Judge rules in favour of CBC to unseal mass shooting court documents

After nearly three years, a judge has lifted most of the remaining redactions — blacked-out sections — in search warrant documents related to the mass shooting tragedy in Nova Scotia. 

"This application was precipitated by the mass shooting by Gabriel Wortman on April 18 and 19, 2020 in rural Nova Scotia which resulted in 22 people being killed, one of whom was pregnant, others injured, and a province left in a state of shock," Judge Laurel Halfpenny MacQuarrie said in her decision released Thursday.

CBC filed a court application to lift a sealing order on April 28, 2020 — 10 days following Wortman's rampage and his death after being shot by police. At the time, the entire country was in the midst of a COVID lockdown and information about the case was limited.

CBC requested access to the Information to Obtain documents filed by the RCMP. The documents presented the Mounties' case for getting approval to search Wortman's properties.

Since the initial court application, most details have been made public by the Mass Casualty Commission which held public hearings last year. CBC is still reviewing what — if any — information is new. 

In those three years, the RCMP has also made changes to its emergency alert protocol in response to the mass shooting tragedy.

Dartmouth lawyer David Coles, who represented several media outlets requesting the information, calls it a "unique" case that could possibly set a precedent for how media applications are handled by the courts. He's now consulting with his clients to decide on their next steps.

Back in 2020, reporter Elizabeth McMillan wrote the first submission, on behalf of CBC, arguing the matter was "urgent" because information in the documents could outline what police knew and when.

"There has been considerable focus on why the RCMP didn't send out a public alert to warn people about an active shooter. We believe the public should know what information police had in this case, in the event protocol changes need to be made before the next tragedy," McMillan wrote at the time.

Soon after, multiple media outlets, including CBC, joined together to hire Coles. He describes the ruling as the "final decision in a whole series of decisions."

Evolving case

The case started with more than 20,000 redactions. Now, only a few details remain blacked out for privacy reasons.

"We don't have certain identifiers out of concern for identity theft, for example. And there are a few names that we don't know. But generally speaking, we've now obtained everything that was part of the RCMP investigation," said Coles.

The number of documents available grew as the criminal investigation evolved. There were only a handful of files when CBC first made the request, but that eventually expanded to 21 files in total.

Coles said he never expected the case would become so massive — or drag out for nearly three years.

"And in fairness, I don't think anybody else did either. These issues just kept arising and more and more search warrants and production orders were issued and that was ongoing and the thing just expanded and expanded," he said.

As redactions were slowly lifted over the course of 2020 and 2021, details of the RCMP investigation were made public for the first time, including items police found on Wortman's property and hints of how he got illegal guns across the U.S. border.

How an inquiry changed things

Then, public proceedings for the Mass Casualty Commission began — and the floodgates opened. 

"We were involved in situations where things were redacted and not going to be disclosed ... and then the public inquiry seemed to have no difficulty just releasing all this stuff," said Coles.

Coles said it was important for the media to see the case through to the end.

"When they started, of course there wasn't a public inquiry. In fact, the only way the public was getting to know anything was through this process," he said.