At about 2 a.m. ET on April 29, a vehicle carrying four officer cadets — all in their senior year — entered the water off Point Frederick, a peninsula between Kingston Harbor and Navy Bay on the St. Louis River. Lawrence which hosts the RMC campus.
The four cadets were Andrei Honciu, Jack Hogarth, Andrés Salek and Broden Murphy.
While few details are known about the crash, foul play was ruled out early on — which is why the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for Ontario took the lead in investigating the deaths. Kingston police and the Canadian Forces National Investigative Service (CFNIS) — the independent investigative arm of the military police — are assisting.
Maj. Gen. D. Craig Aitchison, commandant of the Canadian Defense Academy, also ordered an internal summary investigation that began May 17. The internal summary investigation is one of two types of administrative investigation that the military typically orders after a member’s death.
They are not intended to confer legal or civil liability or impose a penalty. In the case of the four students, the summary inquiry will examine the service-related circumstances of the incident and make recommendations to prevent similar deaths in the future.
In a summary investigation, a single officer handles the case.
“An SI is usually chosen when the subject matter is less complex,” said a spokesperson for the Department of National Defense (DND).
The Royal Military College campus in Kingston, Ont., in April 2022. (Lars Hagberg/The Canadian Press)
The second form of administrative investigation is a board of inquiry, which the department said “usually involves something more complicated.” It is a panel of military members who hear evidence and testimony from people under oath.
“I was actually a little surprised they didn’t use a board of inquiry,” said military attorney Rory Fowler, a retired lieutenant colonel and former legal clerk in the attorney general’s office.
“Usually in the past, senior decision-makers in the Canadian Forces, when dealing with high-profile non-combat deaths, have generally failed to order a board of inquiry.”
“Given the seriousness of the accident as a tragedy and so forth, I would have expected a board of inquiry to be more formal, if for no other reason [than] to leave no stone unturned,” said Michel Drapeau, a retired colonel who practices military law and teaches at the University of Ottawa.
The board of inquiry could still happen
While a summary inquiry is “much less powerful than a board of inquiry,” the military may have reasons to choose that route, Fowler said. Canadian forces may feel that the parallel military, civilian police and forensic investigations are thorough enough, he said. “If there are other investigations that are going to perform that investigative function, it’s possible that a more robust board of inquiry may not need to be conducted…” Fowler said. “Because this particular tragic circumstance has attracted so much media attention, the convening authority may well be of the view that sooner is better than later in completing the administrative investigation.” Initiating a summary investigation does not preclude a board of inquiry at a later point, DND said.
Awaiting post mortem reports
During a brief survey, the investigator contacts the families to ask questions and later shares the results with them, the department said.
The findings “are not being released in their entirety given the sensitivity and personal information they contain,” DND added.
An RMC spokesman said last week that no changes have been made to the infrastructure at Point Frederick “at this time” as the military awaits final reports from the Office of the Chief Justice and the summary investigation.
“It would be premature to initiate any change until the final recommendations of the summary inquiry are submitted,” the spokesman said.
Authorities pulled the vehicle from the St. Lawrence on Friday, April 29, 2022. (CBC)
Earlier this week, a spokesman for the coroner’s office said it was awaiting final post-mortem reports, including toxicology results, before providing the results of the four death investigations to CFNIS and the officer conducting the internal summary investigation.
The results of death investigations can also be given to families upon request, the spokesman added.
DND is under no obligation to release any of this information.
“When the Office of the Chief Coroner’s investigation is complete, CFNIS may share the findings with due regard to the wishes of the families and privacy laws as appropriate,” the department spokesman said.
