Canada seeks answers from OpenAI for failing to alert police after suspending school shooter’s account

Canada’s artificial intelligence minister says he has summoned representatives from the technology company OpenAI after the company declined to alert police after suspending the account of a user who became the perpetrator of one of the country’s worst-ever school shootings.Evan Solomon says he is “deeply disturbed” by reports that the company, which operates the popular ChatGPT chatbot, suspended the account of Jesse Van Rootselaar over the “furtherance of violent activities” in June 2025 but did not reach out to Canadian law enforcement.On 10 February, the 18-year-old killed eight people in the town of Tumbler Ridge. Among the victims were five students, aged 12 to 13, and a 39-year-old teaching assistant. Before attacking the school, Van Rootselaar killed her mother and half-brother at their nearby home.The shooter had described violent scenarios involving guns to ChatGPT over several days in June, which an automated review system flagged, according to the Wall Street Journal. But the San Francisco tech company said it felt the account activity did not identify “credible or imminent planning” and so banned her account, but did not notify authorities in Canada.Solomon told reporters he contacted OpenAI over the weekend to arrange a meeting in Ottawa and expected the company’s top safety representatives to explain how it would decide to forward cases to law enforcement.“They will come here [Tuesday], and we will have a sit-down meeting to have an explanation of their safety protocols and when they escalate and their thresholds of escalation to police, so we have a better understanding of what’s happening and what they do,” he said.Canada’s federal government is currently weighing how it might – if at all – regulate the use of immensely popular artificial intelligence chatbots, including the extent to which minors can freely use the products.Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that staff at the tech company had considered alerting Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCPM) last year about the activities of Van Rootselaar. OpenAI said in a statement that after learning of the school shooting, employees reached out to the RCMP with information on the individual and their use of ChatGPT. Van Rootselaar also used the game Roblox to create a virtual mall full of weapons that allowed players to shoot one another in advance of the Tumbler Ridge attack.While the company framed its decision to reach out to the RCMP as proactive, its handling of the issue has nonetheless come under fire.British Columbia’s provincial government confirmed to the Guardian that while a representative of OpenAI met with officials one day after the shooting in a pre-planned meeting, the company did not reveal that it had suspended the shooter’s ChatGPT account months earlier due to its violent nature. The meeting was first reported by the Globe and Mail.It was only two days after the mass shooting that representatives with OpenAI reached out to the province, for help in contacting the RCMP.David Eby, the British Columbia premier, said in a statement that the pain the families were enduring was “unimaginable” and that revelations OpenAI had “related intelligence” before the shooting is “profoundly disturbing for the victims’ families and all British Columbians”.