Date of publication: 9 Apr 2022 • 9 hours ago • 5 minutes reading • 67 Comments Commission Adviser Roger Burrill shows a photo showing the Plains Road area where Heather O’Brien and Kristen Beaton were murdered by Gabriel Wortman, in her investigation Mass Casualty Committee in Halifax on March 31, 2022. Photo by Andrew Vaughan / CANADIAN PRESS
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The judicial investigation into the murder of 22 Nova Scotians by disruptive dentist Gabriel Wortman in April 2020 is turning into a hot mess.
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In the wake of Wortman’s murderous outburst, neither the federal nor the provincial government wanted to launch a full judicial inquiry – especially not one that could put the RCMP under scrutiny provided by affidavit and offensive controversy. The federals wanted to avoid a public spectacle that could force them to carry out top-down reform of Canada’s dysfunctional national police. The then Prime Minister Stephen McNeil came from a family steeped in policing. His mother was a senior sheriff in Annapolis, and five of his siblings serve as police officers. His Minister of Justice was a retired RCMP officer. The past two decades have seen a number of catastrophic RCMP catastrophes, including incidents in Spiritwood, Sask. Biggar, Sask. (Colten Boushie); Mayerthorpe, Alta. Vancouver International Airport (Robert Dziekanski); Moncton, NB; and Houston, BC (Ian Bush). How long before a search reaches the bottom of a power outage?
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Initially, the two governments announced a silent “joint review” that would conduct private investigations before issuing a public report. A furious outcry from the victims’ families and members of the public forced them to reconsider. In July 2020, then-Federal Secretary of Public Safety Bill Blair announced a public inquiry with the power to coerce witnesses and allow cross-examination. Michael McDonald, a kind retired judge from the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal, would lead the investigation. The supply has generous resources. A memorial service for Lillian Hyslop appears along the street in Wentworth, NS on Friday, April 24, 2020. Photo by THE CANADIAN PRESS, archive His site does not list staff, but my search on LinkedIn for people who list the committee as their current employer found three liaison officers, three senior liaison officers, two policy advisors, a specialist advisor, a senior policy advisor, a research and policy advisor, a commitment strategy consultant, a senior policy lawyer, an events and project manager, an information and archives director, a mental health director, six board advisors or legal advisers, two lead investigators, a chief financial officer, a chief a research team leader, a lead researcher, an archivist, a consensus and competency judge, and an assistant board member. Enough of the sauce.
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Despite the multitude of public relations experts, the committee could not tell me how much it cost to send a glossy postcard to every Nova Scotia home praising its work. An unsigned response from the committee’s anonymous media address stated that I could expect the Public Accounts to be submitted next year. Rubbish. Public Accounts will certainly not have a line item for this mail. In recent weeks, a growing wave of criticism has flooded the committee’s work. Prime Minister Tim Houston has complained about repeated delays in the hearings and the committee’s indifferent treatment of members of the victims’ families. Halifax Law Firm Patterson Law took the unusual step of publicly scolding the commission for its vague and unconventional procedures.
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I’m seriously disappointed; I fought so hard for this public inquiry that another husband and father did not have to go through it lawyers citing a victim’s husband, Nick Beaton “Our customers continue to watch for signs that the public inquiry will proceed as it should, but they are very disappointed that, a week before the start, there is no assurance that it will be anything other than the review in which our customers “They protested to oppose the summer of 2020,” wrote lawyers Sandra McCulloch and Robert Pineo. In the words of (Nick) Beaton (whose wife was murdered), “I’m deeply disappointed; I fought so hard for this public inquiry that another husband and father would not have to go through it. “The commission is supposed to ask the difficult questions and determine where things went wrong and how things should change, but at the moment I do not see that happening.” True research understands that the search for truth, the whole truth, is crude and uncomfortable lawyer Gavin Giles This week, Gavin Giles, an associate of McInnes Cooper, one of Atlantic Canada’s largest law firms, wrote a shocking letter to the Halifax Chronicle Herald denouncing the commission’s proceedings. “True research focuses on who, what, when, where, why and how,” he wrote. “True research intuitively understands that the search for the truth, the whole truth, is often crude and uncomfortable. True investigations seek information by exposing witnesses to direct and often aggressive forms of interrogation. We do not see any of this in the work of the committee to date. “
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At the heart of the problem seems to be the commission’s mandate to “inform about the trauma” of its work. This is a useful idea when guiding police interviews with sexual assailants. It’s silly when applied to a real homicide investigation that covers 22 murders at 16 locations in 13 hours. Judge MacDonald and his fellow commissioners seem to have adopted the requirement that they step on a soft pedal for anything unpleasant – a plan that quickly drove the commission off the rails. The family of murder victim Heather O’Brien responded with fury when the summary of the commission’s evidence eliminated a particularly disturbing fact: Data from O’Brien’s Fitbit showed that her heart continued to beat for several hours after the RCMP Const. Ian Fahie, who watched the aftermath of her shooting, mistakenly concluded she was dead – and evacuated ambulances because an active sniper incident was under way.
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“Const. “Fahie is the junior officer in this situation,” Darcey Dobson, O’Brien’s daughter, wrote on Facebook. “She has nothing to gain by lying. “Most likely he has a lot to lose to tell the truth.” Commission adviser Roger Burrill explained that he was unaware of the Fitbit detail because he believed people might find it “annoying”. Imagine for a second you were transposed into the karmic driven world of Earl. Consistent with this approach, the committee refuses to mention Gabriel Wortman’s name in its documents and in its own statements at public hearings. It is as if his name has magical powers and with his erasure everything will go better. Not everything is better. The murder of a loved one is an untold life event for those left behind. Its effect never disappears. The family members who count on the committee proceedings are not children. The committee should stop nursing them. Parker Donham is a retired journalist and communications consultant based in Cape Breton. [email protected] Twitter: @kempthead
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