Why lawyers want senior RCMP officers to testify at Portapique inquiry

Maps that were pulled off walls, delays in witness information about exit routes and the gunman's fake police car are just some of the issues that lawyers for relatives of the Portapique victims want raised with senior RCMP officers.

The public inquiry in Nova Scotia examining what happened April 18 and 19, 2020, when 22 people were killed by a gunman, heard arguments Monday about why senior officers should or should not be called to testify now.

Sandra McCulloch of Patterson Law, whose firm represents many of the victims' families, told the Mass Casualty Commission they want to hear more from six senior officers about why certain steps were taken, or where information went in the critical first few hours.

The commissioners have said they will call those officers later in the inquiry, when more documents are tabled on RCMP command decisions, Emergency Response Team (ERT) actions, and confirmation of the mock cruiser.

But McCulloch said the victims' families don't want to lose the chance to focus on missing pieces of information related to the documents already on the record about the early hours in Portapique.

"We don't want to lose that opportunity and, you know, somehow feel stifled at a later date," McCulloch said.

"The importance of creating a fulsome factual record absolutely has to be front and foremost to your commissioners' minds."

McCulloch said they want to call RCMP staff sergeants Brian Rehill, Steve Halliday, Addie MacCallum, Sgt. Andy O'Brien; incident commander Staff Sgt. Jeff West; and Cpl. Tim Mills, who oversaw the emergency response team.

MacCallum knew the gunman's name early on, as his wife was one of the 911 dispatchers fielding calls on April 18, 2020. 

He and Staff Sgt. Al Carroll worked in the Bible Hill detachment on mapping and containment planning in the first hour after the shootings began. MacCallum said he wasn't confident about his results on Google Earth, as he knew the area and it was "making roads where there's no roads."

But when MacCallum tried to bring up the force's Pictometry program, based on satellite imaging, he couldn't find a computer with the internal software and gave up after about 25 minutes. He is based in Pictou and was not familiar with the Bible Hill detachment.

Since no one else knew where to find the satellite program, MacCallum ended up "pulling a map off the wall," which he and Carroll started drawing on by hand. MacCallum also brought up a road atlas, and used multiple maps to get a sense of the land.

Based on the maps, MacCallum believed the only way a car could get out of the community would be along Portapique Beach Road to the highway. The subdivision was surrounded by a river on one side, water to the south, and woods and fields to the east.

"Looking at the maps that I had, it didn't look like anybody could traverse a vehicle through there," MacCallum said in his interview with commissioners.