The News Rundown

Unity must come before politics in wake of Tumbler Ridge shooting

Canada has been mourning the senseless tragedy in Tumbler Ridge from this past Tuesday. The quiet northern British Columbia town located northeast of Prince George on the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains was shaken on Tuesday afternoon when an 18-year-old opened fire in a devastating attack that left nine people dead and dozens wounded. The rampage began at a residence on Fellers Avenue, where the suspect killed their mother and stepbrother, before proceeding to Tumbler Ridge Secondary School and opening fire on staff and students. RCMP officers responding to reports of an active shooter found the suspect dead from a self-inflicted wound; twenty-seven others were injured, some seriously.
The shooting quickly became national news, with headlines focusing on the scale of the tragedy in a town of under 3,000 residents and the shock of such violence in Canada, a country with some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Media coverage has been comprehensive on the facts of the attack itself, the identity of the victims, and the ongoing investigation, and we have stories in our supplementals going over each of those.
However, online and social media discussions soon shifted into broader political and cultural debates. Some news outlets and commentators highlighted the shooter’s identity as a transgender woman, noting that police identified the suspect as transgender while balancing pronoun use. This drew criticism over whether media should emphasize gender identity in reporting violent crime. Some commentators accused news outlets of bias, either by framing it as a matter tied to transgender identity or for omitting gender details in an effort to avoid controversy.
At the same time, misinformation spread online, with some users falsely asserting “patterns” of violence linked to transgender people, a claim experts and advocacy groups quickly debunked as unsupported by data. Other social posts focused instead on the broader issues of mental health, pointing out the suspect’s history of psychiatric struggles and previous interactions with police — including prior mental health holds and a court-ordered firearm seizure that was later reversed.
Debate also emerged over gun policy, with some commentators arguing that even in a country with strict firearm regulations mass shootings could still occur when enforcement and tracking fail. Others cautioned against rushing to policy prescriptions, noting the complexity of access, enforcement and mental health support. As we have mentioned several times on Western Context, Canada’s firearm laws already ban many high-risk weapons, and the federal government has tightened regulations further after previous mass shootings.
At 1:20pm, the RCMP were dispatched to a confirmed active shooter situation at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School after emergency calls and an Alert Ready cellphone warning. Police described the suspect as a “female in a dress.” Lockdown protocols were activated at the school and other nearby buildings.
Before arriving at the high school, the suspect, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar, killed their mother and 11-year-old stepbrother at a home on Fellers Avenue. Van Rootselaar then entered the school armed with a rifle and a modified handgun and opened fire in multiple areas, including classrooms and the library.
Officers arrived on scene within about two minutes of the first shots being reported and entered the building to confront the threat, but the suspect died of a self inflicted gunshot before they arrived.
Prime Minister Mark Carney cancelled a planned overseas trip (including a defence strategy announcement and a Munich Security Conference visit) to remain in Canada and respond to the tragedy.
At a community vigil on February 13, Carney expressed deep sorrow and solidarity, telling the crowd that “Canadians will always be with you” and urging collective healing. Flags were ordered at half-mast on federal buildings and Parliament Hill as a symbol of mourning.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre joined Carney and other officials at the vigil. The two leaders held hands during an Indigenous prayer, a rare display of political unity.
Members from multiple federal parties spoke publicly in the House of Commons and at media briefings, offering condolences and emphasizing national support for Tumbler Ridge families.
At the Tumbler Ridge vigil, BC Premier David Eby assured residents students won’t be forced to return to the current school site due to trauma concerns — and promised a safe space for future schooling. He reinforced provincial support and resources for community recovery, mental health care, and school rebuilding.
British Columbians know how to respond to tragedy—with kindness, empathy and love for one another. They did it by coming together last summer in the wake of the Lapu Lapu tragedy in Vancouver. And they can do it again, to help shoulder the grief pouring out of Tumbler Ridge, after at least nine people, many of them children, were killed by a shooter Tuesday afternoon in one of the worst acts of violence in Canadian history.
What is most telling about a province and a country is how we look after one another in times of crisis. How we offer help when it’s needed most.
Carney said: “Our ability to come together in crisis is the best of our country—our empathy, our unity, and our compassion for each other.”
Eby also echoed these sentiments during a late-night address to the province: “I'd like to take this opportunity to ask British Columbians, to ask all Canadians, to wrap the people of Tumbler Ridge, wrap these families with love—not just tonight but tomorrow and into the future. This is something that will reverberate for years to come.”
B.C. Solicitor General Nina Krieger said she’d been working closely alongside the area’s MLA Larry Neufeld and MP Bob Zimmer, both of whom are conservatives. They thanked her publicly. Everyone pledged to work together.
That space allows for larger questions to be asked—that must be asked—about what we can learn from a tragedy. What went wrong here? What could have been done to prevent it?
Hopefully, it’s a discussion to be had without the pointing of fingers or scoring of political points. These are legitimate questions, as Canadians seek to avoid following in the footsteps of other countries.
Outside of the École Polytechnique massacre in Montreal in 1989, which killed 14, Canada hasn’t seen violence on a school campus at the scale of our southern neighbours. This incident in Tumbler Ridge is a disturbing exception.
Keeping it that way has to be the goal of our politicians in their response. And providing the space for the province to appropriately mourn, first, should be the goal of the premier and his government. Then, politicians can come together to do the work to ensure such horror never happens again.
Supplementals:

