Two years after the RCMP formally apologized to Nova Scotia’s Black communities for the historic use of street checks, the force’s own progress reports show one of its five core promises, collecting race-based data to prove the practice has actually stopped, still has not begun, and will not reach Halifax, the area where street checks were most heavily used, when it finally does.
According to the RCMP’s own “Community-led Nova Scotia RCMP Action Plan and Updates” page, race-based data collection is set to start in counties outside the Halifax Regional Municipality this fall, with officer training and community messaging beginning at the end of August 2026. The Halifax Regional Municipality itself, which the RCMP page says remains under joint development with Halifax Regional Police, has no start date at all.
That gap matters because Halifax is where the problem was worst. A 2019 study led by University of Toronto criminologist Scot Wortley found Black people in Halifax were six times more likely to be stopped and street-checked by police than white residents, according to CBC News. The RCMP apologized to African Nova Scotians and all people of African descent for the wide-ranging effects of the practice in September 2024, promising a five-part, community-led action plan built around cultural training, more contact with community leaders, recruitment of Black officers, the race-based data collection, and regular reporting to a community steering group now called the Sankofa Committee.
The RCMP’s own numbers show uneven follow-through on the other commitments too. Detachment commanders logged 51 direct contacts with African Nova Scotian community leaders and attended 64 community events between April 2025 and April 2026, the force says, but that engagement was concentrated almost entirely in one place. Preston Township, a historically Black community east of Halifax, accounted for more than a dozen of those contacts and 25 of the events. Cape Breton and Shelburne county detachments reported zero contacts with community leaders over the same period, according to the RCMP’s own reporting.
On training, the RCMP says 97.8 per cent of employees have completed a mandatory Cultural Awareness and Humility course and 16 of 20 senior leaders have finished a three-day African Canadian Experience workshop, with a goal of making that workshop mandatory for all supervisors within 12 months.
Community advocates say training alone will not be enough. Robert Wright, a sociologist and former director of the African Nova Scotian Justice Institute, told CBC News he is skeptical of measures that focus on education without addressing what he called the underlying poverty and systemic racism that shape policing in Black communities. He pointed to former RCMP commissioner Brenda Lucki’s past denial that the force has a systemic racism problem as a reason for lingering distrust, even as local commanders like Assistant Commissioner Dennis Daley say they are committed to change.
The RCMP has not said publicly why the Halifax region, unlike the rest of the province, still has no timeline for the data collection promise nearly two years after the apology. The force’s own reporting shows race-based data collection is only being piloted nationally in a handful of jurisdictions, including Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories, which suggests Nova Scotia’s rollout is tied to a slower, still-forming national program rather than a problem unique to the province. That explanation may be little comfort to a community that has waited decades for proof the checks have actually stopped, particularly in the municipality where the original data showed the practice was most concentrated.
The Sankofa Committee, the community steering group meant to hold the RCMP to its promises, has met twice since it was formed, in November 2025 and June 2026. Its next report, and whether it presses the force for a firm Halifax start date, will be the clearest test yet of whether the action plan is producing real change or, as Wright warned, mostly symbolic gestures two years after the RCMP said sorry.
Via CBC News. Read the original report here. Additional sourcing: the RCMP’s own public “Community-led Nova Scotia RCMP Action Plan and Updates” reporting, and CBC News’ 2019 coverage of the Wortley street-checks study.
