Recently, when asked for comment on the explosive story in Frank news and the accompanying video depicting what appears to be the execution of Gabriel Wortman by the RCMP, The Force responded by indicating that, with the Mass Casualty Commission underway, it would await the official results of the commission: “The RCMP supports the independent mass casualty commission in its mandate to provide a full and impartial accounting of what happened”. The RCMP and it’s civilian and political advocates insist the citizenry, journalists and media outlets should wait for the commission’s/Inquiry's findings.
The issue is, in judgement under uncertainty, one must consider the determinants of confidence. In many situations it is possible to differentiate between the weight and strength of evidence. The classic example used in the literature is a recommendation letter. When we examine such a letter we need to independently look at two aspects of the evidence: How glowing is the letter and how dependable is the writer of the letter? The first would be an examination of the strength of the evidence, the second would be an examination of the weight or credence. A strong, middling or weak recommendation may arrive from a reliable or unreliable source.
This brings us to the mass casualty commission which has decided to utilize John Robin and Mike Butcher as middle men between the commission and the RCMP. The issue with this is, we must now accept, the quality of the evidence put forward by the commission is itself degraded. The weight and credence of any evidence put forward is degraded by the commission's association to Robin and Butcher. Civilians are right to assess that there's a problem when a commission that is supposed to be independent, cultivates a relationship with Mountie Chief Superintendent John Robin, who has now been widely reported as the former director of covert operations at the national RCMP HQ and Mike Butcher, a disclosure analyst and husband to Lee Bergerman. As Bergerman was the RCMP officer in charge during the April 2020 massacres, this represents an egregious situation, a degrading of the weight/credence of any evidence presented by the commission to the point of nullity. It can't be accepted by civilians as worthwhile evidence anymore than they would accept a recommendation letter that someone's mother wrote as being an accurate assessment. No matter how strong the evidence in the letter, no matter how glowing, we are forced to confront the credence/believability of the writer. If the commission accepted this compromise to it's mandate of impartiality and made decisions to erode the quality of the evidence they can offer, citizens and journalists must ask why.
Which brings us to the Inquiry into the RCMP response to the Nova Scotia mass shooting and commissioner Leanne Fitch. In her online bio Fitch is recognized as a trailblazer, being the first female police chief in Atlantic Canada and identified as an officer with 32 years experience in policing. Her father was an RCMP officer and her wife is a cop. Casting out a quick google search net of “Leanne Fitch Bio" will dredge up a full catch of problems. The result is that, no matter how strong the evidence coming from the Inquiry, the Inquiry itself lacks believability and credence to the degree that the quality of any evidence they could provide is degraded and made fragile.
Civilians know this to be true, even if some lack the ability to articulate why a commission or inquiry that would nosedive it's own credence/weight in judgement under uncertainty, must be, has to be repudiated.
The commission’s rejection of journalists reporting the news to citizens and the RCMP's insistence to wait for the commission has lowered the weight/credence of these groups again. As always, we will need to rely on investigative journalists to build and cover stories, as we can see the commission and inquiry seem to misunderstand the very concept of evidence.
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Excellent points...looking forward for more!
Hope this is the first of many! Good read.