Turning the Tide Together: Final Report of the Mass Casualty Commission. Volume 4: Community

By The Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty

  Volume 4 addresses several issues set out in the Commission’s mandate, including the direction to inquire into “the steps taken to inform, support and engage victims, families, and affected citizens.” We also develop additional main findings as well as lessons learned and recommendations pertaining to the direction to examine these issues set out in the Orders in Council: (ii) access to firearms (v) communications with the public during and after the event, including the appropriate use of the public alerting system established under the Alert Ready program (ix) policies with respect to the disposal of police vehicles and any associated equipment, kit, and clothing (xi) information and support provided to the families of victims, affected citizens, police personnel, and the community. Volume 4, Community, focuses on the role of communities and their members in responding to critical incidents and in contributing to community safety and wellbeing. We open our report by recognizing the extensive harm resulting from the April 2020 mass casualty, one that centres on the lives taken, the survivors, and their families; and ripples out to affected communities, emergency responders, and outward through a circular pattern of impact. One of our main findings in Volume 2 is that community members played a central role as first responders during the mass casualty. We also find the harms caused by the perpetrator’s violence did not begin on April 18. in Volume 3 we bring together these two findings and underscore the ways in which community members are also first preventers, in the sense of fostering the safety of women and others affected by gender-based violence. This volume elaborates this understanding of the dual community role. Communities and their members are both affected by critical incident responses and by systems for ensuring everyday safety, and they have an active role in responding to  incidents and in contributing to community safety and well-being on an ongoing basis. Perhaps more fundamentally, the structure of our Report recognizes that we need to rebalance the relationship between communities and police in ensuring public safety. To put it simply, communities come first.     

 Halifax, NS: Joint Federal/Provincial Commission into the April 2020 Nova Scotia Mass Casualty, 2023. 734p.