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.
Trudeau has said an early priority of his newly re-elected government will be to give all federally regulated workers 10 days of paid sick leave, and work with provinces and territories on better sick-leave policies for all Canadians.
There are 4,888 active cases of COVID-19 in the province and 192,189 people who tested positive have recovered. Of the active cases, 370 individuals are in hospital and 139 are in intensive care.
That heat wave lasted several weeks and saw the town of Lytton, B.C., destroyed by a fire a day after it recorded a temperature of 49.6 C, the highest temperature ever seen in Canada.
Katrine Conroy told the legislature the proposed changes align forestry legislation with the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act passed in late 2019 and introduce "new tools to establish resilient forests."
The police board says it launched a review of the department's protocols when Maxwell Johnson and his granddaughter were handcuffed after trying to open an account at the Bank of Montreal using their government-issued status cards.
On October 16 just before 3 p.m., cleaning staff at the safe injection site near Pender and Abbott streets found what are now known as two replica pipe bombs inside the toilets. Staff believed they were imitation bombs and turned them over to police. VPD’s Emergency Response Team Bomb Technician attended and safely destroyed the device.
