Juno News - Justin Trudeau Testifies ｜ Emergencies Act Inquiry

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00:10:59.980 lot order a lot the Public Order Emergency Commission is now in session

00:11:12.540 that comes on so they thought they just say man over okay good morning so we're

00:11:19.340 at the last day of the public hearings on the facts there will be of course the

00:11:26.380 public hearings on policy matters so I think we're ready for the next witness

00:11:46.720 Commission Council for the Commission our next and final witnesses Prime

00:11:51.540 Mr. Justin Trudeau.

00:11:52.880 Wow

00:12:06.040 Um, maybe we'll take a few minutes, uh, I'm not sure where, what process is, a bit anti-climactic.

00:12:31.040 uh so should we take five minutes i think we'll take five minutes then and see and you can come

00:12:41.360 and get me when it uh it is thank you the commission is in recent for five minutes

00:12:46.000 the commission go ahead it's a it's just a bit of a false start nothing to do with

00:13:00.080 your appearance i could you're welcome uh to come in obviously we're happy to get started

00:13:08.400 i can wait this piece more and we're affirmed mr prime minister will you swear on a religious

00:13:12.880 document or do you wish to affirm j'aimerais le faire sur la bible s'il vous plaît

00:13:32.960 pour la fin de procès verbal s'il vous plaît veuille indiquer et ensuite

00:13:36.880 and then repeat your name in the entire way.

00:13:40.880 Yes, I affirm.

00:13:44.880 Justin Trudeau, J-U-S-T-I-N-T-R-U-D-E-A-U.

00:13:48.880 Jerez-vous que le témoignage que vous allez rendre

00:13:52.880 devant la Commission sur la vérité, toute la vérité et rien que la vérité que je vous mets en aide?

00:13:56.880 Je l'affirme. Merci.

00:14:00.880 Merci.

00:14:04.880 just uh uh before we get started there as i understand it as you heard there will probably

00:14:15.120 be some testimony in english and some in french so please if you need uh uh translation equipment

00:14:24.320 you should have it in hand

00:14:26.160 good morning prime minister morning thank you for being here uh so we'll start with the routine

00:14:37.040 housekeeping uh you recall being interviewed by commission council on september 9th of this year

00:14:42.080 yes okay and after that interview commission council prepared a summary of your interview

00:14:47.200 yes um for the record we don't need to call it up mr clerk but it's wts.5084

00:14:54.800 and prime minister uh you reviewed that summary and and you can confirm that it's accurate to

00:14:59.440 the best of your knowledge yes okay and i'll add there that of course it's a summary it's

00:15:04.400 not an exact transcript of your words but it's a prepared summary and we're all aware of that

00:15:09.680 so prime minister as you know you are the final witness to testify before the commission so at

00:15:14.720 this point the commission has heard a lot of evidence about uh the events of january and

00:15:19.200 February, leading up to your government's decision to declare a public order emergency

00:15:25.280 on February 14th. But what we haven't heard yet is your perspective. So your own perspective,

00:15:31.880 your viewpoint, both as the Prime Minister leading the country through these events and

00:15:36.220 the decision maker in the government's ultimate decision to invoke the Emergencies Act for

00:15:40.960 the first time in that act's history. So we have two hours together this morning, and

00:15:46.000 I anticipate that the examination is gonna proceed

00:15:49.040 in two parts.

00:15:49.940 The first part will consist of fairly specific questions

00:15:53.240 taking you through the chronology of events,

00:15:56.340 often with reference to documents

00:15:58.340 that have been adduced before the commission,

00:16:00.180 readouts of your own calls.

00:16:02.440 And the second part will consist

00:16:04.180 of some bigger picture questions.

00:16:06.220 So addressing some of the key themes

00:16:09.160 that have arisen out of these events

00:16:10.820 and the government's response to it.

00:16:16.000 So let's start with the chronology of events, and I'll warn you, we're going to fly through

00:16:24.080 this pretty quickly. Two hours is not a lot of time to fly through everything that happened

00:16:28.700 between these days, but if ever you feel like you need to add in some narrative or explanation,

00:16:35.120 please feel free to do so. So we'll start with just the pre-arrival days, so before the convoy

00:16:40.920 arrived in Ottawa. We know that you learned the convoy was on its way a few days before,

00:16:45.780 maybe around january 24th and you were briefed on it by both officials from pco and your own staff

00:16:52.180 from pmo can you recall what your expectation was at that point so you've been briefed the

00:16:59.140 convoi is on its way what did you anticipate was going to happen on a view pendant

00:17:06.900 During the months that have been preceded, there was a level of frustration and dissatisfaction

00:17:15.660 with the government policies regarding the mandate, regarding the vaccination.

00:17:20.660 And we had heard a lot of rhetoric from several people across the country.

00:17:29.340 It was also a reflection of what we had seen during the electoral campaign, which was passed

00:17:34.520 six months ago.

00:17:35.580 Alors, de voir que ces groupes allaient venir manifester à Ottawa, on s'attendait un petit peu au genre de rhétorique et à l'intensité qu'on avait vue, mais on a régulièrement des manifestations à travers le pays.

00:17:59.620 On est vigilant, on est attentif, mais on se prépare dans la mesure du possible.

00:18:06.020 Vous avez parlé de la campagne électorale. Pouvez-vous dire un peu plus sur ce sujet?

00:18:12.940 Bien, la campagne électorale avait été un moment où on a pu consulter les Canadiens directement sur les mesures qu'on voulait amener pour protéger la santé publique,

00:18:28.180 c'est-à-dire spécifiquement des exigences de vaccination pour quiconque voulait embarquer dans un train ou dans un avion,

00:18:36.660 ou bien travailler pour la fonction publique fédérale.

00:18:41.120 Et c'était des gros enjeux, une grosse décision de limiter l'accès au transport fédéral comme ça.

00:18:50.700 Donc, pour moi, c'était important que les Canadiens puissent se prononcer sur cet enjeu-là.

00:18:55.960 C'est sûr qu'on le faisait ancré dans les recommandations de santé publique, dans le désir de garder les gens en santé, en sécurité.

00:19:05.080 Mais je pense que c'était tout à fait approprié qu'on ait des débats robustes à travers le pays sur ces enjeux-là.

00:19:13.940 Et c'est exactement ce qu'on a eu pendant les élections. Il y avait plusieurs partis qui étaient en faveur de ce que nous, on proposait.

00:19:20.640 Il y en avait d'autres qui étaient farouchement opposés.

00:19:23.980 Et les Canadiens, pendant cette campagne électorale, ont pu se prononcer.

00:19:28.660 Mais ce qu'on a aussi vu, et ce que moi et mon équipe et mes candidats ont vu en particulier,

00:19:34.940 c'est un niveau de manifestation, de frustration et d'agression,

00:19:49.380 ou au moins d'intensité d'émotion par rapport à cette campagne-là, par rapport à ce que nous proposions,

00:19:58.400 qui était pire et plus intense que tout ce qu'on avait vécu dans d'autres campagnes électorales ou dans d'autres événements politiques.

00:20:07.060 Donc, on voyait qu'il y avait une intensité potentielle qui était là pendant la campagne électorale,

00:20:16.060 qu'on a vu à quelques reprises dans les mois qui ont suivi et qu'on soupçonnait s'en venait peut-être à Ottawa pour ce qu'on voit.

00:20:24.960 Okay, so just to sum that up, I'll switch back to English.

00:20:28.740 I think we'll probably be switching back and forth a few times.

00:20:33.640 You saw the protest coming and you've been briefed on it.

00:20:36.880 And as you said, Ottawa is used to dealing with big protests,

00:20:40.940 but there was maybe a hint that something could be a little bit different here.

00:20:44.100 So there was a hint of worry there.

00:20:45.740 And then, of course, we know that the convoy arrived on, started arriving on the 28th and then went into full swing on the 29th.

00:20:55.220 What was that first weekend like when the convoy arrived from your point of view?

00:20:59.780 Well, first of all, one of the things that we noted in the run-up to the arrival was a bit of a disconnect between what the sort of political arms of my office were seeing and expecting from what we'd seen on social media,

00:21:22.900 colored by our experiences from the campaign uh that was only a few months before contrasted with

00:21:31.220 the assurances by um whether it was ottawa police services or even the public service

00:21:38.900 that this was just a normal quote unquote style of protest that we see on the hill fairly regularly

00:21:49.380 And there was already a little bit of worry that this might be a different brand of event than Canadians were used to seeing.

00:22:00.760 And we certainly saw during the first weekend that the expectations that the police had said that they would simply go home, the ability to keep it under control was not exactly there.

