RCMP did not use confidential informants to obtain search warrants in N.S. mass shooting investigation, court told

The RCMP did not rely on any information from confidential informants when seeking judicial approval to search properties owned by the Nova Scotia mass shooter, court was told.

A prosecutor representing the RCMP made the declaration when defending the heavy censorship of information about the investigation into the worst mass killing in Canada’s history.

The issue of confidential informants has been an undercurrent of the investigation into April’s shooting rampage based on rumours or speculation that the gunman, Gabriel Wortman, was himself an RCMP informant or civilian agent for police.

The speculation grew significantly last week when Maclean’s revealed the killer withdraw $475,000 in $100 bills from a Brinks depot 19 days before his murder spree.

The article cited no direct evidence of the reason for the unusual withdrawal but quoted sources in banking and policing saying the transaction is consistent with how the RCMP pays informants and agents.

The RCMP later denied the police force was the source of Wortman’s money.

Immediately after the shooting spree, when police searched Wortman’s property at 200 Portapique Beach Rd., which he set on fire at the start of his rampage, police found an ammunition box containing a burnt $100 bill.

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The information on what police found in their search came from documents ordered released by a Nova Scotia judge in response to a court challenge for more information launched by a consortium of news organizations, including Postmedia.

Another in the series of court hearings on the media’s challenge for information that the Crown wishes to keep secret was held Tuesday.

It was during Tuesday’s hearing that Mark Covan, a lawyer with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, which represents the RCMP at the hearings, spoke of the need to protect confidential informants when he argued why the documents need to be assessed by a judge behind closed doors before they are discussed in public.

The judge may be satisfied that some information automatically needs to remain secret and is not open to arguments by the media’s lawyer, he said.

“An example of that is the identity of a confidential informant. There is no possible way that the applicants are going to get to know the identity of a confidential informant unless they meet the ‘innocence at stake’ standard. And they haven’t done that,” he said.

(In 2018, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the secrecy protecting a confidential police informant can only be pierced in a criminal case when someone’s innocence is at stake.)

David Coles, lawyer for the media group, seemed alarmed by the reference to informants.

“Several aspects of this trouble me,” Coles told Judge Laurie Halfpenny MacQuarrie.

“You have to decide whether there are elements of this that are simply going to be off the table, and he mentions, by way of example, confidential informants. Well, my goodness. I’ve looked at the affidavits that we have in this first batch,” Coles said. Crown lawyers claim several reasons for various redactions of information but confidential informant status is not one of them, he said.

Covan then sought to clarify the Crown’s position.

“I know there is members of media on the line,” he said at the hearing, held by teleconference because of COVID-19 restrictions.

“There has been a considerable amount of reporting on this. The Crown is not suggesting there are informers in this case, confidential informants in this case. That was an example of how the law applies in a particular context. We are not suggesting here that the RCMP has utilized confidential informants in creating these court documents.

“We are not suggesting that at all. If we had, as Mr. Coles points out, there would have been a clear statement to that effect in our materials that we are relying on confidential informant privilege and we have not done.”

Halfpenny MacQuarrie said she understood: “I took it as an illustration not a specific.”

She noted the two sides have “agreed to disagree” on the process for deciding the issues.

There are nine additional warrant applications and documents still to be released and each document previously released has had significant portions blacked out by prosecutors. Coles said there are more than 1,000 redactions.

A series of open and closed court dates have been scheduled to hear further arguments for and against release of information contained in court documents relating to the shooting. A public court hearing is scheduled for the end of July.

Wortman, 51, wore an RCMP uniform and drove a replica RCMP cruiser during his rampage that started on April 18 with the assault and confinement of his common-law spouse and ended when he was shot and killed by police the next day.

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