RCMP trial on labour code violations in N.B. shooting hears from tactical expert

“It triggered a storm nationally in regards to media and public interest, and I think not only the RCMP, but police agencies across Canada had a general feeling there was a risk of losing a weapon that law enforcement felt was a good tool,” Stuart told Judge Leslie Jackson.

“That became the focus of everything we did over the next several years.”

Stuart was the first witness to testify at the trial. The charges against the RCMP allege it failed to provide members and supervisors with the appropriate information, instruction and training in an active-shooter event, and didn’t give members the appropriate equipment.

Court heard Stuart was later told by an RCMP deputy commissioner that “nothing” had been happening with the carbine issue since the Tasering incident in B.C. and subsequent backlash.

“He basically said there were other priorities and this had fallen off the list of priorities,” the 26-year veteran of the RCMP said, adding that the conversation had taken place sometime between 2008 and 2010.

Stuart, a certified carbine instructor, said calls for members to be armed with long guns rather than pistols came after a 2006 shooting in Spiritwood, Sask., in which two Mounties were killed by rifle fire.

He said a 2010 report by an independent researcher found there was a firearms capability gap that needed to be remedied.

Stuart, who helped research that report, said it found in the case of Spiritwood, officers felt ill-equipped to take on someone wielding a rifle.

C8 carbines were eventually approved by the RCMP’s senior executive committee in September 2011, more than two and a half years before the Moncton shootings, Stuart testified.

He said the carbines would start rolling out in a year and that threat assessments would be conducted to determine which RCMP divisions would receive them first. He later said that, in his opinion, he would have proceeded with a national rollout.

Crown prosecutor Paul Adams is expected to continue questioning Stuart on Wednesday.

Adams has said the majority of the officers in Moncton who responded to the active-shooter call on June 4, 2014 lacked full training and requalification in firearms.

In his opening comments Monday, Adams said some of the fatalities could have been avoided had the force complied with labour laws.

Retired assistant commissioner Alphonse MacNeil, who issued 64 recommendations in the wake of the Moncton shootings, has said the carbine could have made a difference in that incident and they should be rolled out faster.

Earlier this year, the force said it has completed 42 of the 64 recommendations in MacNeil’s 2015 report.

It said more than 3,300 RCMP officers across Canada had been trained to use of the carbine, and that number is expected to double over the next year.

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Aly Thomson, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

RCMP trial on labour code violations in N.B. shooting hears from tactical expert

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