00:22:19.380 okay and i think starting on that sunday um you made a few calls to various mps in your

00:22:25.460 ottawa caucus sort of checking in and seeing how people were doing because there was a level of

00:22:30.500 concern there so um on that note i'll ask mr clerk to please pull up ssm.can.nsc402813

00:22:43.060 while that's being pulled up it's a it's a readout of a call that you had on sunday january 30th

00:22:48.180 with yasser nakfi just for the benefit of everyone in the room can you tell us who

00:22:53.060 gastronomy is yes sir is the member of parliament for uh ontario for ottawa center okay perfect

00:23:00.900 so if we can just scroll down to the text here mr there we go um so hey astor how are you pm

00:23:08.500 how are you doing and how are folks in the community and mr nakfi says very dire community

00:23:15.380 feels under siege you can imagine number of trucks rigs honking for them it's a party but

00:23:21.540 they forget it's also a neighborhood especially low-income families i've been getting a lot of

00:23:26.500 feedback also been in touch with marco that's mr manichino bill i assume minister blair and

00:23:32.420 local officials finding ways to make sure these folks are not part of residential streets tonight

00:23:37.540 will be challenging and you say i feel so gutted for so many people who are just in such a difficult

00:23:43.300 situation it's not just disruption but there's a lot of hateful rhetoric going on are you seeing

00:23:48.180 some of that and mr nazi says it's unbelievable the images that we see are hard to believe

00:23:54.820 saw a life-size poster on a truck of hitler and your name underneath this is the kind of grossness

00:24:00.500 our country is subject to i have constituents being yelled at for wearing masks while out doing

00:24:06.420 normal chores there are all kinds of issues people are facing in the neighborhood i don't know if

00:24:11.300 they can sleep at night um and you then reply there doesn't seem like much clarity on how long

00:24:16.900 this will last and then you refer to something an incident at the shepherd of good uh of good hope

00:24:23.300 and then finally your last comment here is i'm so sorry my friend this is just horrible

00:24:28.180 the rcmp is concerned everyone's on eggshells having this going on in our nation's capital

00:24:33.380 is just totally irresponsible so i just to some extent that's self-explanatory um but i'm wondering

00:24:39.620 if you can help us a little bit in in explaining the context of that call and what mr knockview was

00:24:45.860 referring to and what you'd observed yourself well i i dare say that citizens of ottawa are

00:24:51.700 used to political activity and protests on on the hill on a range of things but this was

00:24:59.460 present and in their daily lives and disrupting their weekend in a way that wasn't a usual

00:25:09.860 political protest um from from the intimidation and harassment of people for wearing masks

00:25:16.740 uh to uh a very concerning story about uh folks um disrupting the the nearby homeless shelter and

00:25:26.260 soup kitchen um there are there were indications that there was a level of um

00:25:35.540 disregard for others that unfortunately we had seen examples of uh during the election campaign

00:25:43.940 uh and it it emphasized for me that this was the same kind of thing uh that we had seen the

00:25:50.900 the intensity the anger um the hateful rhetoric okay moving on then mr clerk to the next document

00:25:58.660 ssm.can.nsc402812 so prime minister this is moving on to the next day so that

00:26:08.100 that'll be monday 31st um i think at some point there was uh some hope or expectation that the

00:26:13.780 convoy might disperse by monday but it didn't and at that point you have a call with mayor jim

00:26:19.460 watson of ottawa we'll just look at a a couple of things here uh the initial reference is to a press

00:26:26.900 conference you've done and he tells you you hit it at the park hit all the right notes uh and then

00:26:32.500 says these people had their time and need to move on so he's very and he's trying to get this across

00:26:37.300 to the chief of police uh be chief slowly so um mayor watson was obviously very focused on on

00:26:43.700 putting an end to the protest if he can uh scrolling down then that last bit jw that's

00:26:50.740 mayor watson chief of police said it's so volatile but kept under control so far trucks are starting 0.64

00:26:58.020 to leave but the diehards chained themselves for this to this it's unfortunate for people living

00:27:03.540 in the neighborhood um chief of police spoke to chief lucky and we need more a few more sources

00:27:09.780 i think that probably means resources and you say that's for sure and then it goes on we uh sorry he

00:27:15.540 says a little more we have to do this with a sense of balance these guys are just looking for a fight

00:27:21.860 and your comment back to on that just down a bit mr clerk is the remainders will have no choice

00:27:28.740 but to incite as a counterbalance so we all have to be careful can you explain those last few

00:27:34.020 comments and that the balance and counterbalance you were you were referring to there can you scroll

00:27:38.660 back up to the the okay no just keep both that Jim's line and mine on the on the screen there we

00:27:44.420 go um yeah I mean these calls were very much about me understanding uh what's happening from

00:27:58.020 a local a local sense and you know there was expression in the in this uh that there were

00:28:04.260 some people who are more intense in the protests than others some were just along to be part of

00:28:09.940 something that they agreed with others were really shaping it and driving driving it uh and i think

00:28:15.940 um i believe i'm not entirely sure what i was saying there i'm not sure the transcript is

00:28:22.100 exactly right either but it it's enough this sense that we didn't want to further provoke

00:28:29.300 uh but we need to be firm and standing up for people uh we need to encourage people to leave

00:28:34.500 but if they see their um that the numbers are starting to dwindle the ones who remain

00:28:40.660 will be more intense so there's a sense already that as we as we manage this we have to be

00:28:47.380 careful we want to make sure that we support and protect people living in the city that we're

00:28:52.980 We're allowing for life to get to normal despite this protest

00:28:59.980 without inciting any reactions that amplify the thing further.

00:29:09.980 Okay. That's helpful. Thank you.

00:29:12.980 The next one, Mr. Clerk, is ssm.can.nsc402814.

00:29:20.980 So now we're at Wednesday, February 2nd, and this is a call that you have with Anita Vandenbald.

00:29:29.380 So again, can you tell us, Prime Minister, who Anita Vandenbald is?

00:29:32.500 Anita is a Member of Parliament for Ottawa-Nepean East, or I believe that's it. 0.74

00:29:40.880 Anyway, she's just to the west of downtown.

00:29:46.020 count. She's a longtime MP and a very strong community member of Parliament. And she was 0.74

00:29:58.280 expressing here just how the tone of and the tenor of this, what was going on in the neighborhoods

00:30:11.120 and around people was worse and more hateful and different from anything she had seen before

00:30:18.380 in a number of years as an MP, but a long time involved in political engagement.

00:30:25.500 So you remember this call?

00:30:26.740 Yes, I do, very much.

00:30:28.180 Okay, so we'll just read through a little bit of what Ms. Vandebelt said.

00:30:33.180 Starting there, you say, I wanted to check in, how are you doing?

00:30:36.840 She says, I really appreciate it.

00:30:38.740 i'm torn i'm scared but i get really mad that i'm scared kids with autism the noise it's one of

00:30:45.300 those things you feel like it's okay well it's awful i'm not a stranger to volatile environments

00:30:50.660 but it's different because i know the sentiment is directed towards us you particularly there's

00:30:56.180 this hate for liberals and then after that i do think it may deter some young women looking into

00:31:01.700 politics um i see i don't want anything to happen to one of us god forbid you before we start 0.86

00:31:08.020 thinking about all of this and then she speaks about constituents calling about what the pm is

00:31:13.220 going to do about it it's hard and she says it's hard because i know it's not within your purview

00:31:18.260 people are frustrated and they just want somebody to do something to get the city back

00:31:23.700 and then she speaks about some some other hateful messages that she's uh she's observed and you say

00:31:29.780 it's about how you balance it again being responsible and reasonable so the part of

00:31:33.620 this that i'd like you to speak to prime minister is where she says a lot of constituents are

00:31:39.060 calling me about what the pm what the prime minister is going to do about this and she said

00:31:43.140 she then says it's hard because i know it's not within your purview so what does that refer to

00:31:49.460 that as she refers to one of the one of the challenges and and things that we were struggling

00:31:55.300 with from the early days of the pandemic of the of the convoy occupation which is that

00:32:02.980 because they were very visibly most motivated to protest the federal government and federal

00:32:10.340 government policies even though many of the mandates they were actually vocally concerned

00:32:15.380 about were provincial measures but it was very clear that they had targeted ottawa and the seat

00:32:21.940 of our federal government deliberately that it was a federal protest in a city that houses the

00:32:28.900 capital there is an impression and an expectation that therefore it's ottawa or sorry it's the

00:32:36.020 federal government's responsibility uh to deal with it to uh make sure that it goes away to stop

00:32:42.980 it it's there is a a general expectation even by people who are long-time residents of ottawa

00:32:48.340 that this is somehow like Washington, D.C.,

00:32:53.080 that is a separate enclave where the RCMP can give out traffic tickets,

00:32:58.260 which they don't.

00:32:59.060 But there is a blending of orders of government

00:33:03.360 in protection of Parliament Hill and the precinct

00:33:06.000 that led a lot of people to say,

00:33:08.940 well, they're here, they're angry at the Prime Minister,

00:33:11.100 they're disrupting my neighbourhood.

00:33:13.860 Federal government should really do something

00:33:15.420 to get rid of these protesters or or move them along or have them leave where we were continually

00:33:24.460 explaining as anita said it's not in our purview the management of wellington street of neighborhoods

00:33:32.540 around was the jurisdiction of the ottawa police services and if they needed support the opp

00:33:39.820 and then the rcmp could be providing extra supports but it was their jurisdiction

00:33:44.460 but of course anyone who's involved in politics you can be a a federal mp walking through your

00:33:49.820 your riding and someone complains about garbage pickup uh they don't want you hear you say oh no

00:33:54.940 that's not a federal issue that's municipal they say um thank you i'll i'll make sure we pass that

00:34:00.060 message along we'll try and see sure that that gets fixed um the idea that i was saying um this is not

00:34:06.460 a federal policing issue this is not a federal issue this this occupation this is something that

00:34:13.340 ottawa police jurisdiction need to need to take care of um for a lot of people sort of say well

00:34:18.940 let's see them they're here because of the federal government and the federal government is refusing

00:34:22.860 to do anything about it uh was the kind of blending of narratives that that we had to be really

00:34:29.980 careful about all right i think we're going to come back to that when i start asking about

00:34:34.380 ontario's initial response to all of this but we're not quite there yet so i'll take you a few

00:34:39.180 few more things and then i'll ask you to pick up where you left off there um so so far we've been

00:34:44.940 looking at some calls you've had with your your own mps mps from your caucus the next one uh mr

00:34:50.220 clerk you can pull up it's ssn.can407738 is a call that you had with excuse me on february 3rd

00:34:59.020 candace bergen who i believe had just become leader of the opposition in the house i confess

00:35:04.780 i was yesterday years old when i learned that but uh i now know um okay so this is a call you then

