RCMP Chief Supt. Darren Campbell told a House of Commons committee on Tuesday that he recalled Luckey saying during a call on April 28, 2020 that she was “sad and disappointed” that Campbell did not release details of the gunman’s weapons at a press conference . Campbell told MPs that the commissioner also said she had “promised” the offices of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and then-Public Safety Minister Bill Blair that those details would be made public. Campbell said he tried to tell Luckey that releasing that information could harm the ongoing investigation, which involved agencies in the United States. “The commissioner told my colleagues and I that we didn’t understand, that this is tied to pending legislation that would make officers and the public safer,” Campbell said. When asked how much of the call with Luckey was about releasing the gun information, Campbell said all of the 20 minutes he heard about the meeting before he left was about firearms. RCMP Chief Supt. Darren Campbell waits to appear before the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2022, in Ottawa. The commission is looking into allegations of political interference in the investigation into the 2020 Nova Scotia mass killing. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld) Blair and Luki have repeatedly denied that Blair interfered with the investigation. Campbell said that while it was never his intention to get into a “political argument or debate” about what happened at the April 28 meeting with Luki, a principle was at stake. “The principle was the oath I swore to uphold as a new recruit three decades ago,” he said. “I could not and would not break that oath.” One gunman’s 13-hour rampage claimed 22 lives and is now the subject of a public inquiry. Lia Scanlan, former director of communications for the Nova Scotia RCMP, appeared alongside Campbell before the commission. Scanlan wrote a letter to the commissioner more than a year after the shooting, echoing Campbell’s concerns and telling Lucki the meeting was “disgusting, inappropriate, unprofessional and extremely demeaning.” Lia Scanlan was chief of communications for the Nova Scotia RCMP in April 2020. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press) Several other people appeared before Scanlan and Campbell at the panel on Tuesday, including Deputy Justice Secretary Francois Daigle and Owen Rees, the acting deputy attorney general. Daigle was asked why four key pages of Campbell’s notes on the April 28 call were initially excluded by the committee to be reviewed for legal privilege, among 35 pages from other senior Mounties. Daigle said that while there is nothing necessarily privileged about a call with the RCMP commissioner, the justice lawyer team would have flagged any pages for review if there was reference “to a cabinet meeting, reference to a Treasury submission or reference to legal advice,” he said among other things. Daigle said the attorney general’s office had “no involvement” in deciding which documents to hold back for review or in gathering thousands of documents for disclosure to the committee. Two other RCMP staff members were also called to the committee: Alison Whelan, head of policy strategy and external relations, and Jolene Bradley, director general of National Communications Services.