This week we have to talk about how the University of Alberta hires its professors and staff.
Last year we talked about how the university was moving away from equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI). Now the university is proposing to eliminate EDI from its hiring processes.
Presently when two candidates are similarly qualified for a position, hiring panels should favour candidates from historically under-represented groups.
The university has been consulting since June last year and has sent a draft policy to the board of governors for approval.
The policy read, “while the current policy includes aspirational language about fair recruitment and the removal of barriers, the university has found in practice that qualified candidates may still face barriers.”
We need to parse that out. Does this mean that the candidates that are the most qualified are now facing barriers as a result of the policy? Or does it mean that those minorities or underrepresented groups are facing barriers?
The university did not say but given now EDI or more commonly called DEI initiatives work, it could be either.
Lise Gotell, a professor of women’s and gender studies, tabled a motion opposing the policy at a general faculties council meeting where the council passed the policy.
Gotell told CBC News the board of governors ultimately gets the final say, but matters such as academic hiring have historically been left up to the general faculties council.
CBC did not dive deep into what Gotell had to say but they did say she was unclear why the university would abandon a policy that was put in place just six years prior.
Gotell also was concerned that institutional autonomy might have been weakened throughout the process.
Kristine Smitka, vice president of the Association of Academic Staff of the University of Alberta, was concerned that it was part of a larger backlash against EDI initiatives. She said, “what we're hearing is a very consistent alarm from our members that what they're seeing in this policy revision is part of a larger backlash against EDI initiatives.”
Ajibola Adigun decided to attend the University of Alberta, in part, because of its commitments to equity and fighting anti-black racism. The third-year PhD student in the faculty of education also sits on the general faculties council.
Adigun feels that there was never a time where merit was sacrificed on the altar of equity.
By the end of the article the back and forth in play here that’s being highlighted is shown.
People at the university including Smitka believe that the Mintz report on Alberta’s post secondary institutions commissioned by the Alberta government is playing a role.
That report says that should universities want to continue to receive public funding they will need to commit to a greater culture of neutrality.
The government says that the decision was made internally but they supported the move.
The story gets way more interesting since Professor Amir Attaran of the University of Ottawa emailed the President of the University of Alberta threatening to use all legal moves to have the University lose its federal funding.
He cited that since the UofA is a recipient of Canada Research Chairs the UofA must employ EDI as a result of a 2021 legal settlement that the Canadian Human Rights Commission and HE reached with the federal government in 2021.
He said, “I am not given to sympathetically parse the University’s poor excuses, because you are pandering to the lowest common denominator (or should one say the greatest bigot denominator) of the Danielle Smith government, which is neither legally wise nor morally interesting.”
Attaran is an American professor in both the Faculty of Law and the School of Epidemiology, Public Health and Community Medicine at the University of Ottawa.
In March 2021, Amir Attaran reached a landmark Canadian Human Rights Settlement Agreement with the federal government’s Tri-Agency Institutional Programs Secretariat (TIPS) regarding the administration of the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program.
This agreement set mandatory equity targets.
He alleges that he faced systemic discrimination in the federal Canada Research Chairs program and that he was denied promotion.
He went to the Trudeau government and the Canadian Human Rights Commission and reached this deal as a result in 2021.
Now he is seeking to uphold the program across the country.
This story is striking because no one is talking about it, secondly the initial article doesn’t delve into the full back story.
Supplementals:

Supreme Court nullifies Liberal single-vote election win in Montreal-area riding

The Supreme Court of Canada has finally made a judgement on the contested election results in the Quebec riding of Terrebonne in last April's federal election, and it has provided a new update for the riding, and the political makeup of the House of Commons.
Terrebonne was initially declared for the Bloc Québécois, but a judicial recount later found the Liberals had won the seat by one vote.
Nathalie Sinclair-Desgagné, the Bloc candidate, called on the courts to annul the results and call a new election after CBC News reported that a voter had their mail-in ballot returned to them due to a misprint on the return envelope. The voter, Emmanuelle Bossé, had marked her ballot for the Bloc. Elections Canada acknowledged the error but said the results had already been finalized.
Liberal Tatiana Auguste was sworn in as the riding's MP following the recount and has been sitting as Terrebonne's representative since.
In October, a Superior Court judge rejected Sinclair-Desgagné's call for a do-over, arguing that a postal code mishap amounted to "human error" and does not constitute an irregularity as defined under federal electoral law. The Supreme Court overturned that ruling after hearing arguments earlier in the day.
Auguste's lawyer, Marc-Etienne Vien, faced a barrage of questions from the justices. Vien argued that the Bloc voter whose special ballot had been returned "was not prevented from voting," when Chief Justice Richard Wagner interrupted him.
Wagner said: "Hold on a minute. The purpose of the law is to promote public participation at a time in history when institutions are under strain."
This was the beginning of a series of interruptions.
Justice Malcolm Rowe, without even asking Vien a question, said: "It seems to me that the responsibility is perfectly clear. The responsibility for this problem today lies with Elections Canada, not with [Bossé]."
Sworn statements filed in the case show that an Elections Canada employee discovered he had mistakenly printed his own postal code on several special ballots about three weeks before election day. He estimated that a minimum of 40 envelopes had gone out with the wrong postal code.
A Liberal Party spokesperson responded to the ruling, saying: "We respect the decision and the institutions that reinforce the great confidence that Canadians have in the integrity of our electoral process."
Sinclair-Desgagné characterized Friday's decision as a win for democracy: "I feel hopeful that democracy has been protected today. Elections Canada not only made a mistake in the postal code, but they also made a mistake in not correcting their mistake. The Supreme Court decided today that every vote counts and that the vote of one person isn’t worth more than the vote of another, and that, when there is a tie, there should be a new election.”
This is not the first time the courts have voided federal election results. The 1988 election night result for the riding of York North was nullified due to irregularities, and a byelection was run in 1990.
The court will have to inform the Speaker of the House, who will in turn have to notify the House that there is a vacancy before a byelection can be called. The Speaker of the House will address a warrant to the Chief Electoral Officer for the issue of a writ for the election of a member to fill the vacancy.
The writ will be issued between the 11th day and the 180th day of the receipt of the warrant by the Chief Electoral Officer. The by-election must be held on a Monday, at least 36 days but no more than 50 days after the day the by-election is announced.
Friday's ruling puts another dent into the Liberals' seat count after the governing party had been on a verge of a majority at the start of the year.
Two Conservatives crossed the floor late last year, meaning the Liberals needed just one more seat to pass bills without opposition support.
Instead, Terrebonne will become the third vacant seat in the House of Commons, after Chrystia Freeland and Bill Blair both resigned their Toronto seats this year. Byelections have not yet been called in any of them.
The Liberals are now four seats back of a majority. But while Freeland and Blair's former seats are considered safe Liberal districts, Terrebonne will likely prove a tougher contest. Sinclair-Desgagné had been the MP for Terrebonne since 2021 — and the riding has largely been held by the Bloc since the early 90s.
Regardless of what happens in the by-election and who the voters in Terrebonne decides best represents them in the House of Commons, it's good to see that the Supreme Court of Canada came to the right decision on this case, the only problem being that it took almost 10 months for it to occur.
Unfortunately, that's how the Canadian court system works these days, with delays to justice being commonplace. It's a hallmark of how badly our court system has been in need of a rejuvenation and lack of media reporting on court delays really shows there is a blind spot when it comes to justice in Canada.
Supplementals:

Firing Line

Canada not on track to hit net-zero by 2050, or meet any climate targets: study

This Friday a new study was published by the Canadian Climate Institute that says that Canada will not meet any climate targets.
Not the 2026 interim emissions reduction target, the 2030 Paris Agreement commitment, or even the long-term goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.
The report blames the “slackening” of policy over the past year.
This “slackening” includes the elimination of federal consumer carbon pricing, the conclusion of green home retrofit funding and the cancellation of the oil and gas emissions cap.
Provincially, Alberta and Saskatchewan both weakened and suspended their industrial carbon prices, and Ontario repealed its climate accountability legislation.
If these climate policies had remained the study shows that the government’s best case model had Canada only achieving a 28% reduction in emissions from 2005 levels by 2030.
That 28% level is below the commitments made by the former Harper Conservative government.
The best case scenario includes industrial carbon pricing reaching $170 per tonne by 2030, the Clean Electricity Regulations pushing Canada to a net-zero grid coming into force, and enhanced methane regulations.
These may change with the Alberta memorandum of understanding on energy.
Environment Minister Julie Dabrusin was asked about the emissions report on Friday but did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Green Party leader Elizabeth May has accused the Carney government of flip flopping and did provide comment for the story saying, "If we're serious about emissions reduction, then we have to actually revisit some of the measures that have been eliminated since (Carney) took over.”
Ross Linden-Fraser, the lead author of the report, is concerned that climate policies could be negotiated bilaterally. He said, "Part of the concern the institute has about the memorandum of understanding is the idea that climate policies should be negotiated bilaterally and that federal floors are negotiable. It's going to be really hard to achieve our climate goals if those floors just get negotiated away.”
This story of course appeared on a Friday afternoon and we don’t need to repeat why media organizations choose to publish on a Friday afternoon.
The Canadian Press story talks squarely about the report and kept the focus singularly on that report. Domain experts about why the government scaled back climate initiatives were not consulted.
If they had they would have found that the consumer carbon price increased prices for everyday people on goods like fuel to heat homes and groceries.
The initiatives towards cleaner energy increases costs in regions where hydro-electric generation or nuclear is not feasible - at this time.
And the emissions cap acts like a ball and chain preventing development in the energy industry.
While it would be nice to reduce emissions and emissions can be reduced by technology over time, given geopolitical shifts and the need for national unity, it is imperative the country looks to develop the energy industry further.
Also on Friday Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel said that the company has no intention of supporting a pipeline to the west coast.
He said, “It’s not so much about the signals and the speeches. It’s more about the actions and the results.”
One of those actions is of course creating a favourable environment for investment.
Ultimately taking the report published this week and the current state of affairs in the Canadian energy industry it’s clear that through drastic emission policies one of the casualties would be the conventional energy industry.
Alberta and western Canada were told this was not the case but this report says all we need to know.
Climate targets were never feasible unless we agreed to drastically shift or de-rail our economy. This was something energy business types spoke of regularly and was talked about throughout the Trudeau administration but people were told both could live in harmony. Now we know the answer.
Supplementals:

Quote of the Week

“I'd like to take this opportunity to ask British Columbians, to ask all Canadians, to wrap the people of Tumbler Ridge, wrap these families with love—not just tonight but tomorrow and into the future. This is something that will reverberate for years to come.” - BC Premier David Eby on the Tumbler Ridge shooting tragedy

Word of the Week

Unity - the quality or state of being made one, a totality of related parts, a condition of harmony

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Show Data

Episode Title: Unity After Tragedy
Teaser: Tumbler Ridge, BC experiences tragedy, the University of Alberta moves to remove DEI policies, and the Supreme Court overturns Elections Canada’s result in Terrebonne. Also, Canada is on track to miss every climate target possible.
Production Code: WC-456-2026-02-14
Recorded Date: February 14, 2026
Release Date: February 15, 2026
Duration: 1:01:49
Edit Notes: Cough break during Tumbler Ridge, end of AB pause, Terrebonne pause, pause into FL.

Podcast Summary Notes

Duration: XX:X