00:35:11.740 have on wednesday february 3rd uh with ms bergen and and do you recall this do you remember this

00:35:16.860 call prime minister yes i do and can you tell us what inspired that call or it was mostly a

00:35:21.900 congratulatory call when uh someone becomes uh leader of a political party that's opposite us

00:35:28.460 in the house i i tend to reach out and have a bit of a personal conversation i usually ask after

00:35:35.100 family see how how they're adjusting to it to maybe give some recommendations about trying to

00:35:40.380 get enough sleep uh but i try and keep it a human introductory call even though i had engaged with

00:35:46.460 her many times uh in the house over the over the years as an mp um when she became leader i wanted

00:35:53.340 to reach out and establish that personal contact of course it was all happening in the context of

00:35:59.740 this uh this uh occupation uh going on so that was part of the discussion but primarily it was

00:36:06.300 a congratulatory call okay got enough sleep is always good advice um mr click can we scroll down

00:36:11.740 a little bit here we see there we go okay so this is the part of the conversation that um

00:36:19.740 you start talking about the the security situation in Ottawa you say uh the second

00:36:24.860 set of briefing would be security situation in Ottawa right now obviously a real concern

00:36:30.220 and we have lots of disagreement on causes and path forward I would certainly like to make sure

00:36:34.940 you you're getting briefings on safety and the situation and have you at least fully informed

00:36:40.700 hopefully we're we're all going to be able to make sure Canada's democracy continues to run

00:36:46.300 and our institutions remain strong and quite frankly the citizens of ottawa get back to the

00:36:50.620 regular lives scroll down again please to the next page mr clerk so miss bergen says absolutely i

00:36:56.700 agree i'm sure you weren't following question period today but that's what i'd like to see

00:37:01.580 some resolution you're right we disagree on some things but i would agree with you the goal is let's

00:37:07.740 find a way for people to head back home and clear things up in ottawa we do want the same things if

00:37:13.980 you have some ideas or some things you think could be done extending an olive branch is one way of

00:37:19.340 putting it we'd love to be able to work together to make that happen all of us and you say in reply

00:37:25.500 all of us need to focus on getting the temp down the temperature down and getting people back to

00:37:30.780 normal lives let's ensure there are discussions on that and there may be opportunities to work

00:37:36.060 together some of them i think you're referring to the protesters there have jammed themselves into

00:37:41.420 a counter in a corner and they're asked for non-starters we have our democracy and our

00:37:47.020 institutions that is well worth defending there are ways we can get beyond this i'm worried about

00:37:52.780 setting a precedent where if anyone wants something they can set up a blockade on wellington street

00:37:58.300 people need to be heard and that's part of our democracy and getting that balance right

00:38:02.700 miss bergen says she agrees with everything you said i think that you do have to be cautious

00:38:08.140 and as pm you don't want to set a bad precedent i'm sure you're talking and come up coming up

00:38:13.100 with some ideas and then she offers to help um so the part of that that i'd like to i'd like you to

00:38:18.780 elaborate on is it appears there that you're talking and i take it the olive branch is a

00:38:23.500 suggestion of some of some engagement with the protesters some talking to in in whatever capacity

00:38:29.580 that would end up being um so what comes out of this conversation that you have in this bergen

00:38:35.260 with miss bergen and what was in your mind at the time um i i say you know we have um

00:38:44.380 ensure there are discussions on that let's ensure there are discussions on that was very much

00:38:48.620 uh let's make sure as political parties we keep talking about it keeping up figuring out how

00:38:54.380 we can work together um and then you know some of their asks are non-starters like

00:39:00.940 overturning the results of the election that we just had but in terms of responding to their

00:39:09.340 demands or or legitimizing them by engaging I'm highlighting that I'm worried about setting a

00:39:15.740 precedent that a blockade on Wellington Street can can lead to changing public policy people

00:39:21.500 need to be heard but we need to get that balance right and then she agreed that I need to be

00:39:27.500 cautious and i don't want to set any bad precedents okay so fairly self-explanatory

00:39:33.980 a willingness to to discuss but you you were concerned about setting a precedent where

00:39:39.580 uh a blockade could equal a a change in public policy is that fair yeah i think we we have

00:39:48.860 a robust functioning democracy and uh protests public protests are an important part of making

00:39:56.060 sure we're getting messages out there and canadians are getting messages out there and

00:39:59.740 highlighting how they feel about various issues uh but using protests to demand uh changes to

00:40:09.180 public policy um is something that that i think is is is worrisome okay um so thank you mr although

00:40:18.060 sorry to a certain no no please go on yeah protest if you're out protesting that the government is

00:40:22.220 you know shutting down a safe injection site or something you are asking for changes in public

00:40:27.180 policy but there is a difference between uh occupations uh and and you know saying we're not

00:40:37.020 going until this has changed uh in a way that is massively disruptive uh and potentially dangerous

00:40:44.140 uh versus just saying yeah we're protesting because we want uh we want public policy to

00:40:49.660 change and we're trying to convince people to get enough of them that politicians will listen to

00:40:54.060 enough people saying okay i'm going to lose votes if i don't change this that's the usual way uh

00:41:01.100 protests uh can be effective in in our democracies okay that's a fair point of distinction thank you

00:41:07.260 um mr clerk the next document is ssm.can.nsc402819 so prime minister we're now heading into the the

00:41:18.300 second weekend of the protest so saturday february 3rd um and our understanding is that the protest

00:41:24.780 intensified again um with more more trucks coming into ottawa uh and on that day on the saturday you

00:41:31.180 have a call with the governor general mary simon do you recall do you remember that call yes i do

00:41:35.740 okay so here is the the readout of it and we'll just go through some of quite a bit of actually

00:41:41.340 what was said on that call um so again there's the introduction and um you say it's been stressful

00:41:49.580 not so much for me personally the governor general says yes they seem reluctant to give it up also

00:41:56.140 makes it challenging and you say yep people blame the feds but many of the mandates not us

00:42:04.140 and for the police well we don't direct them trying to get resolved as peacefully as possible

00:42:10.060 want them to find a way to save face but they can't shut down our democracy sorry they're

00:42:15.020 trying to pull you into this also they just don't understand the institutions uh and then the

00:42:20.940 governor general asked to go further on that actually i'll stop there do you remember what

00:42:25.900 you're referring to in that paragraph there uh yeah that was the uh i believe it was a a memorandum

00:42:32.380 of understanding that uh some groups within or some group within the protesters uh had

00:42:40.780 declared that what they wanted was to empower the senate to work with the governor general to

00:42:46.540 create a provisional government or uh and or chain take take a point a government committee

00:42:53.500 uh that would change public policy um and displayed a lack of understanding of of uh of

00:43:00.300 how our democracy and our institutions actually work okay um but i mean it also meant she was

00:43:07.020 getting bombarded uh the rito hall uh which is filled with good people giving out medals to

00:43:13.660 worthy canadians uh were bombarded constantly uh by uh um by demands that she fire the prime minister

00:43:22.540 uh and and in a very very aggressive way and that's that's what i was referring to as tough

00:43:28.300 for her and tough for her team understood and is that what prompted this call um could have been

00:43:35.580 part of it but i also speak regularly with the with the governor general just to check in and

00:43:39.740 obviously this was something that was worthwhile checking in on but yes that was probably the

00:43:44.220 reason fair enough um okay so then she asked if there's any sense on how it will be resolved and

00:43:50.620 you say something and then uh now they're starting to do that bill blair has handled a lot in the

00:43:56.140 past and we know uh we've heard a lot from bill blair at the commission as well um this is not

00:44:01.740 a protest more an occupation hard to diffuse it will take time being very careful to not try to

00:44:08.380 fix something we don't have the tools for and then there's some discussion with the funding

00:44:12.620 can you scroll down a bit mr clerk um onto the next page please and then she's the governor

00:44:21.900 general says yeah there's some some of the senior staff getting a lot of hateful emails asking for

00:44:28.380 the governor general to fire the prime minister and to create these crazy things it's difficult

00:44:33.340 to receive these things they made a website in my name saying stuff i have to let it slide off

00:44:38.620 our backs and then you discuss the security situation so is that where you were just

00:44:42.540 referring to prime minister and sort of bombardment okay um so just generally speaking before we move

00:44:51.260 on what was your sense of of where things were at on that second weekend um

00:44:58.780 the first weekend it caught everyone by surprise uh through the second weekend i think i mentioned

00:45:05.900 it in in referring to bill blair um talking with the local police with his his own expertise and

00:45:12.460 and background um talking about things that can be done uh to try to de-escalate to start putting

00:45:19.500 an end to this understanding that it can't happen overnight but that there are things that should be

00:45:24.860 done there was an expectation or a hope that on that second weekend we would see um a decrease

00:45:33.020 in activity uh and a dwindling uh instead we saw a surge on that second weekend and things that we

00:45:42.780 had heard that you know the police were going to start doing this or doing that and we're going to

00:45:48.780 be able to respond didn't seem to be materializing there was a sense that that the

00:45:59.580 occupation was just continuing uh full swing without uh without any real

00:46:07.340 control or or even plan to end it and i know from conversations with mps and others

00:46:16.780 that the citizens of Ottawa were quite frantic about having to go through a second weekend of

00:46:23.880 horns and disruptions and being yelled at for wearing masks and not being able to

00:46:30.300 go to their neighbourhood stores and seeing the Rideau Centre shut down and all these different

00:46:34.760 things that were really problematic. And people were starting to get pretty upset that this was

00:46:40.380 you know, two full weekends that they were being massively disrupted by.

