The RCMP’s Rent-a-Cop Policing Led to the Worst Killing Spree in Canada

T here are twenty-five truths about the Nova Scotia massacres. Twenty-two of those have names and indisputable fact on their side. They are the people who were shot dead by Nova Scotia denturist Gabriel Wortman. On Saturday night, April 18, 2020, thirteen of them died in Portapique, some while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were on scene trying to figure out what to do. We still don’t know the order in which they died or the precise details of many of the murders. We just know their names: Greg Blair, Jamie Blair, Lisa McCully, Corrie Ellison, Frank Gulenchyn, Dawn Madsen Gulenchyn, John Zahl, Elizabeth Joanne (Jo) Thomas, Peter Bond, Joy Bond, Aaron Tuck, Jolene Oliver, and Emily Tuck. The next morning, as the Mounties were still trying to make sense of the situation, in distinctly different circumstances, nine more people were murdered: Sean McLeod, Alanna Jenkins, Tom Bagley, Lillian Campbell Hyslop, Heather O’Brien, Kristen Beaton, Heidi Stevenson, Joey Webber, and Gina Goulet. The twenty-third truth is that while only three people, including Wortman’s common-law wife, Lisa Banfield, suffered non-life-threatening injuries, hundreds, if not thousands, were emotionally or psychologically damaged by what happened. The twenty-fourth truth is that although a handful of Mounties did indeed put their lives on the line in exceptionally trying circumstances, a few who offered to do so were not allowed to. Other Mounties, meanwhile, were anything but brave. In a profession where the preservation of life is the first priority, the Mounties saved no one who was in danger by the time they got there. It was anything but a great moment in policing. Not one Mountie’s actions would make a heroes’ highlight reel. The twenty-fifth truth is that the RCMP and its enablers in government and the justice system have not been entirely honest about what happened before, during, and after the massacres. From its first comments, the RCMP attributed Wortman’s actions to the fallout from a long-standing domestic violence environment exacerbated by paranoia over the COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown in Nova Scotia. This official narrative was immediately picked up by then prime minister Justin Trudeau and the federal and provincial governments. During the summer of 2020, the governments reluctantly called a joint federal–provincial public inquiry, the Mass Casualty Commission, or MCC, headed by three commissioners: former Nova Scotia chief justice J. Michael MacDonald, former Fredericton police chief Leanne J. Fitch, and Toronto lawyer Kim Stanton. The families of the victims, and the public in general, hoped that the commission would get to the truth of the matter, whatever it might be. After it handed down its voluminous final report in March 2023, MacDonald and his co-commissioners proclaimed that they had thoroughly examined the issue. Most media observers praised their efforts, although there were dissenters, including family members who were baffled by what had transpired. Throughout it all, I sat back and monitored what was going on. Based on my considerable experience, I sensed what the commission was actually going to do. With that in mind, I didn’t attend a single hearing, but I and my band of citizen investigators followed every move made by the government, the commission, and the RCMP, by either perusing their documents or watching the televised proceedings. My intention was this: when it was all over, I would dissect it and show the public how, unbelievable as it might seem to some, the three parties had worked together to pull off a cover-up in plain sight.

