Juno News - October 19, 2022


Full recording of call between Ottawa mayor Jim Watson and police services board chair Diane Deans

Topics
internal angst in Ottawa police
Mentioned
Steve Bell Serge Diane Matt Trinigan Waterloo Jessica Queen John
FUREY： Why I'm joining True North We need to talk about assisted suicide in Canada

Episode Stats


Length

10 minutes

Words per minute

150.37

Word count

1,644

Sentence count

137


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode, we discuss the hiring of a new Chief of Police, Matt Tranigan, and what it means for the future of the organization. We also hear from the Acting Chief and the Board of Police Commissioners about the process for hiring a new chief.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Hey, and I'm clerk that hit play.
00:00:09.520 Jessica and Serge.
00:00:13.280 Hi, John. Hi, I've got Serge in the room with me.
00:00:18.320 Hi, Serge. Hi there. Okay, well, go ahead. Sorry, no, so I'm hoping that I can get
00:00:28.640 a briefing on next steps with respect to chief, acting chief, and what those steps are in terms
00:00:40.400 of, you know, bringing some stability to the organization. So basically, I'm going to sign
00:00:45.600 a contract with a new chief today, and I believe he will start on Monday. And today,
00:00:53.600 you're bringing a new chief today? Monday. He's going to start on Monday.
00:01:01.280 Who is this, and how did you find him or her? So his name's Matt Trinigan,
00:01:07.440 and he's former chief of Waterloo. You might actually know him, Jim. He was a deputy minister,
00:01:15.760 maybe when you were in Ontario. But he is extremely well respected in the police world.
00:01:24.400 And the Solicitor General's office helped us, gave us a short list. We called the people on the short
00:01:31.280 list. And he's going to bring a team with him, basically, of some former chiefs with a lot of
00:01:38.720 depth of knowledge that are going to come in to assist him in getting this thing to an end. And
00:01:45.120 it's a short term, like, the way with the contract is going to work is it's going to be somewhere
00:01:51.440 between, like a couple of months and the year end, I'm thinking probably the year end, so the new
00:01:58.640 board can choose the new chief. But it's basically a sort of a semi permanent contract is for sort of
00:02:08.320 three months to 10 months.
00:02:12.480 So this is obviously a surprise.
00:02:15.120 But that's what I thought you might want to know.
00:02:17.840 Yeah.
00:02:18.800 Well, what happens to Steve?
00:02:20.880 He's the deputy chief. I mean, the way I see it is that this is probably going to save Steve's
00:02:29.200 opportunity to become the next chief because you know the poison environment that we have right now.
00:02:34.640 Anybody we put in there is not going to last very long.
00:02:38.160 And Steve's going to get blamed for this. So he will be deputy chief and continue that way.
00:02:44.960 And I think we'll have the opportunity to become the next chief.
00:02:51.440 Well, this is I guess the problem I have with this is there's been no process.
00:02:57.360 There's no transparency. There's no sending out a call for people to apply.
00:03:03.280 And we're in the midst of a crisis. And he's been the chief for acting chief for one day.
00:03:07.600 And he's going to be replaced tomorrow.
00:03:09.520 I mean, I feel like he knows that because I had a conversation with him yesterday and I sort of
00:03:15.040 intimated to him that we're looking to bring someone in with, you know, knowledge and experience and a team
00:03:22.080 with them to bring this thing to an end. And, you know, I said to him, I recognize if we were to put
00:03:30.400 you in there right now like you own this. I phoned him last week, by the way, Jim, and I asked him
00:03:35.920 what he would do differently if he was the chief right now. And he said nothing, which didn't instill a
00:03:40.880 lot of confidence, actually. But I think in the long term that he will have a lot better chance of
00:03:48.800 being able to be the chief of police in Ottawa if he if he doesn't own this right now.
00:03:56.960 So are you bringing this to the board today? The board's already approved it.
00:04:03.040 When did they have a meeting to approve this? Yesterday.
00:04:10.880 If I'm reading your press, please say it's already work to put in place. A new command
00:04:14.080 section will be appointing a new chief very soon. My understanding was that we were going to get
00:04:19.280 through this with Steve. So it's a done deal basically. Well, I haven't signed the contract.
00:04:25.200 I mean, if you want to tell me that you don't think you want me to sign that contract, I mean,
00:04:30.240 I can go back to the board and tell them that you would rather not. But I actually believe this is
00:04:37.040 the right thing to do, Jim. Right? Well, I think this has come as a big surprise where
00:04:44.160 that, you know, the eve of some potential action, obviously something's going to happen. We think,
00:04:48.640 you know, I don't have any inside information, but one of the things for the next couple of days,
00:04:53.440 I think this would be very destabilizing to the organization to have someone who knows nothing
00:04:58.160 about Ottawa. Who's I don't know this guy don't recognize his name. Maybe he was a deputy when I was
