Was the Nova Scotia killer an RCMP agent？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
155.65501
Summary
In the wake of a mass shooting that took place in Nova Scotia, Canada, in 2011, there are still many unanswered questions about the motives behind the attack. In this episode, Andrew Lawton and Leo Knight discuss the possibility that the shooter may have been working for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Transcript
00:00:06.580
We covered earlier on in the year that horrific, horrific attack,
00:00:10.620
the most deadly mass shooting in Canadian history in and around Portapique, Nova Scotia.
00:00:19.380
I know that the gun control narrative was one that became very relevant
00:00:22.980
with the Liberals ramming a gun control legislation that wouldn't have done anything to stop this.
00:00:28.740
But now there are still a lot of questions about the motivation behind this attack.
00:00:34.600
And if you believe that understanding motivation can help to prevent future such attacks,
00:00:41.140
A McLean story, the Nova Scotia shooter case has hallmarks of an undercover operation.
00:00:47.180
They have a bunch of anonymous sources in policing and banking
00:00:50.620
saying that the fact that the killer was able to withdraw $475,000 in cash
00:00:57.300
from Brink's banking, which does not at all serve consumers directly,
00:01:03.100
is typical of how the RCMP would pay informants or agents.
00:01:10.100
but they do lay out some facts of that type of banking and that amount of money
00:01:14.800
that does make it a little bit of a curious transaction.
00:01:18.320
Of course, then in response to this, you have the RCMP telling the Toronto Star
00:01:22.720
that fears about the pandemic were what made the killer want to take out all his money.
00:01:31.940
He wasn't an operative, an agent, an informant or anything like that.
00:01:37.380
Joining me now is True North fellow and former RCMP officer Leo Knight.
00:01:44.720
So when you saw this initial McLean story, is your response,
00:01:49.740
this is insane, or did it have the ring of truth to you?
00:01:53.840
I think, and as I said to you and a couple of other folks at True North,
00:02:04.900
For example, he apparently withdrew something in the neighbourhood of $435,000
00:02:16.420
But in reality, it's not that much in terms of overall volume.
00:02:20.700
You could easily set it into a hockey bag, and it would weigh about, I don't know,
00:02:25.400
11 pounds, 12 pounds, something in that neighbourhood.
00:02:33.120
Thing two is we don't know where the source of the money was.
00:02:36.340
Did he cash in some of his lucrative properties?
00:02:40.900
We know he had almost $500,000 in RRSP savings.
00:02:47.240
And we don't know, and the banking records are just not open to us
00:02:54.280
Finally, if it was a situation of a confidential informant, I would have expected that information
00:03:04.400
might have come out a whole lot sooner than this.
00:03:07.720
There's no question that this guy had as a friend, this so-called shadowy guy, Peter Ellen Griffin,
00:03:17.040
who was connected to organized crime and had done a stretch of prison in Alberta.
00:03:22.520
And Griffin was actually the guy who cut and provided the decals for the official RCMP look on Workman's car.
00:03:33.220
And there's no question Griffin's as shady as it gets.
00:03:36.880
But, and here I will insert a huge but, for him to be getting that kind of money from the RCMP,
00:03:45.120
he would have had to have been an integral piece of the composition in terms of being a major player
00:03:54.940
The Nova Scotia Hells Angels chapter, such as it is, is still in its fledgling stages.
00:04:02.980
It had a chapter a number of years ago back in the 90s,
00:04:06.960
but that chapter closed after a series of completely booted, unprofessional murders.
00:04:15.580
The Quebec Nomads chapter took them over and disbanded the chapter and took away their patches
00:04:24.360
What remains now is actually rising from the ashes, if you will,
00:04:30.700
from a series of puppet gangs that were in place to handle the drug dealing and stuff like that.
00:04:36.740
But they're in no way, shape or form in the big leagues, you know,
00:04:42.580
the way the Quebec Nomads or the BC chapters of the Hells Angels or anything along those lines.
00:04:49.600
They're big players who are trying to get into the big time.
00:04:53.780
So I can't see the RCMP paying that kind of money,
00:04:57.560
especially in as small a jurisdiction as Nova Scotia, for a confidential informant.
00:05:05.380
I base that on no specific information other than my own speculation.
00:05:11.240
One of the things that the McLean's article did that I don't know how exactly I feel about it.
00:05:18.020
They have this paragraph about the RCMP operations manual,
00:05:21.900
which they say authorizes the police to mislead anyone and everyone with the exception of the courts
00:05:27.140
to conceal the identity of confidential informants.
00:05:29.860
So then what that does is when the RCMP tells people like they did to the Toronto Star
00:05:35.120
that it had no relationship with Wartman, this paragraph tends to make people,
00:05:40.620
oh, but, well, you know, the manual says they could lie about that.
00:05:45.840
I mean, if they were concealing this, would they just keep concealing that?
00:05:52.760
The part of dealing with a confidential informant is that that person's safety is very life,
00:05:59.280
is entrusted in your hands and depends upon you to keep a secret, as it were.