00:46:46.140 Okay. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Take that one down. So speaking of getting a little upset,

00:46:52.540 the next topic I want to address with you is Ontario's initial response to the protest in

00:46:58.140 those early weeks. So one theme that's emerged from the evidence we've heard, and we've seen

00:47:03.460 this several references to it in the documents, is your government's frustration and your own

00:47:09.240 frustration with um what might be characterized as a certain reluctance on the part of ontario to

00:47:15.160 to engage especially in the tripartite tables that um minister blair i think had put together so

00:47:21.560 uh mr clerk can you pull up ssm.can.nsc402837

00:47:30.520 this is uh the readout from a call that you had prime minister with mayor jim watson on february

00:47:35.400 okay so just keep scrolling a bit mr clerk uh past the key takeaways on to page two

00:47:50.280 um so just to stop there give a bit of situation so mr mayor watson here brings up the expression

00:47:57.880 whack-a-mole which we've heard several times in the commission um fighting a losing battle

00:48:03.400 we don't have enough police um and and you reply that well that's entirely right i don't i know

00:48:10.520 we're looking carefully at that we're looking at the resourcing and then you say on the ottawa

00:48:15.400 policing side you've seen as i have some concerns on how things were handled from the beginning and

00:48:21.320 then you ask about uh mayor watson's relationship with the police chief and and how they're working

00:48:26.360 together and you observe that there are moments where mayor watson is saying one thing and the

00:48:32.280 chief is saying another and ask if if there's anything you can do about that so just briefly

00:48:36.600 before we go on can you comment on that a little bit and and the ottawa policing situation to the

00:48:41.240 extent that you were briefed on and aware of it one of the things we'd said from the very beginning

00:48:48.200 uh to the rcmp uh and to the commission the rcmp and and to um government in general uh that if

00:48:57.480 there was anything we could do to support the ottawa police services in their in what they

00:49:02.840 were doing if we had resources or abilities because you know there is a federal presence in

00:49:08.600 in this capital city um we should do it that we were there to be helpful i instructed brenda to

00:49:15.320 try and do whatever whatever she could to send support to uh to uh to the city of ottawa what

00:49:22.120 we got back or what we had heard as i recall were different numbers from what the mayor said

00:49:30.680 ottawa needed to what the police chief was saying they needed and the one thing that

00:49:38.040 the commissioner made clear to me was they needed to know that if they were deploying

00:49:45.080 resources that they were going to be appropriately used that there was a plan

00:49:49.400 for that and you know we see it sometimes in requests for assistance across the country

00:49:55.320 uh where someone will say we need 20 000 police officers or from or we need we need the military

00:50:01.400 to come in with a thousand troops or we need this or that in in rfas uh and part of our due diligence

00:50:08.760 is okay what do you need them for what are you going to be doing for because for example if

00:50:13.480 if you're sending in military as we did in in hurricane fiona uh to help clear power lines

00:50:21.160 as was necessary in atlantic canada in no situation do military members engage in policing

00:50:31.240 activity and there was a sense that maybe they could be directing traffic and we have to make

00:50:35.640 sure no they're not police military isn't there to play police roles and that that's why we always

00:50:41.320 have questions that okay we're going to send resources but we need to know how how they're

00:50:46.280 going to be deployed and there wasn't always that clarity around what the plan was how many they

00:50:51.480 actually needed uh how they were being used and how they were uh you know how where they were

00:50:57.960 going to be best deployed okay um just keep scrolling down please mr clerk i'll tell you

00:51:04.360 want to stop uh keep going please oh no i'm sorry i missed it there we go uh so mayor watson says

00:51:12.360 i'm gonna ask after this phone call whether the federal government will live up to its commitment

00:51:17.000 we need boots on the ground very shortly it's not dying down took over metcalf street blocked all of

00:51:22.920 it and you reply listen yes yes you can say the federal government will be here there with more

00:51:28.360 resources but again the thing that frustrates me and everyone is conflated but doug ford has been

00:51:34.520 hiding from his responsibility on it for political reasons as you highlighted and important i suppose

00:51:41.000 it's important that we don't let them get away from that we intend to support you on that and

00:51:46.120 mayor watson replies if they keep dragging their feet i'm happy to call them out on it it would

00:51:50.920 be nice if we got something firmed up with the federal government to shame them ford didn't even

00:51:55.320 make an effort to come and see what's going on so can i just ask you prime minister to comment a bit

00:52:00.200 on on the politics that are going on there um well first of all when i say every everyone is

00:52:06.040 i believe is conflating it was conflating you know a federal protest of federal issues with

00:52:11.480 a federal responsibility to do the policing that would dissipate that that protest so that was

00:52:16.920 Sorry, a little bit of an interplay that there was a sense that in the initial phases of the protest, the Ontario government was happy for the perception to be out there that this was a city of Ottawa issue and a federal government issue.

00:52:40.380 and that as a province, they really didn't have a responsibility or a jurisdiction to play in there.

00:52:48.860 It was an unpleasant situation. There were bad headlines.

00:52:52.840 I was getting grumbled at by citizens of Ottawa every day because the federal government wasn't dealing with it.

00:53:00.700 I can understand that provincial politicians who were being overlooked in the complaints everyone had

00:53:06.680 about why this wasn't getting resolved would say you know what let's let's not poke our noses into

00:53:12.040 this and and uh you know people will continue criticizing those people that help i'm fairly

00:53:17.960 certain that behind the scenes um the opp was engaged with ottawa police services and was

00:53:24.360 providing supports as as we as we were as a federal government but i think at the political level

00:53:29.400 there was probably a decision to continue to stay back a little bit and let us wear it a little bit.

00:53:37.980 What we had seen during the pandemic and during other crises

00:53:42.780 is when the three orders of government are able to work seamlessly together,

00:53:48.860 not only does it deliver better results and better coordination,

00:53:53.680 But it actually reassures citizens to see that people who are not always politically aligned at the highest levels can roll up their sleeves and work for the benefit of citizens.

00:54:08.800 And that's certainly something that I've always tried to do and I've been able to do with Premier Ford on many, many issues.

00:54:14.180 But at this point in the evolution of the occupation, that wasn't something that we were able to do.

00:54:21.380 And so, yes, there was a bit of frustration.

00:54:23.680 Okay, well, and we'll see that the very next day you had a call with Premier Ford.

00:54:28.500 And just in the narrative, what was going on at this point, in addition to Ottawa,

00:54:33.360 and there were a few things, as we know, going on across the country,

00:54:36.980 but by this time, this 7th, 8th, 9th, the Ambassador Bridge blockade had really heated up and was in full swing.

00:54:43.600 And that seemed to be a turning point in several ways, but certainly for Ontario's participation in all of this.

00:54:51.040 So, Mr. Clerk, if you can take that document down, please, and bring up SSM.CAN.NSC402845.

00:55:12.040 point for advocacy to to make a long story short this is a call where it seems that you and premier

00:55:17.320 ford are engaging and deciding to work together to solve this problem at this point um you can

00:55:23.160 skip over the first oh here we go the the last part of that first paragraph so pdf premier doug

00:55:29.480 ford uh he says what we can recommend and what we can work together on is i've asked our ag

00:55:36.120 our attorney general to look at legal ways to give police more tools and exhaust legal remedies

00:55:42.280 because the police are a little shy and i can't direct them so that's one area we can focus on

00:55:47.480 we can't take their polar licenses um we check that we we can shut down their fuel consumption

00:55:53.720 and cordon off highways that's where we're at might be operator licenses yeah probably not polar

00:55:59.960 but um operator licenses let's go with that um so then you reply first of all

00:56:07.000 they're not a legal protest they're occupying a municipal street and are not legally parked

00:56:12.280 you shouldn't need more tools legal tools they're barricading the ontario economy and doing millions

00:56:17.880 of dollars of damage a day and harming people's lives at a time we're trying to draw in investments

00:56:24.360 a whole bunch of people are looking at this and saying we can't even clear up a protest on a bridge

00:56:29.160 so just stopping there prime minister do you remember what you were referring to

00:56:32.600 when you start talking about you shouldn't need more tools um

00:56:41.560 i mean that whole question around legality or illegality of the protest um they didn't have

00:56:48.840 a permit to protest um they not not certainly as long as they had um they were illegally parked

00:56:56.040 uh they were um engaged in disruptive activities there are any number of municipal and provincial

00:57:06.440 bylaw infractions and legal infractions that they were engaged in by just being there

00:57:11.480 and there is a sense that you know and this was based on an earlier conversation i had with bill

00:57:18.120 Blair about how one proceeds in this uh is you know you you can enforce small things as a way

00:57:27.720 of keeping the situation under control and creating boundaries and balances and moving towards uh

00:57:33.480 towards it it's a it's a it's an approach um the issue here uh was that there were things that they

00:57:41.080 could do and things that i know were tried that they realized were unsafe for them to do there

00:57:50.440 are stories of police officers getting swarmed there uh when they tried to arrest someone with

00:57:55.400 a jerry can filled with gasoline uh there was a sense that you know giving out simple tickets

00:58:02.760 wasn't really having much of an impact as they did that and taking stronger measures

00:58:10.800 was going to be resisted and met with significant resistance.

