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A week after a controversial not-guilty verdict in the shooting death of Colten Boushie in Saskatchewan, questions continue to gnaw at Clint Wuttunee, chief of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation: Why didn’t RCMP do a better job of securing the crime scene? And why did they treat Boushie’s family and friends so insensitively in the immediate aftermath?

Veteran ranchers Rick and Gail Kehler, who closely followed the trial of fellow farmer Gerald Stanley — thinking all the while it could have been them in his shoes — have a different question for the Mounties: Why weren’t Boushie’s friends charged with any offences?

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The case has exposed deep divisions across rural communities and sparked heated debates over the need for criminal justice reform, but Canada’s national police force has not escaped the maelstrom. Indigenous and non-Indigenous residents alike continue to have pointed questions over the way RCMP carried out their investigation, and there is no doubt the force’s next commissioner — expected to be announced in the near future — will be forced to find ways to repair what some residents say is a broken trust.