'Impervious to change': doubt, disappointment after initial RCMP response to inquiry recommendations

After the RCMP commissioner admitted he didn't read the Mass Casualty Commission’s final recommendations, family members of those killed in the April 2020 tragedy say they have doubts the force will change.

Thursday, the interim commissioner of the RCMP, Michael Duheme, admitted he had not read the Mass Casualty Commission’s final recommendations for the force.

Now, that admission is triggering doubts, among family members of those killed in the April 2020 tragedy, that the RCMP is capable of undergoing the significant culture change recommended in the inquiry’s final report.

Ryan Farrington, whose mother Dawn Madsen and stepfather Frank Gulenchyn were murdered in their Portapique home, is disappointed, but not shocked.

“I wasn't surprised,” he says. “I don't think anything's ever going to change with the way the RCMP are. I [doubt] their structure is going to change. I don’t think their attitude towards the way they work is going to change.”

Without funding from the commission to make up for lost time at work, Farrington says he was unable to travel from his home in Ontario to Nova Scotia for the report’s release.

But even without time off, he adds, he still took time to read what he could of the 3,000-page document.

He says the RCMP needs to show families the recommendations are being taken seriously.