00:58:17.700 But these are things that if they feel they didn't have the resources to enforce a prohibition

00:58:27.060 on bringing in jerry cans or a prohibition of parking on the approach to the uh ambassador

00:58:33.220 bridge well let us give you more resources to do that between the opp and the rcmp um you know we

00:58:40.820 should be able to get the numbers up in a way that could lead for an ability to use those existing

00:58:47.300 tools on the books that was very much where our thinking was at that point how how many more

00:58:54.420 police officers how much more resources do you need to get a plan and if there was a concern

00:59:00.020 around um well we can't get those police allocated to us from other jurisdictions

00:59:07.940 unless there is a clear plan well we'll we'll send you planners we'll help get those um those people

00:59:16.580 there so you can establish a plan that will allow itself to be deployed there was really a sense

00:59:21.700 that there was more things that could be done and he seemed to be a greeting okay and that's

00:59:27.460 actually what you end up saying in the part you can't see right now of that uh the next page the

00:59:32.020 paragraph i'm at least consistent uh so nobody say the bridges and tunnels act meet the federal

00:59:39.620 government has something i can't read that anymore but federal government has responsibility over the

00:59:44.580 bridge and border so there's a role for us to play we're happy to play it but nobody can get on the

00:59:49.460 bridge because they're on municipal land being blocked so we'll give you whatever resources

00:59:53.940 you you're in you need the police of jurisdiction need to do their job if they're saying they can't

00:59:58.980 do it because they don't have enough offices or equipment we need to remove that excuse as

01:00:04.740 soon as possible so they can do their work and we can prevent ontario become becoming a laughing

01:00:10.180 stock um mr clerk just scroll down to the last page please we'll skip over there's some

01:00:15.700 jurisdictional discussions going on there um and then just to the top of that page please mr glick

01:00:23.380 so this is the sort of the conclusion of the conversation uh you say what are the next steps

01:00:28.660 you've said the open p you're going in are they keeping you apprised and do they understand the

01:00:33.700 urgency they can't talk this out for three weeks they need to act immediately and i'm assuming

01:00:39.940 there the concern of acting immediately is brought about by the situation on ambassador bridge which

01:00:45.700 we heard a lot about from the deputy prime minister yesterday premier ford replies they'll act but

01:00:52.020 without directing them it's hard to describe their game plan they'll have a plan unlike ottawa where

01:00:57.700 they didn't have a plan i'll get briefed more from the solicitor general would keep you updated

01:01:03.620 this is critical i hear you i'll be up their ass with a wire brush um then the next yeah you say

01:01:11.540 if that's one of the quote quotable quotes of the commission there have been a few that's one 0.76

01:01:15.700 um the next your reply there uh is well we're there with resources bill bear bill blair will

01:01:22.260 coordinate on our side you can reach out to the law minister of larmy you and i need to work

01:01:27.220 together on this people will be reassured by the two of us working together we need to demonstrate

01:01:32.100 this is not a place of lawlessness okay we can take that down thank you i will say though that

01:01:36.900 you know they can't talk this out for three weeks they need to act immediately i wasn't just talking

01:01:40.980 about the ambassador bridge i was talking about ottawa as well i was talking about the fact that

01:01:45.540 that that this simply can't continue to be stretched out this way but when i say they

01:01:51.780 need to act immediately obviously um i'm not directing uh the premier to direct police we

01:01:57.780 know all the limitations that we have but there was an expectation that this was a situation that was

01:02:03.380 going on for too long and as as doug pointed out a couple paragraphs later you know there is a sense

01:02:10.260 that people that the police of jurisdiction had lost control and wasn't able to control the

01:02:15.620 situation okay that's various i took the document down before we got to audible that's right thank

01:02:20.180 Thank you, Mr. Park. That won't come down now. So, shifting gears away from Ontario,

01:02:29.620 we understand that there's a lot of concern coming at the federal government from the United States

01:02:34.820 as well. And again, the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday spoke about the many conversations

01:02:39.460 she was having with stakeholders in the U.S., U.S. officials, Brian Deese in particular.

01:02:44.820 and we understand that on, I believe, February 11th,

01:02:49.660 you ended up having a phone call with President Biden.

01:02:53.540 Mr. Clerk, we'll just pull up the readout of that call.

01:02:56.180 It's pb.can6057.

01:03:10.360 Okay, scroll down to the next page, please.

01:03:12.580 so maybe that's there it's it's got to be somewhere

01:03:19.300 keep scrolling until you see your readout but in the mean oh no there it is i think um

01:03:23.460 in any event prime minister can you tell us just the readout doesn't actually say that much so can

01:03:27.380 you tell us about your recollection of that call um there was sort of two um two goals i had in

01:03:35.780 that call uh the first one uh was to reassure him uh that just right despite the disruptions to to

01:03:43.620 trade uh and to and real impacts on both sides of the border which were economic yes but were also

01:03:49.780 people to people we know we knew from the pandemic that you know thousands of healthcare workers

01:03:54.660 cross the ambassador bridge every day from uh from canada to go uh work in uh in detroit to

01:04:00.660 in their hospitals uh there is there are real meaningful connections across that crossing uh

01:04:06.820 that were being disrupted in meaningful ways and i wanted to reassure uh president biden that

01:04:11.700 canada was going to um going to be able to solve for this and that we were going to continue to be

01:04:19.380 a reliable partner for trade and for people-to-people ties and a safe neighbor um that was

01:04:28.180 sort of in response to his concerns around disruptions to activities on both sides of

01:04:35.380 the border because of the blockage. But the second thing I wanted to talk about was just

01:04:39.860 sort of the general context, the fact that the 911 centre being overwhelmed in Ottawa

01:04:47.460 a couple of days before happened from American calls, that there was a significant amount of

01:04:55.540 amplification from certain sectors of the American political sphere and there

01:05:05.680 was also a significant amount of money flowing and support for these occupation

01:05:15.180 activities in Canada that were coming from people in the United States

01:05:19.420 sympathetic to that cause and opposed to both he and I in our public health

01:05:28.300 policies but also in our general policies would you say that President

01:05:33.100 Biden shared your level of concern about the situation um no I think I was much

01:05:41.980 more concerned about the the blockage to the lives and the disruption and the

01:05:48.460 potential security concerns. I think he was very concerned. But I don't think anyone was more

01:05:53.980 concerned than me. Okay, fair enough. It was happening on your side of the border. So that

01:05:58.400 makes sense. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. That's it for that one. So this sort of brings us to a pretty

01:06:06.780 critical time in the narrative of what happened in February. So we're building to a bit of a

01:06:12.880 crescendo around that time, the 10th, the 11th. And we've heard from the Clerk of the Privy Council

01:06:18.000 that on February 9th, she advised you to convene the Incident Response Group.

01:06:24.140 And the first meeting of the Incident Response Group was then on February 10th.

01:06:28.020 So we have heard quite a bit about different cabinet committees and what the IRG is.

01:06:33.460 But I'm wondering if you can tell us from your perspective,

01:06:36.260 sitting as Prime Minister and Chair of these committees,

01:06:39.540 what it means to convene an IRG and how it differs and what it gives you,

01:06:45.020 what advantage it has versus other other structures um regular cabinet committees uh are chaired by

01:06:55.980 members of cabinet and feature various cabinet members sitting around the table assisted by

01:07:03.420 their um their directors their deputy ministers uh but it they are discussions amongst cabinet

01:07:11.820 ministers on a particular issue that will then go to full cabinet that's what most committees are

01:07:17.660 the irg is a special committee special in that it is chaired by me it doesn't have a permanent

01:07:23.900 membership because we deal with incidents that require or are important for the federal government

01:07:31.740 to respond to these could be floods or hurricanes uh the most recent irgs i've had were have been on

01:07:38.300 um on the situation in haiti uh and how canada can can respond and support uh you know they

01:07:45.020 they we had them uh around uh you know have them around all sorts of different things

01:07:49.740 uh depending on and depending on what they are needed for uh we pick the areas of expertise we

01:07:58.060 want around the table but differently from most committees this is a these are meetings in which

01:08:06.300 the officials sit around the table and are not just expected to participate they actually lead

01:08:13.820 uh the discussions um whether it's deputy ministers or or heads of agencies the commissioner of the

01:08:20.620 rcmp the director ceases what have you um they are giving direct reports ministers are usually if not

01:08:28.460 always there as well but if they speak at all it's at the very end to add a little bit of color or

01:08:35.340 further further input irgs are all about making sure that the government as a whole is hearing

01:08:44.220 directly that i am hearing directly from all these different agencies and all these different

01:08:50.620 inputs into whatever incident we're looking at uh and and then we um and then we establish a plan

01:08:59.740 or or we move forward uh on that it's actually a decision-making body we can make determinations

01:09:05.500 about what we do next but that frame is uh fairly unique amongst those uh amongst our committee

01:09:12.700 structure so that kind of get it collapses that layer between the officials and the ministers a

01:09:17.660 bit so gives yeah directly from from the ministers which is sometimes something that that uh cabinet

01:09:25.420 ministers who are used to getting briefed by their officials and then briefing their colleagues

01:09:30.460 takes a little bit of getting used to when we have a different irg on a different subject with

01:09:35.740 new ministers who aren't usually at irgs it always is a little adjustment for them that no no no we're

01:09:40.260 hearing from their deputy minister not from them um it's about informing us but it's also about

01:09:46.500 making sure that everyone is on the same page one of the challenges in any government uh is

01:09:54.500 the siloing that happens something that happens in in public safety doesn't necessarily get

01:10:00.260 connected to transport doesn't necessarily get connected as organically as we'd like to

01:10:05.560 immigration and you know various things like that so making sure that everyone's around the table

01:10:11.580 getting on the same page in terms of what's happening with this incident that we're looking

01:10:17.180 at and what we're going to do about it and there's usually okay let's hear the taskings we're going

01:10:23.140 do uh and uh let's check back in in a few days and see see how see how we've done and see where we

01:10:30.180 are again uh irgs rarely happen on a sort of a one-off there's usually a series of them until

01:10:36.420 the incident is is over or has been moved to a different body to uh to weigh in on okay thank

01:10:43.780 you that's helpful and understanding um so we know that the irg that that you convened to deal with

01:10:51.460 this particular problem met first of all three times before invocation and then i think it met

01:10:56.260 daily after that but we're going to focus on that first part on on the 10th the 12th and the 13th

