TRURO: After hearing from First Nations communities at last week’s public hearings probing April 2020’s mass shooting rampage, the inquiry had to cancel a similar panel planned for African Nova Scotian input because of scheduling conflicts.
The panel was scheduled for Monday, a day that ended up a provincial and federal holiday and National Day of Mourning to honour the life and death Queen Elizabeth II. Her state funeral was held in the morning in London, England.
With the final week of public proceedings wrapping up this week, it wasn’t possible to find another date to hear from the panel of African Nova Scotians at the hearings.
The government-appointed Mass Casualty Commission said it has conducted interviews with members of African Nova Scotian communities, heard from community members at roundtables, and will continue to consult with those representatives.
The independent commission has sought input from marginalized groups in society to help guard against coming up with recommendations that “inadvertently have a disproportionate or unintended impact “on such communities.
Last week, a panel of Indigenous community members expressed concern about the RCMP’s failure to warn them that a gunman disguised as a Mountie and driving a mock police cruiser was on a shooting and arson rampage that began in the small community of Portapique and ended when officers happened upon him at an Enfield Big Stop gas station and killed him.
First Nations communities were in the dark because the RCMP issued alerts over Twitter and many Indigenous people, as with many Nova Scotians, particularly in rural Nova Scotia, aren’t on social media so were unaware of the warnings.
The Union of Nova Scotia Mi’kmaq has since launched its own alert system that reaches thousands of members.
The recent stabbing spree in Saskatchewan that left 10 people dead signals the RCMP might be learning from their mistakes. A half a dozen alerts were sent out during the incident that began on James Smith Cree Nation and the RCMP was more proactive in communicating and coordinating with other police agencies in a manhunt for one of two brothers behind the killings.
In a panel later in the week, the inquiry heard from representatives for other marginalized communities, including a report detailing how the gunman, a Dartmouth denturist, exchanged denture work for sex. He preyed on African American women, sex workers and other marginalized women.
With part of the cost of their treatment covered by the Department of Community Services, some of the gunman’s patients “felt this would be a safe person with whom to engage,” the report written by members of the Avalon Sexual Assault and Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund says.
This week’s final week of hearings, held at the Glengarry Best Western in Truro, will ask participants for their suggestions for recommendations they’d like to see in the final report on how to better grapple with a similar tragedy.
The report was initially due Nov. 1, but the commission requested more time. The new deadline is March 31, 2023.