Canadian officials to meet with OpenAI safety team after school shooting

By Ryan Patrick Jones

TORONTO, Feb 23 (Reuters) – Canada summoned top officials from OpenAI for a meeting about the company’s safety protocols, a Canadian official said on Monday, after the ChatGPT maker said it did not reach out to police about an account it banned last year belonging to mass shooter Jesse Van Rootselaar.

Van Rootselaar, 18, killed eight people in a small British Columbia town on February 10 and then took her own life. OpenAI said it banned her account last year on the chatbot ChatGPT for policy violations which it said did not meet internal criteria for reporting to law enforcement.

Senior members of OpenAI’s safety team will travel from the United States to Ottawa for a meeting on Tuesday, Artificial Intelligence Minister Evan Solomon told reporters, “to have an explanation of their safety protocols, and when they escalate, and their threshold of escalation to police.” 

OpenAI confirmed the meeting in a statement, saying that senior leaders from the company will discuss with Canadian government officials “our overall approach to safety, safeguards we have in place, and how we continuously work to strengthen them”.

“This was a devastating tragedy, and we are doing all we can to support the ongoing investigation,” the statement said.

The case has intensified scrutiny of what obligations tech companies have to report threatening user activity to law enforcement.

SHOOTER’S ACCOUNT PREVIOUSLY FLAGGED

Van Rootselaar, who police say was born male but identified as a woman and began transitioning six years ago, had a series of previous mental-health-related interactions with police. The killings took place in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, a town of around 2,400 in the Canadian Rockies.

OpenAI previously said it banned Van Rootselaar’s account in June 2025 after it was flagged by systems that identify “misuses of our models in furtherance of violent activities.”

The company considered referring the account to police, but determined it didn’t meet the threshold of posing an imminent and credible risk of serious physical harm to others, it said.

Solomon said “all options are on the table,” when asked what Ottawa might do to protect Canadians from online harm, citing a forthcoming bill on online privacy and data. He did not give details.

“Canadians expect, first of all, that children, particularly, are kept safe and that these organizations act in a responsible manner,” Solomon said.

The company said it contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police after the shooting to provide information about Van Rootselaar’s use of ChatGPT.

RCMP Staff Sergeant Kris Clark confirmed OpenAI reached out to the police force after the shooting, but did not provide additional details. 

(Reporting by Ryan Patrick Jones in Toronto; Editing by David Ljunggren and Bill Berkrot)