A Nova Scotia Liberal MP is accusing the RCMP of withholding a report on the decision to close its emergency call centre in his riding and relocate it nearly an hour away to the Halifax area, a move he says creates “unnecessary” safety risks.

Bill Casey said Tuesday in a post on Facebook that he met with representatives from the police force last week to once again raise concerns with its plan to close Truro’s Operational Communication Centre in early 2021.

The centre would be moved to a federal building in Dartmouth, in close proximity to the Halifax police force’s emergency call centre.

The veteran MP said he showed them multiple reports warning against closely concentrating sensitive police communication services — the two centres are responsible for fielding 96 per cent of emergency calls in the province — but RCMP officials said internal evidence supported the decision.

When he asked for these findings, Casey says he was told he wasn’t allowed to see them because the report was deemed “confidential,” and would need to file an access to information request if he hoped to gain access, which he claims to have since done.

“Issues affecting the safety of the public should be available to everyone, not just the RCMP,” he said in the post.

“There is no reason for secrets.”

Casey told iPolitics in an interview Wednesday that more than two years earlier he filed a request for information to access a 2004 RCMP report on recommendations for a new communications centre, but had to wait 730 days and file a complaint with the federal information commissioner before receiving the information.

The report, he said, recommended against relocating the RCMP’s communications centre to the Halifax Regional Municipality, citing concerns about the risks of geographically concentrating sensitive infrastructure in one metro area.

“The reason they delayed it and hid it is because they didn’t want me to see (the) places that say exactly don’t do what you’re doing,” Casey said, noting that reports from the Federal Management Assistance Agency (FEMA) and National Emergency Number Association in the U.S. also recommend against concentrating emergency communications facilities.

This time around, Casey is vowing to mount a pressure campaign to force the RCMP to disclose the new report much earlier and publicly voicing his concerns about the potential safety risks caused by the move. If the two communication facilities are brought closer together and simultaneously knocked out, he warned that ambulance, fire and 911 calls, as well as police dispatches, will go quiet for the entire province.

“It goes against everything I can find — every manual, every guideline, everything,” he said of the decision to move the centre to Dartmouth.

Casey said Truro — the most populous community in his large central Nova Scotia riding — is well-situated to host the RCMP centre because it offers “geographic separation” from the municipal police force’s call facility. In fact, when he raised the issue in the House, he said he was told by Speaker Geoff Regan that Parliament Hill security authorities had actually decided to separate their communication facilities to help improve safety after the 2014 shootings.

Casey said he was told by some RCMP officers that the facility was being moved largely to fill vacant space in the public works building that houses the police force’s provincial headquarters. The RCMP is paying rent for the entire building, despite it being larger than they needed, Casey said, and moved the centre to prevent other departments or agencies, namely the Fisheries Department, from assuming the space.

“They don’t want to share the building, they want it to be an RCMP building,” he said, noting that he has filed a separate information request to find out how much rent the RCMP is paying for the building.

“If that building wasn’t empty, we wouldn’t be having that discussion,” he said.

The RCMP didn’t respond to requests for comment on Casey’s claims before deadline.

Casey has represented the largely rural Cumberland-Colchester riding as a Liberal since 2015, but previously held the riding as a Tory from 1988 to 1993 and 1997 to 2007, and finally as an independent from 2007 to 2009. He has already announced he will not seek re-election in 2019.

Casey said he first became involved in the issue from a strictly jobs perspective, with the centre boasting a staff of 55 employees, but became alarmed when he learned about the risks posed by the move.

If the RCMP’s plan moves forward, he warned that the two centres will flank the only wharf on the East Coast that hosts nuclear submarines and a Department of National Defence ammunition depot that an internal report unearthed by the CBC cautioned will likely fall victim to a “catastrophic” fire.

“This goes against a (U.S.) Homeland Security report that says don’t put (emergency centres) near a hazardous site or a nuclear plant,” Casey said.