A senior RCMP officer has testified that lawyers from the federal Justice Department advised him not to disclose a call he received from Commissioner Brenda Lucki asking him to send her details of the firearms used in the mass shooting in Nova Scotia.
Leather also told the inquiry on July 28 that he believes political interference was behind Lucki’s determination to have the firearms details made public to further the federal government’s gun control legislation.
“That’s my impression,” he said, during cross-examination by lawyer Tom MacDonald, who represents the families of two victims killed in the mass shootings.
In his testimony on July 27, Chief Supt. Chris Leather told the Mass Casualty Commission (MCC) that he had received a call from Lucki on April 22, 2020—three days after the shootings that left 22 dead—asking him to send her details about the guns.
Leather’s statement about the call with Lucki, and about a series of emails that followed, didn’t come up in a July 6 interview he gave to commission lawyers.
During cross examination on July 28, Leather told Michael Scott, a lawyer who represents the majority of the victims’ families, that he hadn’t mentioned the call in the interview because he had been told by lawyers with the Justice Department to take a “reactive posture.”
“The advice I received was not to proactively disclose the conversation (with Lucki) and the emails leading up to the meeting on April 28, [2020],” Leather testified, after his request to have his solicitor-client privilege waived was granted.
“I knew from my notes and emails I had prepared and submitted that it was obviously relevant to what would become the infamous phone call of April 28, and was troubled by that and wanted their advice and was advised to take a reactive posture,” he said.