01:11:02.100 and um i'll just fill in a little bit of the narrative so so you don't have to here but we

01:11:06.740 understand that on the 10th what was discussed was two tracks for a potential federal response so at

01:11:12.420 this point i i won't say it had been decided but it was certainly under serious consideration that

01:11:18.180 the federal government might have to act in some way shape or form here and track one was um what

01:11:25.460 can the federal government do under its existing authorities track two was what could we potentially

01:11:30.900 do under any new authorities including the emergencies act and i just want to pause here

01:11:37.380 and ask you one thing which is um in the documents that's sort of maybe not the first but it's

01:11:44.100 certainly the first sort of confirmation official confirmation that the emergencies act was under

01:11:50.100 discussion but we have seen references to the emergencies act here and there in various phone

01:11:55.460 calls or emails or discussions etc and i'm wondering if you can describe if someone asked you

01:12:01.700 um when did the emergencies act come into play as a possibility uh how would you answer that

01:12:07.220 as as an idea um it would have been from the very beginning in the back of our minds as you see a

01:12:16.260 situation that is an emergency is out of control is has a potential for real impact on citizens

01:12:25.940 potential for violence uh real concerns about what's going on not just in ottawa but right

01:12:31.380 across the country at the coots blockade that started up on the same first weekend uh that the

01:12:38.420 ottawa uh occupation did these are the things that um you say okay as we look at a whole range of

01:12:50.100 potential outcomes in this there might be a moment where we have to invoke the emergencies act

01:12:55.140 um it wasn't seriously thought of because i will say certainly in in my thinking right now it was

01:13:02.500 a fairly binary reflection it was oh we might have to invoke the emergencies act there was no

01:13:07.780 reflection of what we would have to invoke the emergencies act to do it was just understanding

01:13:13.860 that if this situation continues and is unable to get under control by anything else the federal

01:13:20.100 government might have to give the provinces more powers give police more powers do something to put

01:13:26.260 an end to this so whenever we said yeah we're looking at all options it would have been in the

01:13:31.860 back of our minds particularly because um i think we're probably the first government that had ever

01:13:39.460 actually leaned in carefully to maybe using the emergencies act as we did in the beginning of the

01:13:45.940 pandemic uh we dusted it off and you know had presentations at cabinet around what the

01:13:52.900 emergencies act was and how it was an update from the previous legislation that existed before and

01:13:59.700 how it was charter compliant and yeah because post 1982 a lot of things needed to change

01:14:04.740 if for the better in our in our country uh with the charter of rights and freedoms so

01:14:09.380 So we got a crash course in the Emergencies Act and the consultations required and all

01:14:17.700 the various steps of it two years before around the pandemic.

01:14:22.740 As I had said during the consultations at that time with the Premiers, I didn't think

01:14:28.480 we needed to use it.

01:14:29.480 I didn't think it was appropriate for us to declare a public welfare emergency, I believe

01:14:34.320 the section is within the Emergencies Act that we would have invoked around the pandemic.

01:14:39.360 there were a lot of people calling for us to do it because it was obviously a national emergency

01:14:43.600 this pandemic particularly in the early days of spring 2020 so we were somewhat versed in

01:14:50.480 this legislation that had never been used seeing this particular um public order situation uh it was

01:15:02.720 a reflection in the back of our minds or my mind anyway i can't speak for everyone that

01:15:07.520 maybe it would end up at this but for the same reason we um were loath to call an irg too soon

01:15:17.520 in the process we knew that it wasn't ours to solve at this point that there were still lots

01:15:24.080 of things that the jurisdiction the police of jurisdiction and various orders could and should

01:15:28.640 be orders of government should could and should be doing to put an end to this so it wasn't until

01:15:33.840 as you say uh the irg of february 10th thursday that we uh said okay um track one you know what

01:15:42.800 more can we do to empower police and and public safety officials to put an end uh to these illegal

01:15:51.920 occupations what more resources can we spend with existing authorities and track two was

01:15:57.520 what could we do that we would have to create new authorities for whether it was through regulation

01:16:05.280 whether it was through passing emergency measures through the house or whether it was using

01:16:10.240 something like the emergency measures act and the key for me in that conversation

01:16:17.520 was it was a shift from that sort of binary frame of

01:16:21.120 no emergencies act or emergencies act because if you think about it the emergencies act itself

01:16:31.360 doesn't do anything except declare an emergency it's it's that it enables government to bring in

01:16:39.440 special temporary measures to deal with the situation so the useful conversations around

01:16:46.240 the emergencies act started on february 10th when i asked the question okay what are the extra tools

01:16:57.840 that we would need to bring in either through legislation or through regulation or in various

01:17:03.520 ways or through the emergencies act that we don't actually have now or what would we do

01:17:10.720 with the emergencies act if we brought it in that we can't otherwise do and that reflection on

01:17:16.880 well what would be the tools actually clarified and and and got the work going perfect example was

01:17:24.480 we had heard consistently throughout that commercial tow truck drivers were not willing

01:17:29.680 uh to come in and remove trucks well the emergencies act perhaps could compel uh truck

01:17:36.720 drivers uh tow truck drivers to uh come and actually fulfill their contracts that are they

01:17:42.640 signed with cities uh to keep the streets clear of of illegally parked cars so that reflection

01:17:50.240 was really the one that started then and the tasking that i gave on that thursday

01:17:55.200 that we would check in again on the saturday uh at the next irg was okay come up with

01:18:02.000 those tools that we could get at that would solve this and then we'll look at whether we

01:18:07.920 need the emergencies act to bring in these tools or can we do it through another way or can we

01:18:12.480 convince the province to do it are there other ways of doing it but let's figure out what are

01:18:16.720 the things that would allow us to get this situation which was out of control back under

01:18:24.240 control okay so that was that was essentially the discussion around the table on the 12th i believe

01:18:29.520 And then the 13th was the big day in terms of deciding as a government whether you were going to take that first step and seriously consider invoking the Emergencies Act.

01:18:42.620 Can you take us through, from your point of view, the chronology essentially of the 13th?

01:18:48.040 We know there was an IRG meeting in the afternoon, I think it was 4.30,

01:18:52.300 and the decision coming out of the IRG was to have a cabinet meeting in the evening

01:18:57.020 to discuss the potential invocation of the Act.

01:19:00.320 So, how did those meetings play out?

01:19:06.760 Pendant le groupe de réponse d'incident de ce dimanche,

01:19:11.260 on a regardé attentivement les mesures proposées,

01:19:16.560 La liste d'outils dont on pourrait se doter pour aider la police, les provinces à non seulement remettre les situations sous contrôle, mais aussi empêcher les situations de revenir.

01:19:36.140 Parce que, si vous avez parlé de cette expression du whack-a-mole, on a vu que les manifestants étaient très habiles à se déplacer, à faire une présence ici, puis ensuite se déplacer pour l'autre,

01:20:00.080 pour réduire leur présence dans une place, pour donner beaucoup de défis aux policiers de pouvoir répondre.

01:20:06.700 Et l'inquiétude, ce n'était pas qu'en mettant toutes nos ressources dans une place,

01:20:12.420 on ne pourrait pas remettre l'ordre dans une situation.

01:20:17.780 C'est qu'en faisant ça, on laissait vulnérable une autre place où ils allaient pouvoir le faire,

01:20:23.460 où une fois qu'on l'a réglé, deux jours plus tard, ils allaient revenir.

01:20:25.820 Donc, il y avait plus une question de, oui, de mettre fin aux occupations illégales, mais aussi de comprendre qu'il fallait les garder clairées jusqu'à ce que la situation se calme réellement à travers le pays.

01:20:42.340 Et donc, pendant cette rencontre du dimanche, on a regardé les différentes propositions,

01:20:49.200 que ce soit les propositions par rapport aux conducteurs de remorques,

01:20:53.980 que ce soit les dispositions pour des zones d'interdiction où tu n'avais pas le droit d'y aller,

01:21:00.180 tu n'avais pas le droit d'y aller pour les besoins de manifester,

01:21:03.340 tu n'avais pas le droit d'amener des enfants, tu n'avais pas le droit de traverser la frontière canado-américaine

01:21:10.400 avec un but de te joindre. Il y avait des mesures que les banques allaient pouvoir geler les comptes de banque des manifestants

01:21:20.160 pendant qu'ils étaient sur le terrain en train de barricader pour les inciter de rentrer chez eux.

01:21:30.180 On a discuté de toutes ces mesures-là. On a regardé, OK, c'est quoi nos options pour amener ces outils-là à être une réalité.

01:21:40.400 Est-ce qu'on peut passer de la législation à la Chambre des communes? Est-ce qu'on peut l'accélérer et demander le consentement unanime ou accélérer le débat pour amener ça rapidement? Est-ce qu'on pourrait le faire en encourageant les provinces d'utiliser plus d'outils?

01:21:58.620 And at that moment, it started to be quite clear that the situation had been so urgent,

01:22:10.680 there was a concern that it could be empiric and gringolier even more elsewhere,

01:22:18.680 that there was an urgency to act and that the tools that we had to quickly bring these specific tools

01:22:28.560 C'était la loi sur les mesures d'urgence.

01:22:58.560 And I'll give you a little framing of it, which is, of course, we know that the declaration of a public order emergency is premised on the existence of a threat to the security of Canada, as defined in the CSIS Act.

01:23:15.360 And we know that CSIS, in the process of assessing the protests, assessed that there was no, the protests did not meet that threshold.

01:23:26.320 They did not constitute a threat to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act.

01:23:31.820 So this is one of...

01:23:32.880 As defined for the CSIS Act.

01:23:36.700 Okay, please.

01:23:38.400 Over to you.

