Canadian Province Sues OpenAI, Says It Should Pay to Rebuild School

British Columbia is suing OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, over one of Canada's deadliest mass shootings. In February, an 18-year-old named Jesse Van Rootselaar killed five students and an education assistant at Tumbler Ridge Secondary School before dying by suicide — eight lives lost in total, including the shooter's mother and half-brother. Families of the victims had already sued OpenAI, saying the company discovered in advance that the shooter was using ChatGPT to plan violence and failed to warn police. Now the province itself has filed a lawsuit spelling out just how expensive the disaster has been.

The school sat "in the heart of the town" — and after the shooting, it became a symbol of the trauma instead. About 160 students, teachers and staff hid in classrooms and closets for hours. Many were too traumatized to return, so the building was demolished in August. The community hopes a replacement school, on a new site, will be finished by the end of this year. British Columbia argues OpenAI and Altman should foot the bill for the school and other emergency costs that wouldn't exist without "this tragedy and its foreseeable consequences."

The province is also demanding changes, not just cash. It wants a court order forcing OpenAI to update ChatGPT so violent conversations end automatically — rather than continuing until a human or system steps in. Most urgently, it wants OpenAI to hand over the shooter's chat logs to the public. So far, OpenAI has given those logs only to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. OpenAI says it was protecting the shooter's privacy when it overrode internal review teams that had recommended sharing the violent chats with police. British Columbia suspects the real motive was avoiding bad publicity and protecting a potential $1 trillion public stock offering.

OpenAI declined to comment on the lawsuit, calling what happened "an unspeakable tragedy" and saying it remains committed to safety work with governments and law enforcement. The case matters far beyond one town. It's the first big test of a simple question: when an AI company learns a user may be planning violence, what does it owe the public — and who decides? The answer could reshape how every major chatbot handles its most dangerous users.