Mapping Program Mounties Struggled to Open Could Have Helped Contain NS Mass Killer

Commission counsel Anna Mancini, right, questions retired RCMP Staff Sgt. Steve Halliday as he provides testimony about the RCMP's command post, Operational Communications Centre and command decisions at the Mass Casualty Commission inquiry into the mass murders in rural Nova Scotia on April 18/19, 2020, in Dartmouth, N.S. on May 17, 2022. The Canadian Press/Andrew Vaughan

A report looking into a mapping program the RCMP had access to—but couldn’t open—during the 2020 mass shooting in Nova Scotia concludes it could have helped contain the killer’s rampage.

The study by Brian Corbett, an analyst with the inquiry, compares images of potential escape routes the RCMP viewed on Google Earth with what they could have seen through Pictometry—the trade name at the time for a program that uses high-resolution aerial images.