00:06:06.780
Reference to that particular paragraph, that refers more to giving an informant
00:06:14.660
or an agent of the RCMP a little bit of carte blanche to lie, to make a dope deal,
00:06:21.940
to buy stolen property or something along those lines to maintain a cover.
00:06:31.260
How common are, because they say confidential informants and agents.
00:06:41.460
If you give me information relative to something that's going on that I'm interested in,
00:06:49.740
If you offer to introduce me to that individual as part of a UCO or undercover operation,
00:06:59.520
that makes you an agent because you're doing something specific.
00:07:06.120
And the information that you provided a few moments ago about just the amount of money
00:07:13.160
that's still the same if he were an agent instead of a confidential informant, theoretically, correct?
00:07:18.720
In theory, an agent would make more money because he's taking more risks upon his life.
00:07:25.520
But would we be talking about half a million dollars for what we know about the circumstances so far?
00:07:35.440
The one case I can put to it that's sort of an equivalent involved an agent who is a bouncer in a strip bar
00:07:42.100
working for a Hells Angel member, singular, specifically.
00:07:49.640
And that guy was paid a fraction of that amount of money.
00:07:55.320
But still, I think it shows that in the big leagues of Ontario or British Columbia or Quebec,
00:08:06.460
In the small town, I don't want to say bush league, but say the environic starting up of a Hells Angels chapter in Nova Scotia,
00:08:21.500
With all due respect to your former colleagues at the RCMP,
00:08:26.480
one frustration that a lot of people have had is that police are, by default, tight-lipped on things.
00:08:32.640
And I'd say even to the point where they don't have to be.
00:08:35.040
And in a lot of cases, when questions have been posed to the RCMP,
00:08:42.560
I found it interesting, though, that when this story came out about any sort of potential relationship,
00:08:51.280
the RCMP was very quick to say, you know, maybe he withdrew the money for pandemic-related reasons.
00:08:56.760
So I did find it interesting that that sort of self-preservation mentality seemed to kick in
00:09:04.400
And then they started speculating about what his motivations might have been for withdrawing the money.
00:09:08.880
It seemed like to deflect the attention off of them.
00:09:15.740
I'm not going to apologize, and certainly don't you have to make any apologies for any allegations
00:09:27.320
It's abysmal, and it's been abysmal for several decades.
00:09:34.280
The RCMP has always been economical with information.
00:09:43.240
Trying to pry information out of them, even if you're within, even if you're working with the RCMP
00:09:49.060
on, say, a mutually interested project, it's still hard to get information.
00:09:54.900
Everybody is so protective of what they view as their own possession or their own domain
00:10:03.040
And you see that in cases like this where the media and the public is clamoring.
00:10:08.760
I mean, 22 people were murdered by one guy in a single night.
00:10:17.980
And such as we've had from the RCMP, in my view, is woefully lacking.
00:10:23.360
Do you think that in a case like this, I mean, the old saying that dead men tell no tales,
00:10:28.960
do you think that the questions will ever truly be answered in a case like this?
00:10:33.520
That's the problem with these so-called lone wolf sort of attacks is that you aren't looking
00:10:38.040
at a conspiracy of sorts where you can start finding individual people that will give you
00:10:43.940
If it's just one person, sure, maybe you can tell a bit of a story about that person and
00:10:48.160
everyone said they might have had issues or red flags.
00:10:50.480
But do you think you'll ever be able to truly get the full picture in something like this?
00:10:57.460
The RCMP can only keep their lips buttoned for so long.
00:11:02.700
There's going to be a number of coroner's inquests coming up into the deaths of 22 people,
00:11:10.720
The coroner in Nova Scotia will be looking very specifically at causation factors, etc.
00:11:18.380
And the one thing that is very, very hard to do at that point in time when you're laying
00:11:26.440
everything bare in a coroner's inquest is to try and hide something.
00:11:31.240
And while I've seen it done in the past, usually what happens is won't be tied to anybody who
00:11:40.440
So just to wrap up that initial sort of McLean story here, the RCMP said that it can confirm
00:11:48.260
that the RCMP was not the source of those funds as incorrectly assumed in recent media
00:11:54.880
So do you think that, let me ask the question in two ways here.
00:11:59.640
For starters, do you think that, you know, that's it, that should sort of end it?
00:12:03.120
Or the other side of that, do you think that the RCMP, by being so unequivocal and so clear
00:12:08.920
in its terms, they're basically guaranteeing there's nothing to hide?
00:12:15.900
Again, I harbor no illusions about the veracity of anything that's being put forth in public.
00:12:22.100
We don't know where the investigation is going.
00:12:24.780
We don't know if the police are trying to put out a red herring for whatever reason to
00:12:40.260
And perhaps some of it's even educated speculation, but it's still speculation, Andrew.
00:12:48.260
Leo Knight, True North fellow and former police officer.
00:12:58.820
So he's doing us a real courtesy by joining us at this time.
00:13:03.560
Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:13:05.500
Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.