A former chief justice, an ex-federal cabinet minister and a retired police chief have been appointed to conduct an independent review into April’s mass shooting in Nova Scotia.
Michael MacDonald, who was Nova Scotia’s chief justice from 2004 to 2019, will chair the review panel, announced Thursday by the federal and provincial governments.
MacDonald is joined on the panel by Anne McLellan, a former member of Parliament and deputy prime minister, and Leanne Fitch, who retired as chief of the Fredericton Police Force in 2019 after 34 years in municipal policing.
The governments said the “independent and impartial” panel will undertake a broad review of the events of April 18 and 19, when a gunman killed 22 people during a 13-hour rampage before he was shot dead by police.
A news release said the panel will consider the causes, context and circumstances giving rise to the events, the police response and the steps taken to inform, support and engage victims, families and affected citizens.
“The panel is tasked with finding answers to the most central questions related to the actions of the perpetrator, the police and other law enforcement agencies, and the experiences and impacts on victims and families,” the release said.
“The panel has a mandate to investigate, identify lessons learned and make recommendations on actions that should be taken at both the provincial and federal levels to address what happened and improve public safety in the future.”
The panel members were selected, the release said, because of their experience in fact-finding and independence, their knowledge of public safety, policing and gender-based and intimate-partner violence, and their understanding of shared federal-provincial relations and responsibilities.
MacDonald retired as Nova Scotia’s top judge in January 2019. He was appointed to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in 1995, was named its associate chief judge in 1998 and became chief justice of the Nova Scotia Court of Appeal and Nova Scotia’s 22nd chief justice in 2004.
As chief justice, he led several judicial outreach initiatives with the province’s Mi’kmaw and Black communities. He also promoted efforts to increase diversity on Nova Scotia’s benches, including a judicial mentorship program for Black and Mi’kmaw lawyers and justice day camps for students from marginalized communities.
MacDonald was a member of the Canadian Judicial Council for 20 years and chaired several of its committees. After retiring from the bench, he joined the Halifax-based law firm Stewart McKelvey, where he promotes diversity and inclusion.
The Nova Scotia branch of the Canadian Bar Association annually presents the J. Michael Macdonald Access to Justice Award to honour his work in the area of access to justice.
In January 2019, Joseph Kennedy, who was chief justice of the Nova Scotia Supreme Court at the time, said MacDonald had been a “transformative" chief justice.
“The courts in this province have evolved during his leadership,” Kennedy said. “Judges now strive to understand and relate to the entire population in ways that are innovative and meaningful.
“He will be remembered as one of the great chief justices in the history of Nova Scotia.”
McLellan was born and raised on the Noel Shore and obtained her law degree from Dalhousie University in Halifax, where she later served as chancellor. She was a Liberal MP for the Edmonton area for three terms from 1997 to 2006, and was a member of cabinet the entire time, either as deputy prime minister, health minister, public safety minister or justice minister.
She recently chaired the federal government’s task force on the legalization and regulation of cannabis and is now a senior adviser on public policy with the Edmonton law firm Bennett Jones. She has a master of law degree from King’s College at the University of London and also has taught law at the University of New Brunswick and the University of Alberta.
Fitch was Fredericton’s police chief for seven years and deputy chief for seven years after 20 years on the front lines of policing. As co-chair of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police crime prevention, community safety and well-being committee, she was instrumental in developing the national framework for intimate-partner violence, the release said.
She was a roundtable member for the New Brunswick Department of Public Safety on the issues of crime reduction and domestic and intimate-partner violence and was also a member of New Brunswick’s domestic violence death review committee.
Fitch has bachelor and master’s degrees in sociology, has taught criminology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, is a published author on topics such as intimate-partner violence and community policing, and has presented locally, nationally and internationally on those topics. She is currently involved in three UNB research projects on intimate-partner violence.
In a statement Thursday, the panel members said grieving families and communities understandably have many questions about the “devastating act of violence.”
“We accept the responsibility entrusted to us with a solemn commitment and determination to conduct a thorough and independent review into these tragic events and into the broader context and circumstances leading to, surrounding following them,” the statement said.
“In the coming weeks and months, we will meet with families, survivors, first responders, law enforcement officials and others as we examine what happened, how it happened, and what lessons and actions can improve community safety and help prevent such tragedies in the future.”
The panel members said they believe the scope and mandate of the review will provide them what they need to do a comprehensive job.
“Our approach will be trauma-informed as we undertake this work with care and compassion for those who have been most deeply affected. We are committed to examining the contexts that played a role in these acts of violence, including gender-based and intimate-partner violence.“
The panel is expected to deliver an interim report by the end of February 2021 and its final report by the end of August 2021.
