Paul Palango: What happened in Nova Scotia was an example of a cascading failure for the Mounties and there are horrible questions for which answers are needed now
Officers at the scene of the crash between Stevenson’s car and Wortman’s fake RCMP vehicle
When the news finally dribbled out, we learned that 22 people were dead, including Mountie Heidi Stevenson. The gunman was also shot dead in a gas station by a Mountie. A messy story resolved. The mourning began for the Mountie … and the others. Tributes went out to the first responders. Flags were ready to be lowered. Funerals, such as they were in this age of COVID-19, were ready to be held.
Even now, without all the details in, it has become clear to me that the Nova Scotia massacre encapsulated all that has been and continues to be wrong with the current structure, ethos and performance of the RCMP. The RCMP prides itself in being a national police force, but it’s not really a national police force, like say in France. It’s actually a federal police force that rents itself out to the provinces and territories outside Ontario and Quebec. Even then, the only urban areas it polices are Moncton, N.B., and the suburbs of Vancouver—and even there, it’s about to lose its local detachment in Surrey.
However, working on organized crime and counter terrorism is akin to the difference between cricket and baseball. Both have bats and balls, but they are fundamentally different games.
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