“Canada and Nova Scotia have established the Progress Monitoring Committee (PMC) to provide a mechanism to monitor, report on, create mutual accountability and exchange knowledge and information as [the governments of] Canada and Nova Scotia, and others, respond to the [Mass Casualty Commission] Report.
The PMC will play this critical role and support engagement and transparency as Canada, Nova Scotia and other partners work collectively to advance this vital work.”
Terms of Reference
Progress Monitoring Committee
May 31, 2023
Engagement? Transparency? Accountability?
On Tuesday, December 12, 2023, retired judge Linda Lee Oland — the chair of that committee charged with overseeing the federal and Nova Scotia government responses to last spring’s 3,000-page/130-recommendation mass casualty commission report — held a media availability to report on the committee’s progress.
We learned … not much.
According to a report by the Canadian Press’s Michael Tutton:
- After a two-day meeting at a Truro, N.S., hotel, Oland said her 16-member committee is still in the early stages of monitoring responses to the inquiry’s report.
- During the meetings, however, she said the two governments and the Mounties had offered specific details about their plans, including timelines, for completing the recommendations. Oland “didn’t offer details but said her group will publish a report on its website in January about the two days of meetings.”
- Oland said no one was “dragging their feet” and she has no complaints so far. “The objective is not … to check the boxes and get to the finish line as quickly as we can. So, we are monitoring progress, and as long as we are content that progress is being undertaken at a good rate and nothing seems to be left behind, we’re going to keep doing this work of keeping the governments and the RCMP accountable.”
- The committee’s next meeting is slated for this spring. Its deliberations are held in private, and the group is expected to meet no more than four times each year.
There is, it seems to me, something odd, even unseemly, about a committee whose avowed purpose is to “create accountability… exchange knowledge and information… [and] support engagement and transparency,” but then meets behind closed doors, promising only to later publish what will almost certainly be a cherry-picked and antiseptically sanitized official account of what happened in private.
If Lee’s committee is serious about any of the boxes it’s supposed to be checking — engagement, transparency, accountability — its meetings would be open to the media and the public.
Senior federal and provincial officials, as well as RCMP brass, would then be required to account in public for what they have done — and not done — to implement the report’s recommendations. And to answer questions from the committee. Also, in public.
But that’s not what the committee’s terms of reference call for. While the committee is supposed to “publicly report on the initiatives that Canada and Nova Scotia are undertaking in response to the MCC Report, including a rationale for these initiatives,” what happens behind closed doors is supposed to stay behind those locked and guarded doors.
In order to encourage frank and open discussion at the PMC, discussions and meeting materials are confidential and must not be disclosed to external parties without prior discussion and approval by the PMC as a whole. Sharing of information related to the PMC will be through the Secretariat.
Engagement? Transparency? Accountability?
Who thought this was a good idea?
The governments of Canada and Nova Scotia, of course. They were responsible for coming up with those terms of reference. They, along with their policing creature, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, all benefit by keeping the public light of day at bay.
Consider that, among the MCC report’s most significant recommendations, the commission called for an external review of the RCMP’s role in providing policing to municipalities across Canada. It also recommended the RCMP phase out its police academy and replace it with a new model composed of three-year policing degree programs.
During the most recent meeting of the monitoring committee, did the province, the Mounties and/or the federal justice department offer “specific details about their plans, including timelines,” for completing those recommendations?
We don’t know.
We do know that, in late September, six months after the release of the mass casualty commission report, the Houston government announced — via news release — that it “will conduct a comprehensive review of how policing is conducted throughout the province.”
That committee is to be co-chaired by retired Nova Scotia Supreme Court Justice Clair MacLellan. So far, however — three more months later — the government hasn’t announced the name of the external consultant chosen to conduct the review, and it hasn’t disclosed the names of any other members of the review committee.
Progress? Timelines?
The news release does say the report “is expected to be completed by 2025.”
We shall see. We shall also see whether its report will be made public when, or if…
As for Ottawa, we also know that, at the end of May, now-former federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino danced and dodged when asked about Ottawa’s commitment to implementing the mass casualty commission’s recommendations.
The minister was asked multiple times Wednesday whether the government will commit to all of the report’s recommendations.
For example, the report recommends phasing out the historic RCMP training centre in Regina, known as the depot, and establishing a three-year, degree-based model of police education for all police services in Canada. Politicians in Saskatchewan already have rejected the notion.
Mendicino called it a “significant decision” needing more consultation.
He said he is “absolutely committed to moving as quickly as we possibly can” on consultations, “but in the right way…”
“I’m going to keep a very open mind about what recommendations will be implemented,” he said.
Translation. Don’t hold your breath.
Has that changed?
As for the Mounties, their “RCMP Response to the Mass Casualty Commission” web page doesn’t even acknowledge the commission’s call for an external review or the idea of replacing the training depot with a new education regime for recruits.
There is no good reason not to make the progress monitoring committee’s meetings open to the public to monitor its monitoring.
Unless the reason isn’t good.
Many years ago an organization I worked for sponsored a workshop entitled “The Right to Know – The Need to Know.” We organized the workshop with the help of a couple of law professors and some others who understood why citizens should have access to government information; especially about matters that did or could impact the lives of citizens. While the NS government passed Freedom of Information legislation, it seems like its been downhill ever since. Perhaps we need to tell our government that we want this committee to operate in an open and transparent manner – i.e. meetings open to the public; reports available to the public. When I read the terms of reference for the Progress Monitoring Committee I was taken by the per diems. $1250 for the chair and $800 for other members. 1/2 the per diem for meetings 1-3 hours; full per diem for meetings 3 + hours. That 2-hour meeting in Truro cost the citizens some big bucks.
What a joke. Just terrible. The first thing to go in any new dictatorship is the access to information.
The absence of public disclosure should come as no surprise as we transition to an authoritarian form of government in Nova Scotia. An army of staff have been hired to ostensibly administer freedom of information legislation when in reality their role is to manage information that the government wants or is prepared to let the public know. And the cops will play an increasingly important role in keeping everyone in line as our living standards decline.