A memorial to the victims of the Tumbler Ridge shooting. Canada has previously taken a deep look at why acts of mass violence happen and what can be done to prevent them, writes Kim Stanton.Jennifer Gauthier/Reuters
Kim Stanton is a lawyer, a senior fellow at Massey College and the author of Reconciling Truths: Reimagining Public Inquiries in Canada. She was a commissioner on the Mass Casualty Commission.
Six years after the mass shooting that began in Portapique, N.S., our country finds itself again in the aftermath of a horrifying mass shooting, this time in British Columbia.
Since the February mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, the search for answers to how this could have happened and how to prevent it from happening again has intensified. Jatinder Baidwan, the B.C. chief coroner, has announced he will conduct an inquest. Bob Zimmer, the MP for the area, is one of many voices calling for a public inquiry. Amid the theories about what caused the shooting and speculation about the family at the centre of it, many people wonder whether it could have been predicted and what could have been done to prevent it.
Yet this country has taken a deep look at why acts of mass violence happen and what can be done to prevent them.
In the wake of the mass shooting in April, 2020, the federal and Nova Scotia governments established a public inquiry, the Mass Casualty Commission, with a mandate that included looking at the actions of the RCMP and municipal police forces, access to firearms, victim supports, intimate partner and family violence and the perpetrator’s prior interactions with police and social services.
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In March, 2023, the commission released a seven-volume, 3,000-page report. It made 130 recommendations to help prevent and respond to future similar incidents. It identified missed red flags regarding the perpetrator, as well as the policing – and broader societal – failures to act on the many warning signs that a person who was causing harm was likely to cause more. The commission report is a blueprint for how to improve community safety in our country.
The commission connected the dots between the high prevalence of violence that occurs in the home and the incidence of mass violence. Mass killings frequently begin with an incident of gender-based violence, intimate partner violence or family violence.
The commission recommended ways for police to take this connection seriously and warned that we ignore incidents of violence in the home at our collective peril. The presence of firearms in a home exponentially increases the risk of lethality in situations of domestic violence.
The commission called for a national action plan to promote better preventive and supportive mental health care. It recommended a prevention-first approach to community safety with an understanding that the social determinants of health are also the social determinants of community safety and well-being.
It addressed the rural/urban divide in policy, policing and community-based mental health and anti-violence supports. It recommended the revocation of firearms licences in circumstances of domestic violence or hate-related offences, and the effective, consistent and accountable enforcement of firearms regulations.
So we do know a lot about why these things happen. We also know a lot about what to do to prevent them.
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Often when an inquiry reports, the receiving governments say it will cost too much money to make the necessary systemic changes. What happened in Tumbler Ridge highlights the terrible human cost of not making the changes that we know will make a difference to prevent further violence.
The Mass Casualty Commission listened carefully to the families and communities directly affected by the shootings, to those working on the front lines of policing and mental health and to leaders, policy makers, academics and many others with relevant expertise.
The commission crafted implementable and game-changing recommendations for policing and mental health, as well as ones encouraging healthy relationships and care for one another in our communities. These recommendations were intended to help keep us all safer.
From the press reports, there were a multitude of red flags related to the shooter in Tumbler Ridge, and RCMP actions in relation to the individual and the family must be scrutinized. A public inquiry would provide the necessary analysis, true. But while the federal government has committed to hiring another 1,000 RCMP members, the significant changes the commission said were necessary to the training and culture of the RCMP remain unimplemented, and mental health care in rural communities remains insufficient.
Answers are still needed about what happened in Tumbler Ridge and why, but we don’t need to wait for the findings of another public inquiry in order to act. We can honour the memories of those whose lives were taken by doing what we already know can help to keep us all safer.