurred.

“We weren’t what you expected us to be,” she told the commission. “And I don’t think we were what you wanted us to be or what you needed us to be.”

But if the hopes of change are once again high, the history of the RCMP suggests that expectations should stay low.

“Past recommendations have not been fully implemented, and problems identified in past processes persist today,” the commission report notes.

Among the most concrete operational recommendations for the RCMP is to improve communication and transparency, internally and with the public.

On the night when Wortman’s killings began, RCMP kept the public in the dark for hours about the extent of the unfolding operation.

The commission recommends that future critical incident response teams responding to such situations should include officers specializing in public communications as priority members rather than an afterthought. And it said special consideration should be given to which social media platforms are most appropriate.

While criticizing the force as an institution, the report singled out officers for their courage and heroism. Among them was Const. Chad Morrison, who was shot by Wortman but drove himself to a nearby ambulance station and had the presence of mind to remove the magazine from his carbine and hide it in the grass while awaiting medical assistance.

And it honoured Acting Cpl. Heidi Stevenson, who was rammed by Wortman’s replica cruiser but managed to wound him in a shootout before being killed herself. Wortman’s head wound ultimately allowed the officer who finally shot him dead at a gas station, Const. Craig Hubley, to identify him.

The commission also noted the actions of Sgt. Darren Bernard, a Mi’kmaq RCMP member, who stayed with Stevenson’s lifeless body. “We just kind of sat down in the dirt and stayed with Heidi,” he testified. “In my culture, you know, when there’s a deceased person you have to stay with them.”

In its broader recommendations directed at senior management, the commissioners suggest that an external review be followed by a restructuring of the force that could end up with the Mounties “retaining the tasks that are suitable to a federal policing agency” while passing off other duties to other agencies.

The commission recommended stricter separation between the offices of the minister of public safety and the RCMP commissioner, to avoid the appearance of political interference.

This recommendation arises from a telephone call between Lucki and senior RCMP leaders in Nova Scotia in the days following the killings. Lucki voiced frustrations about the difficulty getting timely answers to questions being asked of her by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then Public Safety Minister Bill Blair. She also said she was disappointed that the force has failed to release details about the killer’s firearms to the public, noting that the government was sponsoring legislation to restrict firearms that would ultimately help police.

From this, the commission report recommends that there be changes to the RCMP Act to ensure that any ministerial directions made to the head of the RCMP be made public and presented to Parliament.

The unanswered question after the mammoth report is whether anything good will come of it.

In some areas, such as emergency communications, the RCMP says policy changes have already been effective, such as during the September 2022 manhunt after a stabbing rampage that began in Saskatchewan’s James Cree First Nation.

Other recommendations will fall to a special team tasked with analyzing and implementing changes, said interim Commissioner Michael Duheme.

The public should rightly be skeptical of such promises.

In the past, the RCMP’s senior leadership has made public apologies in the face of damning reports into its actions, or inaction, only to continue leading the force more or less along its problematic course.

The blame has fallen to funding shortfalls, staff shortages, resistance from within the force or scandals, tragedies and wavering political priorities shift the force’s attention elsewhere.

It’s hard to say how or why things would be different this time around.