Overview
- The government is allocating $600,000 to increase the firearms lab’s capacity, prioritizing testing in key files and speeding extortion-related charge approvals.
- Premier David Eby told RCMP Assistant Commissioner John Brewer to show urgency or step aside after he resisted calling the violence a crisis, and Brewer later apologized.
- Investigators report 32 files under the provincial task force, seven people charged, nearly 100 judicial authorizations, and more than 1,000 exhibits with hundreds of hours of CCTV under review.
- CBSA is examining the admissibility of 111 foreign nationals connected to the files, with nine removals from Canada so far.
- Police link multiple recent shootings to the extortion campaign, Surrey reports 34 suspected cases in three weeks, the mayor is urging a national extortion commissioner, and victims have largely been from South Asian communities.