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T he RCMP has long been a coddled problem child for governments. Over the past several decades, repeated headlines have informed the public about convincing and disturbing tales of incompetence (the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians warned in November 2023 that “the committee does not believe that federal policing is effective, efficient, flexible or accountable”), deceit (“Despite Denials, RCMP Used Facial Recognition Program”—The Tyee, March 10, 2020), and far too many tragedies to enumerate but including shootings of RCMP officers in Mayerthorpe in 2005, Spiritwood in 2006, and Moncton in 2014 and the killing of Polish tourist Robert Dziekański at Vancouver International Airport in October 2007. Behind the scenes, one independent study after another has found the force to be in tatters, suffering from a cult-like toxic and broken culture (“Scathing Report Calls Out RCMP’s Toxic Culture”—National Association of Federal Employees, February 25, 2021), a lack of accountability (“The Dark Side of the RCMP”—The Walrus, October 20, 2021), and an unsustainable structure (“RCMP Facing ‘Systemic Sustainability Challenges’ Due to Provincial Policing Role”—CTV News, May 24, 2020). Fixing the RCMP is about as unpalatable a subject as there might be for Canadian politicians. They just keep throwing money at the problem, now more than $5 billion a year. “Give us some of that money and we’ll show you how policing should work,” one Canadian municipal police chief, who was reluctant to speak on the record out of a very real fear of retribution from the RCMP, told me. But no matter what the RCMP does wrong, it continues to have access to the public purse. The RCMP’s Kevlar is that it has long been an informal yet indelible symbol of the country. It is a guardian institution but operates and comports itself like a business. It’s the Canadian way. Canada has never been about lofty ideals, and its symbols are not aspirational, like those of some countries. There are no suns or stars or majestic eagles or lions. Canada has always been about business. One of its national symbols is a semi-aquatic rodent, the beaver, whose pelts were the basis of the country’s original industry and wealth. One of the first and most important duties of the RCMP in 1874 was to protect trappers collecting those pelts in the late stages of that industry. Some prime ministers have spoken about the RCMP’s problems. At the turn of the twentieth century, when they were still known as the Northwest Mounted Police, then prime minister Louis St. Laurent wanted to get rid of them but soon relented. Instead, the Mounties were deemed to be “Royal,” a moniker they kept when they transitioned into the Royal Canadian Mounted Police a few years later. In the years leading up to his campaign for office in early 2006, Stephen Harper championed reforming and reimagining the RCMP. Once he was elected prime minister, that all got put on the back burner and was forgotten. In the lexicon of modern business, with about 30,000 employees, the RCMP is deemed to be too big to fail and too important an institution for the country. That’s the myth-making government and RCMP marketing departments at work. While it appears to be a giant national police force, in reality, the RCMP is less than the sum of its parts. Its unorthodox hybridized structure has reduced it largely to a publicly funded, politically controlled rent-a-cop system, providing policing to provinces, territories, and municipalities across the country on a contract basis. Those buying RCMP services think they are getting a deal—the best police force in the country at a discounted rate, because of subsidies from the federal government. When the RCMP markets its policing services to provinces and communities, one of the things it promotes is that Mounties are well rounded. Their individual careers are built on multiple assignments in different locales. Many have travelled the world on international peacekeeping missions or training police in third-world countries. When a Mountie arrives in a Canadian community, they have highly buffed credentials. While they are often outsiders, the theoretical advantage is that not being part of the society they are policing makes them incorruptible. The Mounties promise to dish out the law fairly and without favour. Sounds great on paper. In fact, the personnel pool that the RCMP draws from is much smaller than it might seem: about 20,000 serving Mounties. Over the past three decades of writing about the RCMP, I have heard from dozens of Mounties that the open secret for getting ahead is not based so much on merit as it is on family history inside the force, hidden connections, and favouritism. Under this regime, upwardly mobile Mounties tend to have curated careers in which they are all but sheltered from harm, controversy, and obstacles as they quickly climb the rungs of the organization. The single most important ingredient in their rise through the ranks is a willingness every few years to pack up their family, load their worldly possessions into a moving van, and head out on an adventure. It’s the RCMP way, reliving the vagabond glory of the Great March West over and over again, without acknowledging that the world has changed a little since 1874. And as we can see in the Nova Scotia massacres, that’s not exactly a recipe for excellence, because many of the best Mounties are unwilling to sacrifice a normal life for themselves and their families to chase the pot of gold promised to them at the end of their career rainbows. Once a Mountie arrives in a new location, they tend not to know anyone but other Mounties. Their knowledge of a community and its criminal players tends to be