01:23:39.300 The legislation in the 80s that was built brought in a definition of a national, sorry, a threat to national security, imported the words of the CSIS definition.

01:23:58.460 That was a handy definition that was already existing and there, that's how we can define what a national threats to the security of Canadians.

01:24:09.300 uh would be those words in the cesus act are used for the purpose of

01:24:20.980 cesus determining that they have authority to act against an individual a group or a specific plot

01:24:30.100 with for example a wiretap that in order for them to take action in a particular situation

01:24:36.900 that threshold needs to be met of threats to national security and actually be useful if we

01:24:44.300 could pull up uh part c of uh sure sure um you know what we have that one second i will get you

01:24:52.160 a document number but okay sure go ahead do you want or do you not yes i do sorry okay

01:24:58.520 com com dot five zeros nine five four please

01:25:03.460 so here i think this pastes together the the three things so national emergency public order

01:25:15.280 emergency scrolling down you'll see the reference to csesac and there keep scrolling mr clerk just

01:25:22.360 keep going yep there we go good um so in order for CSIS to be able to do a

01:25:35.020 particular operation it has to make meet this matter of threats to the security

01:25:40.240 of Canada and then they can go and do that wiretap this definition within

01:25:51.640 a declaration of public order emergency under the Emergencies Act is about the

01:25:59.120 governor and council finding reasonable grounds that there are threats to the

01:26:05.760 security of Canada sufficient to invoke the the Emergency Measures Act so both

01:26:16.320 the context and the purpose is very different. The people doing the deciding, in the case

01:26:23.240 of the CSIS Act, if this is met as a definition, it's CSIS itself that decides that this is

01:26:30.200 met. There's checks and balances afterwards. But for the purpose of declaration of a public

01:26:36.600 order emergency, it's the governor and council, cabinet and the prime minister making that

01:26:41.520 determination so the context within which we look at this definition is very different from the

01:26:50.560 deliberately narrow frame that cesis is allowed to look at what inputs it can take in what proofs

01:26:56.400 it needs to establish this are very well prescribed so that cesis can be you know

01:27:03.280 so that cesis is responsible in what it does whereas the declaration of public order emergency

01:27:09.360 is open to inputs, sure, from CSIS, but also from the RCMP, also from transport, from immigration,

01:27:19.340 from the whole of government, from the clerk, from the National Security Intelligence Advisor.

01:27:23.560 So within threats to the security of Canada, what we had to determine was,

01:27:31.900 does the situation going on across the country constitute a threat to the security of Canada?

01:27:39.100 Yes or no? And then we looked at particularly C. Are there activities within Canada directed towards or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective?

01:28:09.100 That was what we were looking at. Is that threshold met? Are there activities supporting the threats or acts of serious violence, a threat of serious violence for political or ideological goals?

01:28:26.800 If that threshold was met in our reasoned opinion, then that part of invoking a public order emergency was met.

01:28:37.740 The other part of it is, does it constitute a national emergency?

01:28:41.040 And there's elements on that that I won't get into unless you ask me about.

01:28:43.620 But I was very much focused on was this bar hit, yes or no, for the purposes of invoking the Emergencies Act.

01:28:57.180 There has been a bit of back and forth at this commission on whether these words are different or can be read differently or broader when they're used in a public order emergency than they're used for the CSIS.

01:29:19.520 It's not the words that are different.

01:29:20.820 The words are exactly the same in both cases.

01:29:23.300 The question is, who's doing the interpretation?

01:29:27.180 what inputs come in and what is the purpose of it and the purpose of it for

01:29:32.760 this point was to be able to give us in special temporary measures as defined in

01:29:41.620 the Public Order Emergency Act that would put an end to this national

01:29:46.500 emergency okay so so essentially you're saying that around the table that day

01:29:55.360 Yes.

01:29:56.360 You were looking at the inputs that were given to you by officials and by the ministers

01:30:02.420 and concluded that there was activities within Canada.

01:30:08.360 Threats of serious violence was the key ones.

01:30:11.800 And can you elaborate on what those threats were?

01:30:15.600 What led to that conclusion?

01:30:18.720 And again, we went around the table with officials from all different agencies and heads of departments

01:30:25.220 uh to talk about this there was uh the um militarization of vehicles for example we'd seen

01:30:33.460 uh sorry weaponization of of vehicles we'd seen uh you know cars ramming into police officers

01:30:39.940 or other cars at coots uh we saw an incident like that in um in uh surrey i believe uh we saw

01:30:49.300 trucks uh used as as uh potential weapons certainly in um uh in ottawa with their their

01:30:57.060 presence and unknown uh interiors there was the use of uh children as human shields uh deliberately

01:31:05.620 uh which was a real concern both at the ambassador bridge and the fact that there were kids on

01:31:11.860 wellington street that people didn't know what was in the uh in the trucks whether it was kids

01:31:17.940 whether it was weapons whether it was both police had no way of knowing uh those there was presence

01:31:24.020 of weapons uh at coots as we saw there was a concern around weapons being stolen uh in peterborough

01:31:31.140 uh that we didn't know about 2 000 guns that we didn't know where they had gone at that point

01:31:35.780 uh we later found out that they didn't go there but there was that was a real concern

01:31:39.860 that we had about what was happening to them um there were a number of others as well there was

01:31:45.220 the fact that um police trying to invoice enforce uh laws were met with uh active resistance and put

01:31:56.180 uh a group of 30 police officers trying to uh interdict someone or arrest someone who was

01:32:01.380 carrying a jerry can uh into uh into the site in ottawa uh got swarmed by a hundred people and they

01:32:08.100 had to leave uh because there were threats to their safety and they weren't able to arrest that

01:32:12.340 individual there were layers of danger that ceases kept uh bringing up to us that the presence of

01:32:21.460 people promoting um ideologically motivated violence violent extremism in uh the convoys

01:32:29.860 uh had a danger of triggering not necessarily them to act but lone wolf actors or people who

01:32:38.580 could be radicalized to take actions that were violent we saw increasingly counter protests of

01:32:47.140 people who were trying to take back their city uh who were for example we all saw images of of

01:32:53.380 grandmothers standing uh in residential streets against uh you know massive trucks heading their

01:32:59.460 ways to try and you know prevent them from coming to join the convoy there were all these things that

01:33:06.500 positioned or present presented real threats of serious violence and every input we were getting

01:33:15.780 on that weekend at the irg was that things were not getting better things were getting worse

01:33:24.100 even as it looked like there was a plan for the ambassador bridge to move forward it looked like

01:33:29.860 there was going to be a plan for coots moving forward it wasn't a sense there wasn't a sense

01:33:36.660 that things were dissipating on the contrary we were hearing about fort erie we were hearing

01:33:42.020 about the blue water bridge in sarnia we were hearing about potential blockades in uh in new

01:33:46.500 brunswick we were hearing about uh potentials at lacol we were hearing more convoys and more

01:33:53.380 supporters heading to different places to take action there were things going on in bc and surrey

01:33:58.980 Like, there was a sense that this was a broadly spread thing,

01:34:03.180 and the fact that there was not yet any serious violence that had been noted

01:34:10.940 was obviously a good thing, but we could not say that there was no potential

01:34:18.760 for threats of serious violence, for serious violence to happen over the coming days.

01:34:22.960 We were seeing things escalate, not things get under control.

01:34:27.500 Okay. You mentioned there that the Ambassador Bridge was on its way to resolution in a sense, and Cootes was on its way to resolution. One of the things that's come up in the evidence is that at this juncture, Ottawa could also perhaps have been said to be on its way, perhaps in an earlier stage, to resolution in the sense that a plan, an integrated plan for policing was coming together at that point.

01:34:56.840 And that may not have been something that was clearly expressed on the 13th to the IRG and or cabinet.

01:35:05.960 So first, I wanted to ask you what your understanding of that situation was at the time.

01:35:11.380 First of all, from the beginning, from the approach of the very first weekend, we heard from various authorities and police of jurisdiction, don't worry, we got this.

01:35:24.000 There's a plan.

01:35:24.680 there's a plan and for the second weekend there was a plan and we have a plan for this and it's

01:35:29.460 not going to happen and we've got this we're getting we're getting more resources nope there's

01:35:32.740 a plan we kept hearing there was a plan um and even i mean we heard in in testimony here that

01:35:39.560 there was uh a plan on the 13th that the ottawa police services pulled together um i would

01:35:46.020 recommend people take a look at that actual plan um which wasn't a plan at all it was a talk

01:35:54.620 about using liaison officers to try and shrink the perimeter a little bit but as you look at the

01:36:01.020 annex for you know how the troops are deployed how the police officers are deployed what resources

01:36:05.980 are going to be need every annex is uh to be determined later to be determined later it was

01:36:11.340 not even in the most generous of characterizations a plan for how they were going to end the

01:36:17.740 occupation in ottawa um when the plan did come together and if someone wants to compare

01:36:23.340 the supposed plan on the 13th with the actual plan on the 17th that uh ottawa police services

01:36:29.420 pulled together um you see the crisp difference between these are the types of units we need

01:36:34.540 these are the resources we need this is how we're going to do it this is all the stages of it

01:36:38.460 on the 17th it was not there on the 13th but even beyond that because i'm not

01:36:44.540 fully aware how much of this is hindsight and how much of this was that general sense we got

01:36:49.820 that people continued to say oh no we're going to be able to get this under control i think and we're

01:36:54.780 jumping ahead but you know jason kenny was saying on on uh on the monday morning in our in our first

01:37:00.700 minister's meeting yeah coots is well on its way to being under control we had heard that before

01:37:06.460 and there were fluctuations going on in the various uh in the various sites across the country um

