With Summer Kneebone still missing, Native Council of P.E.I. 'frustrated' new law was delayed

The head of the Native Council of P.E.I. says she's "really frustrated" by a delay in the province's Missing Persons Act coming into effect, given that at least two Indigenous people went missing in the province after it received royal assent in May 2021.

One of them, 27-year-old Charlottetown resident Summer Kneebone, is still missing. 

"They might have been able to get messages a lot sooner, they may have been able to get conversations a lot sooner," Chief Lisa Cooper of the Native Council said of the police forces involved in the search for Kneebone and the roadblocks they faced when seeking her phone and internet records.  

The act finally came into effect today, Sept. 9, 2023. The three other Atlantic provinces have similar legislation in place already.

A government spokesperson told CBC News on Thursday that the P.E.I. act required a new category of justice of the peace to be created to handle police applications for private phone and internet data when people vanish. That didn't happen until July of this year.

"Government was already working toward implementation of the Missing Persons Act in September, but did accelerate the coming into force date to provide an extra legislative tool that may be useful to police in their current missing persons investigation," the spokesperson added. 

Kneebone's last known sighting was on the evening of Aug. 7. Her phone and bank cards have not been used since then. 

"This is…the second Indigenous person on P.E.I., if not more, within this time frame that could have used this Missing Persons Act to trigger a lot more information than what their hands are tied to trigger," Cooper told CBC News, also citing the Jamie Sark case on Lennox Island First Nation in the fall of 2021.

"And I'm really frustrated that it took this province well over two years — that's unacceptable…

"There would be no explanation good enough for me on why this province failed to enact this Missing Persons Act in 2021."

Cooper praised the action of Charlottetown Police Services staff who have spent the last three weeks trying to sort through public tips and "hours and hours and hours" of surveillance footage from all over the city in an effort to find out what happened to Kneebone. 

"I'm thinking — and this is my own personal belief — we could have bypassed that. He could have bypassed that," she said of Det.-Sgt. Darren MacDougall, who has been heading the investigation.  

"And it's a sin that it takes this case, Summer, to finally get it through, with her family now for the past three weeks wondering where she is." 

During criminal investigations, police forces on P.E.I. have long been able to apply to a judge for an order requiring telecommunications companies to release people's otherwise private data.

If there's no evidence of criminal action when a person goes missing, they haven't had the same ability — until now.  

"The implementation of the Missing Persons Act will provide us with a mechanism to obtain data that could help us achieve our goal of finding Summer," MacDougall told CBC News on Thursday.  

"P.E.I. is supposed to be a safe place to be," said Cooper, whose organization organized a ground search in the Mount Stewart area for Kneebone earlier this week.

"We can't forget about her. We gotta keep going until she's found. The family is so distraught and it's not right."