Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission turned its back on women rather than turning the tide on femicide

The Nova Scotia Mass Casualty Commission report states it wants to eradicate all forms of gender-based violence. Instead, the final report missed the mark and actually supports misogyny.

”Gender-based violence is an epidemic in Nova Scotia and in all of Canada, as it is in most parts of the world…has been consistently present throughout societies to the point that it is seen by many as routine or normal. This normalization is further reinforced by the ways our collective efforts have failed to gain traction in stamping it out. We must work together against this placid perception, and we need to take action with the collective communal force of meeting an epidemic (Vol. 3., p. 268).

Those words appear in the Mass Casualty Commission Final Report – Turning the Tide Together – released March 30, 2023.

The seven-volume report is organized thematically and includes volumes specifically focused on violence, community, policing and implementation.

The report is the culmination of an independent public inquiry called the Mass Casualty Commission created in response to the April 18 and 19, 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia that killed 22 people including a pregnant woman.

While the report connects the mass casualty to intimate partner violence and coercive control, it failed to recognize the role played by patriarchy, male privilege, white privilege, class privilege and non-State torture (NST).

The Commissioners state, “our efforts must be to eradicate all forms of gender-based violence and its impact on all survivors” (Vol. 3, p. 269), and commit to this goal by stating, “we believe this lesson to be the single most important one to be learned…Let us not look away again” (Vol. 3, p. 267). Yet, Jeanne Sarson and Linda MacDonald maintain the Mass Casualty Commissioners did in fact, grievously look away.

While living and working in Truro, Nova Scotia as Public Health Nurses, Sarson and MacDonald began researching NST after a client revealed being tortured and trafficked by her parents from infancy.

NST is identical to State sanctioned torture in that it involves the deliberate infliction of pain or suffering on a person. Forms of torture include rape, electroshock, waterboarding, starvation, and sleep deprivation among other things. The distinction lies in the fact that NST is carried out by non-State actors like family members, family friends, human traffickers, pornographers, pimps, and off-duty police officers.

Thirty years later, Sarson and MacDonald’s groundbreaking work has garnered international recognition and accolades. The pair have presented multiple times at the United Nations; met with various Attorneys General; been asked to present to the Standing Committee on the Status of Women several times; and now, testified twice each to the Mass Casualty Commission. And, still, the gender-based human rights violation known as NST remains completely ignored by Canadian policy and law.

A Feedback Report submitted to Commissioners Michael MacDonald (chair), Leanne Fitch (retired Fredericton Police Chief), and Dr. Kim Stanton, by Sarson and MacDonald stated in part,

“The failure to include the women and children who suffer non-State torture crimes is about looking away; it’s discriminatory, invisibilizing, marginalizing, and exclusionary, creates on-going vulnerabilities,disregarding of their humanity, and will perpetrate ongoing harms as this inquiry report will be catalogued for others within society to learn or not learn from.”

On the day of our interview, Sarson found it incomprehensible that the Commission felt it shouldn’t address the issue of NST because it didn’t know if that was the trigger for the mass shooting.

“Of course, we don’t know because we are not even asking the question. We are not even assessing whether the violence that went on amounted to torture inflicted by private actors,” Sarson said during the interview with Small Change.

She also can’t justify the decision made because the Commission had a responsibility to listen and pose questions for clarification. Those questions should have included, how do you know women suffer NST? As well as, how do you know that NST can trigger a mass killing? Instead, the NST experts were not asked a single question.

“I’m massively disappointed in the lack of respectful listening and them not respecting that Linda and I worked really hard to participate with due diligence,” stated Sarson.

Had the Mass Casualty Commissioners included NST in their report then that document could have been used as supporting material by officials, like Liberal MP Peter Fragiskatos, who continues working to have NST included in the Criminal Code of Canada.   

It’s not that the Canadian government denies the existence of torture inflicted by non-State actors, they simply want to minimize the crime to one of aggravated or sexual assault.

“It’s like silence all the way through. We pushed for a feminist analysis and that’s really what brought in the gender-based violence,” maintains MacDonald.

She added, “We were leaders in Canada. The Nova Scotia feminists fighting femicide were leaders in Canada asking for a feminist analysis”

That sentiment was echoed by Kristina Fifield who works at Avalon Sexual Assault Centre in Nova Scotia during a Learning Network webinar held in June.

Fifield stated that gender-based violence organizations were initially not accepted as part of the Commission. Both the community and the Commission questioned their involvement.

“I think this just speaks to the cultural shift that is needed. We are still very far away from being where we need to be in addressing violence and the normalization of violence that took place with this mass casualty event and the perpetrator’s history with violence,” Fifield shared during the webinar.

The perpetrator’s violence was well known amongst professionals, the community, and family members. Sarson and MacDonald suspect that if more details had been released there would be ample evidence that the perpetrator inflicted NST on his intimate partner, Lisa Banfield, and perhaps other women.

The perpetrator was a denturist providing publicly funded health care services to marginalized communities. That gave him access to vulnerable and marginalized women.

Serwaah Frimpong, a trauma-informed lawyer that acted as Policy Advisor for the Mass Casualty Commission’s Research and Policy team, came across a brief entry  in a police officer’s notebook that effectively said, the perpetrator in this case being well known amongst the Indigenous/Black community. There was no additional information.

However, Frimpong found an accompanying transcript from Ms. Melinda Daye, a noted African Nova Scotian community leader, school principal, and activist.

Turns out, Daye had reported her concerns to the RCMP regarding the perpetrator using his privilege and status within the African Nova Scotian community to proposition women under his care. There was no followed up from the RCMP and no additional interview with Daye.

Frimpong, also a participant of the webinar, spoke with Daye about the perpetrator. Seems Daye’s mother had been his patient and that he had propositioned women in the African Nova Scotian community.

Frimpong then met with the women to confirm Daye’s reports and record their first hand accounts.

The lack of follow-up on the part of the RCMP establishes the extent to which the police culture is ignorant of gendered and intimate partner violence against women. It also speaks volumes to systemic misogyny and racism that is well documented within the force.     

But what about the perpetrator’s intimate partner? It’s documented that Banfield was terrorized for 20 years including being strangled and dragged by her hair. Other women have also accused the perpetrator of strangulation.

Strangulation is considered a high-risk predictor of lethality and femicide. Considered by many in the gendered violence field to be a red flare, it is often overlooked by police, responders, medical professionals and the criminal justice system.

Banfield also became the target of anger from community members who mistakenly believed that if she hadn’t escaped from her abusive partner and hidden in the woods over night the mass shooting could have been avoided. Media coverage played a role in perpetuating the victim blaming.

Fifield’s organization realized they needed to be proactive and launched a media campaign before Banfield testified at the Commission. They created and distributed a kit intended to educate the media around victim blaming and the importance of both the language used and the details shared when reporting on trauma.

Normally, there aren’t the funds to create these resources, so Fifield is calling for proper funding of gender and intimate partner violence organizations. However, that is going to take a major shift in the way power and privilege perceive the epidemic of violence against women, and girls, in order to see the political changes that are needed.

Sarson wants to know, “If as Canadians we want to really figure out how we want to develop the values of our country, what does that mean when we decide to look the other way as these three people [Commissioners MacDonald, Fitch and Dr. Stanton] with positional power did?”

She knows that the ripple effect of that silence will mean women experiencing gender-based violence, including NST, will be reluctant to risk saying anything or to seek help from authorities.

“We know there’s enough systemic misogyny in the police and the justice system and here the misogyny reared its head in the mass casualty too,” observed Sarson.