There are some shoes to walk in yet, as we track the suspects to their deaths.
If you're an rcmp officer, armed to the gills, then you've been warned that these suspects are determined to go down 'guns blazing', and without a doubt you are primed to shoot on site.
If you're a local resident, then the impulse to protect your own people must be strong. You're used to policing yourselves, familiar with the local bush and hunting down and shooting bear, so its not much of a stretch to imagine a local hero or two would have set out to administer some self preservation.
Any of these players would have good reason to shoot the suspects, given the hysteria from the media warnings and weight of police/army activity. Suicide seems most likely given a sudden realization of the hopelessly dire situation they have somehow stumbled into - they pretty much cannot surrender (for driving a stolen vehicle) without being fired upon. Yet, some loose ends stretch credibility for this convenient theory to be foolproof.
The clothing dumped on the riverside, makes zero sense from a fugitive survival standpoint. From an evidence/plant point of view, they allowed easy tracking to the corpses, a km away. Rcmp also knew of the bodies' location long before announcing the find - its why those funky, wheelie hearsy vehicles were brought in only to find it would require boats to bring them out.
The suicide weapon/s will be a determining factor to ensure these suspects fit the crimes they've been accused of committing. Here again, we must suspend logic if we're to accept this as an only truth. Weren't they supposed to have survived some rapids on a bent piece of aluminum? And, swim back to the exact spot where they stored their guns to keep dry?
Stranger things have happened, but I just can't, despite all our interesting discussion, see these couple of tinhorns possessing enough devious smarts to be credited with any of these horrors. And, in fact, if looking for glory, then an alcohol check-stop shoot-out would have been the place.
True evil just couldn't or wouldn't have let that opportunity pass.