A lawyer representing a consortium of media organizations spent almost a full day in Halifax provincial court Wednesday grilling a senior RCMP officer as to why she insists on keeping information redacted on the April mass shootings that began in Portapique.
“We had a lengthy discussion about why you would require that the identify of a professional anthropologist that you are hiring, why his identity should be blacked out?” David Coles said of his cross-examination of Sgt. Angela Hawryluk’s steadfast position to keep such information redacted, despite the fact that the police investigation is completed on some of the still-sealed information.
The officer’s response to Coles’s repeated questioning was that the individual in question is an “innocent” witness whose identity deserves to be protected.
“I mean, he’s a hired expert,” Coles said.
A Dartmouth denturist who had residences in Portapique carried out Canada’s largest mass murders during a 13-hour shooting rampage April 18 and 19.
A number of media organizations, including SaltWire Network, have applied to the court for access to information contained in RCMP search warrants, which Hawryluk had placed under a sealing order by a justice of the peace. Although search warrants are generally supposed to be made public after they have been executed, the Crown elected in this case to initially provide heavily redacted (blacked-out) versions that Coles is continuing to challenge.
Hawryluk told the court that she never intended for the warrants, or informations to obtain (ITOs), to become public and that doing so could “compromise” the ongoing police investigation into the shooter’s activities prior his rampage, which claimed the lives of 22 victims and an unborn baby.
The ITOs before the court include two production orders and five search warrants.
Coles questioned Hawryluk’s defence of the redactions, given that some information has been released by the Crown or, in the case of one witness, is available publicly. Coles said the RCMP discovered the name of the shooter’s partner in his denturist business through a search of the province’s Registry of Joint Stock Companies.
The media lawyer also took issue during his cross-examination with a decision by Judge Laurel Halfpenny MacQuarrie following a two-day, in-camera hearing in late July between herself, the Crown and the RCMP. The judge determined that some of the warrant information would remain permanently sealed, while some of it would be sealed temporarily. But he said no unsealing date is attached to the temporary redactions, meaning it could remain secret for years.
Despite Halfpenny MacQuarrie’s decision, Coles said a justice of the peace informed him that he “wasn’t satisfied” to issue a sealing order based on some of the information contained in two of the affidavits.
“What has been disclosed to me, she filed two other affidavits to get the two production orders that are part of the package of seven,” he said. “She created and filed two additional affidavits, which, up until my cross-examination, nobody has known existed, even including the Crown.”
And Coles said there are only five paragraphs in those documents that relate to the ongoing police investigation.
“She’s acknowledged that of those five, two of those redacted, even on this thing that we have not seen, two of them relate to investigative matters that are now concluded,” he said of Hawryluk. “Now, she hastens to say, 'Well, maybe something might come up that would cause us to re-evaluate that, but at this point in time, there is no ongoing investigation in relation to what is redacted, blacked out, in two of the five.
Hawryluk responded by saying there is still an open investigation because she is still waiting for followup DNA and other reports that relate to the redacted portions.
Some of the “temporary” redacted information pertains to the shooter’s former business partner. But Coles said there is no quarantee of when such information may be released.
“So, this temporary redaction, who knows how long it can be?” he said. “All they are talking about now is revisiting it in six months. This is the outcome of her (the judge’s) closed-door session with the Crowns and the RCMP. So candidly, you know, I had real trouble that all of these temporary redactions, which are the bulk of the entries in these ITOs, are going to be held confidential off into some future date.”
The next stage in the process will involve oral arguments as to whether some of the redactions from Stage 3 in the process should be lifted and whether notice should be provided to individuals who provided statements to the police or who are named in the ITOs, so they can be heard by the court, if they object to their names being released.
Two days, beginning Aug. 31, have been scheduled for that hearing, which will take place in either Truro or Halifax.
