The public inquiry into the Nova Scotia mass shooting spent Tuesday looking at why an emergency alert wasn’t issued.
New documents provide details on an interview between the Executive Director of the Nova Scotia Emergency Management Office and the Mass Casualty Commission on February 15, 2022.
Paul Mason told investigators the RCMP didn’t think about issuing one until the department reached out.
“At the end of the day, it didn’t cross their minds,” Mason said.
Mason explains his office first learned about the severity of the incident when the Mounties sent out a Tweet at 10:17 a.m. on April 19th, 2020.
The gunman’s shooting rampage began the night before in the Portapique area where 13 people were killed.
The Tweet included a photo of the gunman’s mock RCMP cruiser.
“I find it surprising you could have an event go on from like 10:30 on Saturday night until 11:30 a.m. on Sunday and nobody thought about an alert until we called them,” Mason said.
Mason adds the department didn’t hear from police about issuing the notice through the Alert Ready system until minutes before the gunman was killed.
He says the way the system rolls out, police are supposed to notify EMO of the need for the notice.
“They expressed an interest in issuing the alert at approximately 11:25 a.m. on April 19th,” Mason told the inquiry on Tuesday. “So we were just kind of I guess getting started, for a lack of a better term, at that point when we were advised the perpetrator was in custody.”
RCMP confirmed they were in the process of drafting the text for an alert when the shooter was killed by police outside a gas station in Enfield.
The shooter took the lives of 22 people during the 13-hour rampage in April 2020.
