Ottawa, June 24 (IANS) Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has denied meddling in an investigation into the 2020 mass shooting, the worst the country's history.
Brenda Lucki, head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), has been accused of pressuring local officers to help advance Trudeau's gun control plans, the BBC quoted the Halifax Examiner as saying, which was the first to report on the development.
According to the Halifax Examiner, the accusation stemmed from notes made by a local RCMP officer, released as part of a public investigation into the mass shooting on April 18-19, 2020, during which a gunman posing as a police officer killed 22 people in Nova Scotia.
The suspect died in a stand-off with police.
Addressing reporters on Thursday, Trudeau said that his government "did not put any undo influence or pressure" on police.
"It is extremely important to highlight that it is only the RCMP, it is only police that determine what and when to release information," the BBC quoted the Prime Minister as saying.
Denying the accusations, Commissioner Lucki said in a statement released on Tuesday that information sharing between the federal government and police is normal during a high-profile event such as a mass shooting.
The RCMP chief however acknowledged that she "should have been more sensitive" in her approach.
Canada's opposition Conservative Party has called for a debate in the House of Commons, and a parliamentary committee voted on Thursday to hold a hearing into the matter.
In the wake of the deadliest rampage in Canadian history, Prime Minister Trudeau in May 2020 announced an immediate ban on the sale, transportation, importation, or use of some 1,500 makes and models of "military-grade assault-style" weapons.
An agreed statement of facts read in court by Crown counsel Jay Fogel said Loreto was killed on March 17, 2021, before her burned body was found in Burnaby's Greentree Village Park the next day.
There are 254 individuals hospitalized with COVID-19 and 48 are in intensive care. In the past 24 hours, no new deaths have been reported, for an overall total of 2,974.
With the Conservatives set to pick their new leader Sept. 10, the party would have more than two years to prepare to face Canadians in a general election, assuming the Liberal-NDP deal holds.
Trudeau will kick off a whirlwind trip with an address to the European Parliament in Brussels on Wednesday, where he will stress the importance of both continents working together to defend democracy in the face of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The society and SkeenaWild Conservation Trust commissioned the report, which says only 110,000 sockeye were commercially harvested in all of B.C. in 2021, and the coalition questions why the Pacific Salmon Treaty is failing to address issues of interception and overfishing.
The deal says the NDP will neither move nor vote for a motion of non-confidence that could topple the Liberals during the term of the arrangement. The Liberals and NDP will meet regularly, and they agree to identify priority bills to move swiftly through the House of Commons.
