Thursday February 26, 2026 | VICTORIA, BC [Posted at 6:21 pm PT | Updated 10:17 pm]
Analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
OpenAI is under a sharp eye of enquiry the federal minister of AI and now the Premier of BC.
On Tuesday, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon and other ministers met with OpenAI senior safety team, afterward telling media he was ‘disappointed’. In that meeting, the tech company confirmed the ChatGPT account of the teen shooter had been flagged internally last June, but not reported to police.
Letter to federal minister:
Ann O’Leary, OpenAI’s vice-president of global policy, wrote in a letter to Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon that the California-based company partnered with mental health and law enforcement experts “several months ago” to update its safety protocol.
Canadian authorities were never told by OpenAI about the original account held by shooter Van Rootselaar.
There were two separate accounts and OpenAI didn’t figure that out until after they saw the shooter’s name.
OpenAI has agreed to adjust the threshold of how and when they report activity that they clock on their platform and to the police.
Eby met with OpenAI today:
Today BC Premier David Eby and staff met with Open AI and then held a media availability to say — among other things — that he believes the people (including children) shot in Tumbler Ridge on February 10 would not have been subject to that attack if OpenAI had reported their suspicions of June 2025 to police.
BC Premier DAvid Eby explained how the shooter was able to avoid the protocols existing at the time of the shooting.
“These companies cannot be trusted to set their own reporting thresholds,” Eby told media today.
“Clearly they tragically missed the mark in bringing this information forward,” Eby told media at the legislature today. “The consequnces of that will be borne by the people, the families of Tumbler Ridge for the rest of their lives. These are not small stakes,” the premier said today.
It’s not known whether OpenAI assisted the shooter in planning, said Eby today.
Letter shared with media:
“Mental health and behavioural experts now help us assess difficult cases, and we have made our referral criteria more flexible to account for the fact that a user may not discuss the target, means and timing of planned violence in a ChatGPT conversation but that there may be potential risk of imminent violence,” O’Leary wrote in the letter to Solomon, that has been shared with media.
It’s not clear from the letter when the new protocol took effect. But the company didn’t flag Jesse Van Rootselaar’s account to police when it banned the account last June.
Company’s threshold was not met:
OpenAI has said Van Rootselaar’s activities did not meet the company’s threshold for informing law enforcement because it didn’t identify credible or imminent planning at the time.
“With the benefit of our continued learnings, under our enhanced law enforcement referral protocol, we would refer the account banned in June 2025 to law enforcement if it were discovered today,” the letter reads.
OpenAI says it would have referred the Tumbler Ridge shooter’s ChatGPT account to police under new safety policies the company has implemented in recent months.
But BC Premier David Eby has pointed out that OpenAI still didn’t mention their awareness of Van Rootsellar the day after the shooting. The company took additional time to come forward. Withholding information in that manner may not stand in good favour for them, going forward.
O’Leary is a new VP at OpenAI:
O’Leary is described by OpenAI “an exceptional lawyer and strategic advisor who seamlessly bridges the worlds of policy, government, and sophisticated legal practice”, as attributed to Open AI Co-Managing Partners Ishan Bhabha and Randy Mehrberg in a statement on January 13, 2026.
Chris Lehane — the Chief Global Affairs Officer at OpenAI — wrote last month on LinkedIn about Ann O’Leary: “Ann is a force of nature who gets policy done because she understands good policy translates into good politics – she has operated across state, federal and global markets and can score policy points at all three levels.”
“She will fight for policies that will disrupt for the benefit of people and not at their expense,” said Lehane.
Lehane is a former advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
Eby digging in:
BC Premier Eby said today that the Coroner’s inquest can provide much of the information that people will want to know about the shooting, as well as through a jury that independent of government and can address aspets of security protocols. but results of a police investigation may not get covered in a Coronoer’s inquest, Eby added. ‘Which is why we’re keeping all options open right now.”
“The issue here, to my mind, is definitely an OpenAI issue in the sense that they had this information and they could have prevented this incident if they had the right standard in place. It’s frustrating, angering and devastating that that’s the case, that they openly acknowledge that. The issue here is a threshold for AI companies generally, across the country, to have to report and further to be consequeces if they don’t report this information and bring it forward as soon as they have it.
In terms of whether OpenAI opens an office in Ontario or Quebec or British Columbia or anywhere, the number one question I have is, are we doing everything we can to reassure families that they’re not going to be in a position that these families in Tumbler Ridge, if this situation happens again,” Eby told media this afternoon in Victoria. “And everything we’re doing will be focussed on that.”
“One of the key realities here that everyone should keep track of is that we don’t have all the information,” said Eby, outlining that scope as information on Open AI, the shooter’s contact with the mental health system, and the guns.
“Police are assembling all that information. We’ve directed Northern Health to pull archives and get all the information together to make sure that there’s a full picture available for any public process that takes place after the police investigation and make sure that police have everything they need as well,” the Premier said today.
“And so that work is underway and we’ll make sure that all that’s available to British Columbians.”
Other opportunities for prevention:
“But the AI piece is just one piece and if the shooter had never logged into OpenAI, where were the other opportunities to prevent this from happening,” said Premier Eby today.
“Without doubt there were other opportunities to prevent this from happening and we just need to figure out where they were,” said Premier Eby.
That is appropriate bravado but likely no situation is entirely preventable.
Aiming for a national standard:
The federal minister is evidently looking at the scope of national policy. A spokesperson from Solomon’s office said the government is reviewing the letter and “will have more to say in the coming days.”
On this aspect, Premier Eby doesn’t feel it will be just Canada looking for standards and controls for the AI industry.
“I suspect that this will be an international push” described by Eby as “a minimum level of safety requirement, while the discussion in Canada is hopefully moving more quickly in this direction. The discussion on how to regulate and oversee AI is not unique to Canada, it’s taking place around the world right now. I’m sure people are looking at this example right now,” the premier said.
The work on public safety with AI will need to reply on legislation, which doesnt’ seem to have kept pace fast enough with the evolution of AI.
On CBC’s Power and Politics news program today, Globe and Mail reporter Bob Fife said that AI companies or executives “shouldn’t be trusted as far as you can throw them” to undertake voluntary protocols for public safety accountability (corporate profit being the only motivation).
===== RELATED:
Tumbler Ridge shooter was blocked on ChatGPT for gun violence content (February 21, 2026)
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