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.
Herd immunity refers to having enough people within a community protected from a virus or pathogen, either through natural infection or vaccination, that transmission becomes unlikely.
The emergency operations centre for the central Okanagan says assessments of neighbourhoods directly affected by the 830-square-kilometre White Rock Lake fire along the western banks of Okanagan Lake should be complete by Thursday.
This investigation began in March 2021, when Surrey RCMP received a report alleging that a woman was sexually assaulted while receiving a massage at Shri Professional Massage, located at 1105-7360 137 Street.
The pledges come in a Liberal re-election platform with $78 billion in new spending, more than three times the direct new revenues promised over the next five years.
Mike Farnworth says the extension recognizes that the potential for significant wildfire activity persists even as cooler weather helps firefighting crews.
The B.C. Prosecution Service says in a statement it recently determined the available evidence no longer satisfies the charge assessment standard for a prosecution to continue.
