FRANK MAGAZINE SEPTEMBER 10, 2021
YES, BUT WILL IT BE TRAUMA-INFORMED?
By PAUL PALANGO
In the movies press conferences look exciting and meaningful. Reporters competing with each other shouting out questions. Tense confrontations. Sweat on brows. Pinned down by the unrelenting barrage, someone inevitably cracks and blurts out the truth. Headlines are created and everyone retires afterward to a bar for a celebratory round or six. That’s how it goes in the movies.
In the real world, it never goes that way. There is little or no room for error. Everything is scripted. The questions are predictable, and the answers worked out in advance. No surprises. The illusion of facts. Just enough to sculpt a meaningless headline in one publication or another.
Nowadays, there is something worse than a traditional press conference. We had one the other day in Nova Scotia. The occasion was a “virtual progress update” from the three commissioners at the head of the federal-provincial Mass Casualty Commission.
Virtual was an appropriate way to describe what happened. The Cambridge Dictionary meaning describes the adjective this way: “Almost, but not exactly or in every way.”
I attended from my home office on the South Shore. I phoned in and registered. I was the second reporter to do so, after a fellow from Radio-Canada.
My qualifications as an attendee were unique. Over the past 17 months, I have written far more than anyone else about the subject at hand – the murder of 22 innocent people by denturist Gabriel Wortman over a 13.5-hour period on April 18 and 19, 2020. Alone and in collaboration with others, like Stephen Maher of MacLean’s, Andrew Douglas of Frank Magazine and Jordan Bonaparte of the Nighttime Podcast and a host of citizen investigators, we have broken many important stories about what actually happened, most importantly the epic failure in policing by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Together we have publicly documented and detailed the many lies and deceptions of the police and their enablers in governments and the justice system. I am writing a doorstop of a book for Random House about it all. There’s also a large documentary project to put it all on film. I promise it will not be your typical Canadian yawner which is so mind-bogglingly balanced and politically correct that it is all but impossible to figure out what really happened.
Meanwhile, mainstream reporters covering the Nova Scotia massacres have largely lost the thread. With the occasional exception of the CBC’s Elizabeth McMillan, they’ve all moved on to other glittery sagas, waiting for the MCC, as they call it, to hold hearings and spoon feed them more headlines.
Former Nova Scotia Chief Justice Michael MacDonald, chairman of the Commission, spoke first this day. He touched the usual notes about affected families, beautiful communities and resilient people – the Nova Scotia Strong meme – being an example. He talked about witnesses and evidence gathering and about how the commission was “completely independent.” He said that the commission built its team by selecting the best people for the job, failing to note that many of the investigators, including lead investigator Barbara McLean had worked with federal Solicitor General Bill Blair, the boss of this thing, when he was Toronto Police Chief.
Some would argue that’s far from independent. There appears to be a guiding hand in Ottawa.
MacDonald, speaking in a flat almost lifeless tone of voice, said the commission had a two-year mandate and was going to conduct its own investigation to create “an evidence-based record” and “foundational documents.” He tossed around words like “consultative” and “collaborative.”
“We continue to subpoena documents and interview witnesses to ensure that we are able to get to the bottom of what happened and why,” the former judge said. “We are committed to doing our work transparently and respectfully. We are also approaching our work in a trauma-informed manner. We will do our utmost to make sure that we will not cause more harm to those who have already suffered …. We must balance two competing but important considerations. Honoring the public’s right to understand what happened while protecting the privacy and dignity of those who have already suffered so much.”
Almost from the moment Gabriel Wortman was shot at the Irving Big Stop in Enfield, government officials and the RCMP have been promoting the notion that they were all determined to protect the survivors of the dead from further trauma. That’s become their collective mantra. They seem to have forgotten that the real victims are the 22 dead and that our society demands answers in their name. That’s how the justice system is supposed to work, as difficult as that might be for some of the families to accept.
“I would like to stress that our commission is not a court. Our approach is very different from a civil trial or a criminal prosecution, which are adversarial. We cannot and will not make findings of civil or criminal liability or assign punishment,” he said.
Somebody else could always come along after the fact, pick up the Commission’s evidence and run with it, but who? The RCMP won’t be interested, of that we can be sure.
“However, difficult precedents and uncomfortable truths will be explored,” MacDonald continued, “to get to the bottom of what happened and why.”
Cynics are welcome to believe that when they see it.
Next up was Commissioner Leanne Fitch, the former police chief of Fredericton for seven years, daughter of a long-time Mountie, wife of a Fredericton cop, and a former management adviser for the RCMP.
