More than two years after her daughter was killed, this mother still can't get information from RCMP

WARNING: This story contains graphic details of violence.

There are times when Rose Marie Smith's daughter, Lisa, is at the forefront of her mind: on Lisa's birthday, her kids' birthdays, the anniversary of her death.

More than two years have passed since Lisa was shot and killed at her workplace by a man she briefly dated, who then took his own life.

"When I think of her, I can still see that little girl, running in the field," Smith said in an interview from her Halifax-area home, where Lisa's framed photo and a candle sit on a table in the living room.

But the passage of time hasn't helped Smith get clearer answers to questions about why her daughter, a mother of three, was killed that day in Pointe-Sapin, a small fishing community in eastern New Brunswick. If anything, it's strengthened her resolve.

• Previous coverage: A death unexplained

She still wonders whether other people picked up on red flags and reported those to the police.

Smith has been told her daughter was harassed by the perpetrator at their shared workplace, after deciding she didn't want to date him anymore, but she was reluctant to go to police because she felt she could handle things herself.

Mother struggling to get answers, more than two years after daughter was killed.

3 years ago

Duration 2:00

Rose Marie Smith seeks more transparency from the RCMP about their investigation into the killing of her daughter by a man she briefly dated.

Smith also wants accountability for how a man with a history of violence against women, who was prohibited from possessing firearms, managed to get a gun that day.

But she has been unable to get those answers from the RCMP, which investigated the crime. She's barely been able to get the force to talk to her at all.

Lisa's death is one of nearly 400 cases studied by CBC's investigative team as part of Deadly Relationships, a sweeping, 16-month CBC News investigation examining intimate partner homicides over a five-year period across Canada. Her family's experience raises questions about the transparency of police agencies and government bodies that investigate these cases.

Police have refused to even acknowledge what happened as intimate partner violence, telling CBC News in 2020 that more couldn't be said because charges wouldn't be laid, since the perpetrator is dead.

"There's no accountability," Smith said.

"Nobody's willing to take responsibility. There's no transparency, for sure. So closure in any sense hasn't happened yet. It has not happened because we don't know anything."

• Warning signs present in 1 in 3 homicides of intimate partners, CBC investigation finds

For the first time, in a response to an access to information request sent to CBC News earlier this year as part of the Deadly Relationships investigation, the RCMP included Lisa's name on a list of victims of intimate partner violence homicide.

"I'm glad they have acknowledged it to someone," Smith said. "They've never acknowledged it to us."

'I feel they have a responsibility'

Smith's quest to learn more about what led to her daughter's death started in 2019, when she contacted the RCMP detachment in Richibucto, south of Pointe-Sapin, looking for basic facts about what happened that day. 

She said she was told to contact the RCMP in Ottawa.

"The initial call from the RCMP in Ottawa when I was speaking to him, he went through some of the things and said, you know, we don't want to give this information out because we're afraid people will sue us," Smith said.

"And I said, well, why would you think that? But I think that was the overall feeling from him, was that if I received information, I might sue them. I don't want to sue them. I don't want money. It's not going to bring Lisa back. It's not going to resolve anything. I need the information, and I feel that they have a responsibility."

Smith would like the information for her family to get closure but also wants to be able to provide it to Lisa's children, should they want it someday.

She was told to file an access to information request, paid the $5 application fee, and after 18 months, she received a single, redacted report that doesn't include answers to her questions.

She said she was told she could reapply in 20 years to get the unredacted document, but Smith doesn't know if she'll still be living then.

"I shouldn't have to be almost an aggressor to get information," Smith said.

No one from the RCMP was made available for an interview. Angela Chang, the director of strategic communications with the New Brunswick RCMP, wrote in an emailed statement that she couldn't comment on "conversations with specific individuals," referring to Smith's conversation with the officer in Ottawa, and said the police force is "looking into the matter."

But when it comes to providing more information on Lisa's death, she said the police agency is limited by privacy legislation and tries to balance that "in all our communications with the public." 

The RCMP didn't answer a question about how the perpetrator got a firearm, despite being banned from doing so.

"The details you have requested as a member of the media regarding the incident in Pointe-Sapin would normally be disclosed through the court process, had someone been charged in connection with the incident," Chang wrote.

"As no one was ever charged, the RCMP is limited as to what can be released publicly about the investigation while respecting both Access to Information and Privacy Acts."

15 N.B. victims of intimate partner homicide over 5 years

Smith wonders whether the answers she's seeking could help other women and prevent future deaths.

Lisa was one of at least 15 people in New Brunswick, 13 of whom were women, who died because of intimate partner violence between 2015 and 2020, according to data compiled by CBC News.

