Criminal charge withdrawn against spouse of Nova Scotia mass killer

Victims’ families warn Mass Casualty Commission may be set up to fail

Lawyers representing the families of many of the Portapique massacre’s victims are warning that the Mass Casualty Commission may already be failing their clients.

“I don’t think there is a single client who feels satisfied with the information they have received thus far,” said Sandra McCulloch, a lawyer at the firm Patterson Law, which represents 23 families of the victims of the April 2020 killings.

“More problematically, based on the way things are at this point, many are discouraged in the belief that they will walk away from this proceeding with as many unanswered questions (as they have now).”

The Mass Casualty Commission is scheduled to begin hearings in Halifax on Feb. 22 that will run until late fall.

The commission’s stated role is to “provide clarity around the causes, context and circumstances that led to the April 2020 mass casualty in Nova Scotia and make meaningful recommendations to help keep communities safer in the future.”

Patterson Law took the unusual step of issuing a public statement on Monday evening laying out their concerns.

They include a lack of information about who would be called as witnesses, whether they will be cross-examined by lawyers representing the families of victims, what documents would be made available and whether objections could be raised to evidence not presented during the hearings or lawyers could seek to have brought forward.

McCulloch explained that as far as she could tell, lawyers representing the families would have to justify to the commission the necessity of cross-examining each witness. However, they still don’t know at what point before, during or after the testimony they would get to seek approval to cross-examine the witness.

The plan is markedly different than during the Desmond Fatality Inquiry hearings into the 2017 quadruple murder-suicide carried out in Guysborough County by Afghan War veteran Lionel Desmond.

That inquiry saw lawyers representing each of the families involved, along with other individuals and institutions, have the opportunity to ask questions of each witness automatically after the initial testimony.

“Aside from our frustration about a lack of detail about the schedule of the public proceedings, we hold fear that evidentiary matters which we, on behalf of our clients, will fail to be fully explored by the commission,” reads the Patterson Law statement.

McCulloch said her firm has raised their concerns with the commission but with seven days left before hearings begin and with a lack of satisfactory response thus far, they felt it important to make them public.

Commission senior counsel Emily Hill responded to the concerns in a written statement.

“Over the past number of months, (participants) have had a critical role in shaping the factual record,” wrote Hill.

“Since the fall, we have provided family members, through their counsel, information weekly. This includes drafts of the Commission’s Foundational Documents and tens of thousands of pages of information, including transcripts of 911 calls, witness interviews, security camera footage from April 18 & 19 2020, notes and investigative files, information about the police responses on April 18 & 19 2020 and more. We also asked for, and acted on, their input through written requests and weeks of meetings. This included input on areas for further investigation by the Commission.”

Hill said that throughout the hearings there will be opportunities for the families and other participants to raise their concerns with gaps in the record and suggest witnesses to be interviewed.

“A public inquiry is not a trial, nor is it about assigning blame,” wrote Hill.

“Public inquiries are about change. The Commission’s work is to determine what happened and why and how it happened in order to make recommendations that will help make sure it does not happen again.”

The commission was established in response to public outrage at both the provincial and federal governments when they first announced a review, to be held behind closed doors, into the killings.

In a written statement, Nicholas Beaton, whose wife and unborn child were killed by the gunman, warned that the commission runs the risk of falling far short of its goals.

“This has been the review that we fought against,” wrote Beaton.

“We wanted the tools that a public inquiry would give us, that a review would not. … All this has done is cost taxpayers millions of dollars, only to give us a review anyway.”