00:05:03.760 there, but it doesn't ring a bell. Yes, he is very well liked. The Solicitor General told me that
00:05:11.360 this, the Solzhen's office, our advisor on our board is a guy named Graham White. He told me that this,
00:05:19.520 he called it an elegant solution. He thinks it's a very good solution on an interim basis for Ottawa.
00:05:26.480 I don't support this. I think this is the wrong approach at the wrong time. We're going into the
00:05:37.200 midst of what could be a very serious operational activity. And the sideshow becomes, oh, by the way,
00:05:46.880 Steve, uh, shunning you aside to a guy who doesn't know where Queen's is.
00:05:53.040 You know, I, you know, I, I respectfully disagree. Like, I really believe that this is one in Steve's
00:06:00.320 interest and two in the community interest to get some people with a lot more depth in this kind of
00:06:06.960 stuff than we have internally to Ottawa police right now to get this done. And, you know, Steve,
00:06:16.400 there's a lot of internal angst. I don't know how familiar you are with it, Jim, but there's a lot of
00:06:22.000 internal angst in that organization. I was just talking to someone right now that was telling me
00:06:27.200 how they've been called off and Steve's part of it. So there, there's, there's internal angst in the top
00:06:36.400 ranks right now. Um, and they're, they're infighting. You probably know a little bit
00:06:41.520 about the infighting that's been going on in the top ranks, but I really think actually bringing
00:06:46.880 someone that rises above that wouldn't be a bad idea. Well, I guess the process has been
00:06:55.520 obviously secretive. You've had no opportunity to consult the BIPOC community or other members.
00:07:00.560 No, it's only a short term solution. It's not the next chief of Ottawa. It's an interim
00:07:07.840 until we do a search for a chief. I mean, I can't put Steve Bell in there to be the new chief without
00:07:15.360 a search either. This is protecting him. Well, no, he, he, listen, uh, he's entitled to apply like
00:07:24.720 anyone else is who has the qualifications. Uh, so, you know, uh, I don't think there's a conflict
00:07:31.920 because he's the acting chief that he can apply, but right now it's basically a sole source contract
00:07:37.520 that we are about to sign, which I, you know, uh, it's your call, but I won't support that.
00:07:47.520 And I think it will destabilize the organization.
00:07:52.560 Okay. Well, um, that's why I raised it. I mean, I thought you should know you,
00:07:57.760 you are the mayor. So if, uh, if you're telling me not to do it, then I will not do it. I'll go and
00:08:04.160 have another board meeting and tell them we're going to have to change again. And I'll say,
00:08:08.080 I don't know what I'll say right now. Um, is there a vote of non-confidence
00:08:12.240 in me or the board coming to council? I haven't seen any motions.
00:08:22.160 I think you're frozen, Diane. Hello?
00:08:27.920 Let me just text her. I'll text her, see if she's disconnected.
00:08:34.160 I just got a picture of Diane. It's frozen.
00:08:38.400 Yeah. I think she might be frozen. I have it too.
00:08:41.760 Hold on.
00:08:42.880 I'm just going to rejoin Jessica. Tell them I'll rejoin.
00:08:46.160 Oh, you're good now, Diane. You're good now.
00:08:49.280 And we're back. You're back.
00:08:52.560 Okay. Jim, I, what, what do you know about what's coming that impacts me today or the
00:08:58.640 conversation that's happening? I think I've, I've worked really hard for the last 20 days.
00:09:03.680 I think it would be a courtesy to at least let me know what's coming at me.
00:09:08.480 Yeah. I'm going to talk to some counselors today, uh, as I try to before every meeting and, uh,
00:09:14.640 see what, uh, their plans are. And if I get any sense of what's going on, I'll try to give you a heads up.
00:09:20.400 Are you, would you support a vote of non-confidence in me?
00:09:26.480 Um, I haven't decided that yet.
00:09:33.360 Okay. Thanks.
00:09:34.400 All right. Well, listen, I appreciate, uh, the heads up. As I said, I, I hope that there's, um,
00:09:39.360 that you don't rush into this because I think it would be a mistake, uh, at this point.
00:09:44.000 And I think it would undermine Steve Bell to have someone he's, you know, to come in, uh,
00:09:50.960 literally, you know, two or three days after what, what could have been a, um, you know,
00:09:55.520 a police action to try to solve this nightmare we're all living through.
00:09:59.600 There are a lot of people in the upper ranks, just so you understand that do not support Steve
00:10:04.640 Bell right now. And it's part of what's happening inside. I, I, do you know, nevermind, nevermind.
00:10:12.480 What's the, what's the changes of the changes to the command structure that you're making?
00:10:19.760 It's the, it's the advisory body that would come with this new chief
00:10:25.680 that has OPP and everyone else with that kind of experience in terms of organization to get this done.
00:10:34.880 It's actually, it's actually a really good plan, Jim.
00:10:38.160 Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, listen, thank you for the heads up and, uh, we'll see you on zoom later.
00:10:46.560 Take care. Take care. Bye.