Heading Back Upstream - Options for Reinvigorating Nova Scotia’s Fatality Investigation System

Abstract

This thesis explores the question, “Is Nova Scotia’s fatality investigation system performing as a modern fatality investigation system should, as the Legislature intended, and as the public expects?” It concludes that it is not. Nova Scotia’s Fatality Investigations Act [“FIA NS”] was intended to establish a statutory framework for a modern fatality investigation system with two core objectives. The first is to support the administration of justice by delivering independent medicolegal determinations and by collecting mortality data. The second is to deliver increased transparency and accountability whenever there is reasonable cause to believe that a death was preventable. This latter objective has yet to be attained. This will be attributed, in large measure, to a lack of clarity around the role that the Executive is expected to play in the fatality inquiry and death review processes. Government involvement in determining which deaths should be investigated, by whom, and to what ends, has compromised the horizontal accountability objects of the FIA NS. There is a public interest in knowing whether the state has caused, contributed to, or otherwise failed to prevent a death. Despite this, Nova Scotia has a dismal record in this regard. This thesis will explore how this came to be and identify possible improvements which if implemented, have the potential to reinvigorate Nova Scotia’s fatality investigation system.