superficial and anything but second nature to them. They are strangers in a strange land. The MCC recommended major reforms to the RCMP and local policing, including better training, improved communication, and stronger oversight. But modern Canadian governments have little appetite for big projects, a reluctance noted by Canadian constitutional lawyer Deborah Coyne in a July 2021 ebook: Canada’s Faux Democracy: What Are We Going to Do about It? Coyne’s daughter is Trudeau’s half-sister. Coyne says governments refuse to undertake “long-term initiatives to address major challenges we face as Canadians. Such challenges are too often considered high risk politically. And, because they may take more than a four-year term to resolve, deliver no neatly packaged success stories to present at election time.” The RCMP has been reduced to a publicly funded, politically controlled rent-a-cop system, providing policing on a contract basis. E dgar MacLeod was named executive director of his old alma mater, the Atlantic Police Academy in Summerside, Prince Edward Island, in 2017. Over the years, he has received many accolades and has become known as an articulate and well-respected analyst and thinker in Canadian policing circles. He has seen the RCMP’s dysfunction up close. MacLeod graduated from the Atlantic Police Academy in 1973 and was offered a job by the Shelburne Police Department on Nova Scotia’s South Shore, which his father, desperate to see his son get a job, made him take. When MacLeod received his first paycheque in Shelburne, he noticed something extremely odd about it. The cheque had been issued by Bob Douglas Security Agency, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. When MacLeod investigated, he found the strangest of arrangements: Shelburne’s was one of a number of small Nova Scotia police services that fell under the umbrella of the private Dartmouth company. Five months after joining the Shelburne police force, the twenty-one-year-old MacLeod was made deputy police chief. A year and a half later, he was made chief when his predecessor left for a better job—manager of the local liquor store. According to MacLeod, his demise on the force came after a key Shelburne citizen was arrested for creating a disturbance and drunk and disorderly conduct. The arrested man was a financial supporter of the mayor (now long since dead), who called MacLeod into his office. “There was some discussion,” MacLeod recalled. “And the mayor said, ‘I expect you to look after these charges. It’s a bit of an embarrassment and he’s a big supporter and a friend.’ “I was in shock that he would even approach a chief of police with that kind of a notion. ‘I don’t even know if you know who you are talking to, Your Worship,’” MacLeod said, conscious of paying respect to the office. “‘I’m going to pretend this conversation didn’t happen. . . . The charges stand and it’s going to court.’ And the mayor said: ‘I don’t know if you know who I am. I am the chief magistrate. I expect you to look after this.’” MacLeod asked the mayor: “What will happen if I don’t look after this?” He said the mayor replied that he would go to his council and have a resolution passed to dismiss MacLeod by a motion of council. “I’m never going to resign,” MacLeod said and stormed out of the office. “He told me the town didn’t want to bring the Mounties in, but they were in a dilemma because I wasn’t going to co-operate.” About three months later, a resolution was passed. MacLeod was gone. The Shelburne police force was eliminated. The plan was that the RCMP would be contracted on a short-term basis to provide municipal policing until a new local force could be assembled. The RCMP jumped at the opportunity. It promised the world to Shelburne: better policing that would be cheaper, thanks to federal subsidies. The town wouldn’t have to worry about the messiness of overseeing the RCMP. It would all be handled by the federal government. Before long, other small Nova Scotia municipal forces were disbanded and the RCMP moved in. In 1975, the Nova Scotia Police Act came into force, putting the Bob Douglas Security Agency out of the policing business. As the Mounties grew their contract operations, municipalities noticed that their promised gratis services began to disappear. There were financial charges for everything and virtually no way for municipalities to control the Mounties or hold the force accountable. MacLeod went on to have a stellar career in law enforcement. He spent twelve years in the Sydney, Nova Scotia, police force before becoming the chief of police in nearby New Waterford. Until 1995, the greater Sydney area employed seven different police agencies, with the RCMP assigned to the rural areas. MacLeod was one of the leaders in the fight to amalgamate the services into one, a move that the RCMP strenuously objected to, but unsuccessfully. The Mounties were kicked out of the community and replaced by the Cape Breton Regional Police under MacLeod, who served for twelve years in the post. Further aggravating the Mounties was the defection of two Cape Breton First Nations reserves, Membertou and Eskasoni. Each was disgruntled by the spotty service provided by the RCMP under federal contracts. They liked what MacLeod’s force had to offer and, in a move unprecedented in Canada, switched their business to the municipal force. Now retired and living in PEI, MacLeod said the failings of the RCMP at the federal level have had an unacknowledged but profound effect on Canadian society. “Governments at all levels are failing to make the connection between the lack of federal enforcement and the unprecedented conditions facing our local communities,” MacLeod said. “We’ve never had more homeless people or people with psychiatric problems. There