Letter to the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP – August 27, 2013

Airdrie, Alberta

Mr. Ian McPhail, Q.C., Interim Chair
Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP
National Intake Office
P.O. Box 88689,
Surrey, BC
V3W 0X1

Dr. Mr. McPhail:

RE: High River Forced Entry of Homes & Firearms Seizures
Reference is being made to my previous letter dated August 12, 2013 and your response dated
August 13, 2013. Since I last wrote, we have further information that may be able to assist your investigations.

(1) On August 20th, Danielle Smith, Leader of the Official Opposition in the Alberta Legislature
called me and advised that the RCMP directed or participated in “forced entry” of approximately
700 homes in High River during the flood. Considering there are upwards of 3,000 or 4,000
homes in High River the public needs to know how the RCMP selected the homes to break into? If they were searching for survivors or pets, wouldn’t they have needed to enter all the homes in High River? We know of one witness who told Armed Forces personnel that there was definitely no one home at his neighbour’s house and they kicked the door in anyway. A RCMP officer was standing watching this break-in the whole time. The soldiers were later observed walking away with two civilian rifles.

(2) In my last letter, I advised you of the video released to the media of the search of house
number 619 that mentioned the word “firearms”. Yesterday, the National Firearms Association
received the results of an expert analysis of the audio portion of this video and have learned that the transmission clearly says he’s “located all the firearms.” This would indicate that they were indeed searching for firearms rather than just collecting firearms that they found laying aboutduring their search for survivors and pets. It would also indicate that the RCMP knew in advance which homes had firearms by using the firearm licensing system and possibly a copy of the firearms registry that was supposed to be destroyed months ago in accordance with legislation passed by Parliament. Why would the person on the radio use the word “all” if he didn’t already know how many guns were there in the first place?

(3) Finally, I have attached the text of all the Access to Information Act requests I have submitted to the RCMP. Considering that the Information Commissioner has reported to the media that the RCMP has stopped the processing of all ATI Act requests, it is even more important that you get access to all the documents that we have requested.

Thanks again for your help. Please let us know if we can be of any assistance in your investigation of these rights violations.
Sincerely,