MCC Day 56 – Chief Superintendent Chris Leather

The Mass Casualty Commission continued to hear from senior NS-based RCMP commanders today, with testimony from Chief Superintendent Chris Leather. C/Sup Leather was the second ranking officer in Nova Scotia at the time of the events of the mass casualty. He was in Halifax after having testified Monday in Ottawa before the Federal Public Safety and National Security Subcommittee. Among the observations I was able to make from being at the Harbourside Marriot in person were that there were many empty seats (there were about 25 people watching, in addition to the lawyers, MCC staff, and media), perhaps a reflection of the choice to have these key witnesses appear during one of the hottest, nicest, weeks of the Nova Scotia summer. Speaking with people during breaks, I was able to learn (to my complete lack of surprise) that the lawyers for participants are getting increasingly frustrated that they are being marginalized as they have been. The MCC choices have made it very difficult for these lawyers to properly represent their clients, by cutting off any real opportunity for questioning witnesses. Also, I learned that Superintendent Darren Campbell’s acknowledgement at the end of his testimony yesterday of mistakes that the RCMP made, and his apology to the families, made an impact. Sup. Campbell spent 45 minutes speaking with one of the family members after he testified, and was reportedly quite genuine in his remarks. C/Sup. Leather seemed to be quite subdued in his demeanor. Perhaps this is his natural personality presentation, but he was certainly a low-energy witness. One of the first topics he discussed was emergency alerting, and the training for that. He seemed to be advocating for a limited group of supervisors to have access to the system, noting that you had to take care to properly craft an emergency message. This seems likely to reinforce the problem of messages getting out too slowly, which is all contrary to the expert advice the MCC received on emergency alerts. In discussing the main topic of his testimony, the press conferences that he lead, C/Sup. Leather did express some regret and contrition, while also deflecting blame to communications staff. He suggested that he had very little training in press conferences, or time to prepare for questions. It may be fair to argue that less training, rather than more, is appropriate for police communications with the media. Such training seems designed to help the officer conceal information from the public, rather than properly and fulsomely reveal it.