have never been more illegal drugs on our streets. Why? It can all be traced back to the impact of international crime, including organized commercial crime, drug trafficking, and money laundering. The federal government is largely responsible. The RCMP is tasked with the responsibility of federal law enforcement, but federal policing enforcement has not kept pace. Instead, we see more and more of our federal policing dollars being invested into a fundamentally flawed structure where the RCMP is stretched well beyond its primary mandate.” Echoing Coyne’s thoughts, MacLeod said: “Governments are not thinking far enough ahead down the road. Everything is very short term. They don’t want to get involved in any meaningful change because that is too difficult. It’s all about the next election.” Governments instead promote “the partnership model,” as MacLeod put it, the fairy tale that all police forces are working together like a consortium of businesses. “That structure promotes a lack of accountability and fails to serve the public interest. The partnership policing model has become the classic problem where everyone is responsible for everything, but nobody is accountable for anything. The ambiguous federal, provincial, and local governments’ policing responsibilities will unfortunately lead to further erosion of peace and security.” W hen the MCC was looking for someone credible to analyze and discuss the state of policing in Nova Scotia, someone like Edgar MacLeod would seem to have been a knowledgeable, fair, and appropriate candidate. The RCMP model of policing is an inherent problem. The force specializes in underpolicing communities, understaffing, and slow response times, while proclaiming that these policies make it efficient and a cheaper alternative to municipal and provincial police forces. In a province of almost a million residents at the time of the massacres, about half of Nova Scotians lived in communities served by municipal police forces. The other half were spread out in tiny communities across the province that were being served by fifty-three RCMP detachments. In some of those communities, however, the RCMP presence was merely a building and few, if any, officers. It was a crazy, entrenched patchwork that the RCMP fought to maintain in spite of the enormous costs of the infrastructure alone. But the commission soft-pedalled these issues, choosing Barry MacKnight as their expert. On paper, he looked like another Edgar MacLeod, but his 1,500-page report in the foundational documents seemed to sugar-coat the entire situation. The first thing that struck me as odd about the report was the anodyne biographical information about MacKnight. Why were there no specifics? It didn’t take long to find an answer. Barry MacKnight’s report signalled that the MCC was not going to be digging all that deeply into the root of the problem. MacKnight had begun his policing career as a Mountie. He then moved over to the Fredericton Police Force, where he rose to become chief of police. In 2012, he suddenly left that job at the relatively young age of forty-nine to, as it’s often put in similar circumstances, “pursue other opportunities.” He was now running his own consulting service in Hanwell, New Brunswick, specializing in workplace and professional misconduct investigations. His successor in Fredericton was an officer he had groomed for the job, Leanne Fitch, now one of the MCC commissioners. One police source in New Brunswick described MacKnight as “strategically careful to never offend anyone.” Another spoke of his tenure as “unspectacular,” while a third said, “By the time he left, the force was in a mess. Fitch didn’t do anything to fix it.” MacKnight’s report was loaded with numbers and graphs and read like a virtual press release, as if the structure of policing in Nova Scotia were a well-oiled machine that just needed a little tinkering to run better. A casual reader would not find any mention of the force’s above-noted shortcomings. At the very bottom of his report, for example, MacKnight produced the training records for what appeared to be about a dozen RCMP members at Bible Hill. Their names and any identifying characteristics were redacted. Each showed pages and pages of training achievements, as if this mattered in the real world. Former Mountie Janet Merlo showed how phony the training is in her 2021 book No One to Tell: Breaking My Silence on Life in the RCMP. Merlo described how a single Mountie at a detachment would log into a computer terminal and do the tests for perhaps forty other members at once. Many other Mounties have confirmed what she wrote. In his hagiographic assessment of the RCMP, MacKnight failed to acknowledge, among other things, that the Mounties are extremely secretive and see information sharing with other police forces as a one-way street. MacKnight’s report signalled that the commission was not going to be digging all that deeply into the root of the problem—the historical rotten foundations of policing in Nova Scotia—and it didn’t. It also seemed apparent that the commission wasn’t all that interested in how the RCMP came to be so poorly organized in Nova Scotia. Bad decisions had to have been made, but who made them? The RCMP has long been adept at hiding behind the red serge to protect individual officers from facing accountability. Adapted and excerpted from Anatomy of a Cover-Up: The Truth about the RCMP and the Nova Scotia Massacres by Paul Palango. Copyright © 2025 Paul Palango. Published by Random House Canada, a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited. Reproduced by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.The post The RCMP’s Rent-a-Cop Policing Led to the Worst Killing Spree in Canada first appeared on The Walrus.