"That's astonishing," Smith said. "I'm sure some of those could have been prevented."

• Coercive control, the silent partner of domestic violence, instils fear, helplessness in victims
• How CBC crunched the numbers on intimate-partner homicides

A study by University of New Brunswick sociology professor Carmen Gill, released earlier this year, found that 27 per cent of all homicides in the province between 1999 and 2018 were related to domestic violence, for a total of 52 lives lost.

Farrah Khan, the manager of Consent Comes First at Toronto's Ryerson University, which provides support to community members affected by sexual violence, said police need to work better with victims, families, violence against women organizations and the media to provide information.

"We need to have conversations that are about how this is predictable and preventable, and only with real data, real information can we end this," Khan said in an interview.

"And families have the right to that information. It's very important that they do, and no one should be saying that they have to fight for decades or years to get information about the murder of their child."

Without clear information, decisions can't be made to end violence against women and full conversations can't be had about what's happening, Khan said.

"We need to name men's violence against women for what it is," she said.

Committee reviewed Lisa's death

Last year, Smith was told her daughter's death was reviewed by New Brunswick's domestic violence death review committee, which was created in 2009 to try to prevent deaths like Lisa's from happening.

The committee releases annual reports detailing the committee's recommendations, with responses from government and police agencies. But the reports don't include any context of what happened to prompt the recommendation.

Smith wasn't interviewed for the review into Lisa's death. After going through the reports available online, she can't figure out which recommendations might relate to what happened to Lisa.

"I would have loved to have sat down or even talked to [a member of the domestic violence death review committee] on the phone to have some carry-through how they came to these conclusions and what the follow up would be," Smith said.

"Because going back on the other reports written in previous years of this committee, a lot of the same documentation comes up. It's almost word for word. So are they not acting on it?"

Geoffrey Downey, a spokesperson with the Department of Justice and Public Safety, said participating family members are contacted following a review to explain the recommendations, but "they are not provided with a report." While Smith was told the review was finished, no one explained the findings to her.

Secrecy on top of secrecy

In 2019, former chief coroner Gregory Forestell told CBC News that his office was reviewing the way the committee worked, looking at how to give the recommendations some context while also balancing privacy rules.

New Brunswick revamped its child death review committee in 2017, after a CBC News investigation found the public is allowed to know little about how at-risk children die.

Now, the committee gives the public more information about the child when releasing recommendations, including the age of the child, cause of death and how the child was known to the Department of Social Development.

Forestell suggested in 2019 that changes to the domestic violence death review committee could follow a similar path.

"Transparency and accountability is definitely part of the review process and will be part of the report in the new year," Forestell said then.

But the findings of that consultant's review haven't been made public, as Forestell suggested they would be. No one was made available by the department for an interview.

Downey, with the Department of Justice and Public Safety, said a consultant was hired in 2019-20 to "undertake an analysis of needs, opportunities, and other improvements" for the committee.

As a result, the committee added more frontline workers to its membership, made changes to its terms of reference and developed a tracking mechanism to track its recommendations and responses.

Lethality predictors tracked, not made public yearly

Carmen Gill, who compiled the academic study on 52 homicides over 20 years, is also a member of the domestic violence death review committee. Her study was prompted by a request from the committee.

It concluded the committee has made it easier to track known risk factors that, when combined, can predict lethality, such as a victim trying to leave the relationship, a history of violence or a custody battle. The data on those risk factors isn't included in the committee's annual reports, which are public.

Before New Brunswick had the domestic violence death review committee, no one was tracking all this information in one place, Gill found. 

"For me, the death review committee has really changed the way that we are dealing with domestic homicide," Gill said in an interview.

'People, not policies'

But for Rosella Melanson, an activist on Acadian and feminist issues, the committee is "secretive and bureaucratic."

"Civil servants talking to civil servants," Melanson said.

"That's all it is. That's not what it was supposed to be. That's not what's going to change anything."

She believes the public should know much more about what the committee is doing. She also thinks the consultant's review of the committee should be made public.

"There is a committee that must have had questions about the quality of its work or wants to do better," Melanson said.

"So there's a consultant hired with public funds. We should know and we should be able to measure whether that consultant did good work and whether the committee is responding to the consultant's report."

Had she been asked, Smith said, she would have been "totally OK" with the committee including details about what happened to Lisa in its public report, so others can learn from it.

She thinks the reports are written for policymakers and professionals, not for members of the general public to learn from.

"We're dealing with people, not policies," Smith said.

"It can't always be policy-driven. If people don't change things, then the policies mean nothing."