Yep, independent, that one.
She was followed by Ontario lawyer Dr. Kim Stanton who is an expert on aboriginal affairs and who believes that public inquiries should essentially be social engineering mechanisms. Social engineering? The implementation of seat belts was a good example. Then there were the failures. The federal government promoted margarine over butter and carbohydrates over meat. People got bigger, fatter and had more heart attacks. They don’t like talking about that.
This being a “virtual progress update” the Commissioners didn’t take questions.
That was left up to Emily Hill, the Commission’s Council and MCC lead investigator Barbara McLean.
The first question is from the CBC’s Brett Ruskin. They threw him a headline, stating that the commission had issued almost 50 subpoenas for information.
Ruskin was followed by Michael MacDonald of The Canadian Press (no relation, that we know of, to the retired judge). Alexa MacLean from Global Newspopped the next forgettable question and follow up. Perhaps the highlight was Marie Adsett from CTV Atlantic who got so emotional about the commission having not created a safe place for the victims’ families “so that it doesn’t feel like a court room,” one easily could have mistaken her for a victim.
Finally, my turn, came. When my name was called, I could’ve sworn Emily Hill appeared to roll her eyes. But maybe I’m being overly sensitive.
My journalistic strategy over the past 17 months has been to put names, facts and viable theories on the public record so that they could not be easily ignored by either the Commission or the media. That’s what I did this time.
“Can you assure the people of Nova Scotia and Canada that the RCMP has acted in a transparent fashion and fully co-operated with the commission. For example, has it been given full access to or control of all communication records between RCMP members in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick on April 18 and 19, 2020. This includes both analog and encrypted radio channels reserved for supervisors, ERT members and regular members as well cell phone records and any other means of communication between the various parties such as digital texts or paper records for the hours leading up to and including the massacres. If so, will the commission be releasing all of these audio records to the public? If not, why not?”
MacLean and Hill ragged the puck with their answer.
I followed with this one.
“Video tapes published in June by Frank magazine highlighted obvious and serious discrepancies in the official report from the Serious Incident Response Team in the shooting of Gabriel Wortman on April 19th at the Irving Big Stop in Enfield. Will the Commission be calling upon SIRT director Felix Cacchione to explain the methodology he and his team used to conduct their investigation? Further, will the commission be issuing subpoenas to any and all RCMP members or others who were involved in the hunt for and shooting of Gabriel Wortman?”
They didn’t have much to say about that one, either.
The point is this. The Commission has wrapped itself in a flag of convenience – victimhood. The members say they care. They are “trauma informed.” They are “respectful.”
That’s not the issue. It’s merely a smokescreen.
The families were already traumatized. They, most Nova Scotians and other Canadians want answers to the obvious questions and don’t want the inquiry drowning in tears and sentimental dross.
Here are some questions they can “independently” consider or which the mainstream media might screw up its collective courage to ask at the next “virtual” press conference:
1) What was Gabriel Wortman’s relationship with the RCMP? Was he the target of an ongoing investigation or an informant working for the RCMP in Nova Scotia or, importantly, New Brunswick?
2) What was the RCMP really doing that night in Portapique?
3) The RCMP has never disclosed who was in charge that weekend. There had to be someone with a white shirt giving orders. Who was it?
4) Victim Jamie Blair told the RCMP via 911 that Wortman was dressed as a Mountie before she was killed. Why did the RCMP lie about when it first knew Wortman was dressed as a Mountie and driving what appeared to be an RCMP cruiser?
5) Why is there not an independent police investigation into the shooting of Corrie Ellison? The RCMP has admitted that its officers were very near where he died on Orchard Beach Drive at the time he was killed, but they didn’t see Wortman or Ellison’s brother who was walking up the road at that time.
6) Why did the RCMP not call for help from other police forces?
7) Why did the Serious Incident Response Team led by former Judge Felix Cacchione issue reports that play fast and loose with the facts?
8) More importantly, why did Cacchione’s office not investigate the entirety of the RCMP’s performance that weekend? After all, there is a strong argument that the RCMP could be guilty of criminal negligence causing multiple deaths including that of one of their own, Constable Heidi Stevenson. Why was there not a criminal investigation mounted by an outside police force?
9) How much damage has this ongoing charade done to the integrity of the justice system?
Having asked such impolite and uncomfortable questions and shown no respect for the powers that be, I guess, is the reason why Ms. Hill seemed to roll her eyes.
paulpalango@protonmail.com
photo of MCC androgenous types from Frank Mag on Twitter