01:37:13.180 it was not enough just to have a plan to clear a couple of lanes it was getting the situation

01:37:25.740 under control so as to prevent a recurrence or a restaging of a protest elsewhere and that was what

01:37:34.940 was very clear from all the all the perspectives around the table that there was not confidence

01:37:42.940 that we were on a track to getting the national emergency under control in the coming days

01:37:50.860 that it was continuing to um to be a situation that was not um being controlled by police by

01:38:01.660 officials okay so uh we will get to the first minister's meeting but let's just finish off

01:38:07.180 on this point with the 13th um in a lot of the evidence that has come out before the commission

01:38:14.380 we see hesitancy and reluctance to invoke the emergencies act so officials advising that this

01:38:20.700 this may make things worse this may inflame tension this may embolden protesters etc um

01:38:26.940 and we also obviously heard from from mr vigno saying and the thesis assessment that there was

01:38:32.140 no threat to the security of canada under the cesus act uh and then we heard mr vigno say but

01:38:38.540 i still thought that the the act was necessary and i conveyed that to the prime minister

01:38:43.420 so can you tell us uh was there consensus on the use of the act did what did what did you hear

01:38:51.980 about whether or not people agreed with this interpretation whether you should vote the act

01:38:57.020 yes there was consensus around the irg table uh on sunday the 13th there is no question about it and

01:39:03.900 and uh director vigno's um answer on that is absolutely consistent uh cesus for example

01:39:13.340 wouldn't feel that they had the capacity to bring in a wiretap against one of the convoy

01:39:20.860 organizers under the CSIS Act because that the tools that they have and the threshold they have

01:39:27.500 to meet for what is a threat to the security of Canada um according to CSIS's evaluation

01:39:35.260 was not was not met and that that was something we heard from the very beginning CSIS uh continued

01:39:41.180 to say from the beginning of the protest we haven't yet under the CSIS Act uh reached a level of

01:39:47.340 threats to canada but the director of cesus is also one of the national security advisors to me

01:39:55.580 and in looking at the frame and scope of the situation we were in uh was very comfortable

01:40:03.020 in saying yeah for the purposes of the cesus act this is not met but for the surf for purposes of

01:40:09.820 the public order emergencies uh act that the governor and council has to make a reasonable

01:40:15.020 decision about we feel that it is met and that was the consensus from officials around the table and

01:40:22.140 again it was about um not even just sort of that binary okay do we declare the emergency you're on

01:40:31.420 it's do we declare a public order emergency so that we can bring in these specific measures

01:40:38.220 and as we went around the table on that and my expectation is and that was a virtual table i

01:40:43.180 believe but my expectation is always if you have significant disagreements this is the time to speak

01:40:50.540 up there was no voice saying hold it we don't think you should do this or i don't think you

01:40:57.580 should do this which does happen from time to time in cabinet meetings and in irgs and

01:41:04.700 And if someone had come up and said, okay, we don't think, us at Transport Canada, we don't think that we should invoke a public order emergency, I would have said, thank you.

01:41:18.380 I would have taken that into account, but I didn't need unanimity or full consensus in order to make the determination in governor of council according to that that we were moving forward.

01:41:32.680 obviously it helped uh and in this case there was consensus around that table that invoking

01:41:39.800 the emergencies act was what we needed to do and when you say that are you speaking of the

01:41:45.000 irg in the afternoon or the eventual cabinet meeting in the in the evening i'm speaking of

01:41:50.040 the irg right now with where we went around the table with officials but we did a similar thing

01:41:55.240 that afternoon uh sorry that evening with the cabinet meeting but i can talk about that a few

01:41:59.960 Yeah, that's the segue. So please, please do. Tell us about the cabinet meeting.

01:42:29.960 on l'espérait, mettre fin à cette situation. Six éléments qu'on n'allait pas pouvoir amener ou invoquer par d'autres processus que l'appel à la loi sur les mesures d'urgence.

01:42:50.480 Il y a eu une bonne discussion autour de la table. Tous les ministres qui voulaient parler ont pu parler et sans partager les délibérations, je peux dire qu'on est sortis avec un consensus clair, que je devais procéder aux prochaines étapes de consultation avec les premiers ministres, avec la possibilité d'invoquer la loi sur les mesures d'urgence.

01:43:19.120 Then, but I could hear the reactions, just as I did before, on the same day with the IRG meeting, that people felt comfortable enough and together enough on this issue.

01:43:45.420 yes we could move on towards the possibility of invoking the act the next day part of the

01:43:56.460 discussion at the cabinet table as well okay yes you made the same consensus then yes what we can

01:44:10.460 loosely called decision day um february 14th and i'm just gonna try and lay out the chronology of

01:44:17.600 that day and then ask you first of all whether that is the that is the correct chronology of

01:44:22.040 the day and then ask you to speak to various parts of it so um the first minister's the decision

01:44:28.520 coming out of cabinet the evening before was to convene a first minister's meeting to have the

01:44:34.260 obligatory consultation under section 25 of the emergencies act before it could be invoked and we

01:44:39.900 know that late that night an invitation was sent out to the premiers to that meeting that invitation

01:44:45.720 did not include the subject of of the meeting and we've heard some some of uh your ministers

01:44:51.180 and officials speak to to why um but in any event so the first minister's meeting was held i believe

01:44:58.780 at 10 15 the following morning on the 14th following that meeting you had a call with

01:45:05.020 opposition leaders i believe and and a call with your own caucus no no um the uh caucus call was

01:45:12.380 before the first minister's meeting thank you okay i wanted to make sure that we shared with

01:45:18.220 our members of caucus who were going to be um involved in very much a part of a government that

01:45:27.900 has uh would invoke the emergency measures act i wanted to let them know before um premiers

01:45:35.740 were consulted uh i wanted to let them know that i was about to consult the premiers but the sense

01:45:40.620 was that uh caucus um would should hear it before the premiers uh heard about that that makes sense

01:45:48.060 okay so caucus call first then first ministers meeting then i think you spoke to opposition

01:45:53.260 leaders uh then around 3 41 pm i said around but we actually know the minute 3 41 pm you receive

01:46:00.380 advice from the clerk and that advice as we know is that they recommend that the clerk recommends

01:46:06.300 that you invoke the emergencies act and shortly thereafter there's a public announcement of it so

01:46:11.660 just unpacking that starting with the caucus call briefly but the focus of this will obviously be

01:46:16.700 the first minister's meeting take us through that day um the caucus call uh was informing them that

01:46:23.340 i was about to go into a first minister's meeting in which i was going to um present them uh with

01:46:31.020 the fact that we were thinking about invoking the emergencies act uh and i shared with them

01:46:37.100 that these were the kinds of things we would be giving police and various new authority various

01:46:50.240 officials and authorities to which tools would be able to move forward with that so I presented it

01:46:55.880 it wasn't a big discussion I wasn't looking for consensus there wasn't a lot of feedback it was

01:47:02.900 just informing them that we were taking this seriously and moving forward and i i dare say

01:47:10.100 the response was uh was very positive uh from uh from our our caucus um then uh the first ministers

01:47:18.740 meeting as i'd mentioned uh earlier uh this was not the first time i talked about the emergencies

01:47:24.580 act with the premiers uh i guess miss telford and i had talked about yesterday i have had many many

01:47:32.340 many uh first ministers meetings uh over the course of the past two years to deal with the

01:47:37.620 pandemic emergency and we have always worked very constructively together and for me

01:47:45.300 being able to sit down with them and highlight that we were seriously considering invoking the

01:47:53.540 emergencies act in order to do the following things uh and i wanted to hear from them and then

01:48:01.140 i went around the around the table across the country uh to hear from each of them on their

01:48:08.820 reflections their inputs their concerns their support their disagreements in some cases

01:48:20.180 but really wanted to hear what it was that they were going to be

01:48:23.780 um what their thinking was on this situation that would uh by definition affect all of them

01:48:31.620 on a situation that was uh to a certain extent affecting all of them um at the end of that

01:48:38.180 meeting i uh reached out to the um opposition leaders uh had conversations with them about

01:48:47.620 what i was reflecting on doing and asked for their support and then

01:48:57.460 started preparing for a potential announcement that afternoon as the note from the clerk came in

01:49:09.460 making the official recommendation to the government that we invoke the emergencies act

01:49:15.540 okay so let me let me start with an initial question taking you back to first thing in

01:49:19.700 the morning had you made up your mind already no um i certainly i was a long way down the road

01:49:30.420 of um realizing that it was um it was probably uh the path we needed to take

01:49:38.580 but I did not make up my mind until the note from the clerk was in front of me and it was in black

01:49:46.600 and white that the public service made a formal recommendation that I invoke the emergencies act

01:49:53.540 if I'd gotten to that point and they had said no we still don't think the threshold is met

01:49:58.940 it is possible that we wouldn't be here today and I would not have invoked it

01:50:07.620 But I don't know.

01:50:09.260 But the fact that when that note came in,

01:50:13.520 I made that final decision with all the conversations,

01:50:17.240 all the inputs and all the feedback that I'd gotten from caucus,

01:50:21.060 from sort of cabinet and from first ministers and opposition leaders

01:50:25.880 and all the officials I'd talked to.

01:50:29.300 That was when I made the decision.

01:50:31.380 So going back to the first minister's meeting then,

01:50:34.520 we understand it lasted about an hour and and all of the premiers had a chance to voice their

01:50:40.280 opinions and their concerns but is there anything they could have said or done at that point to

01:50:45.240 change your mind absolutely um if uh someone had said um listen i hear those six things

01:50:56.600 you're planning on doing you don't need them because these are the tools we're going to use

01:51:03.160 instead we have the power we're going to be able to in ontario do this and we're confident that

01:51:09.800 that will end the situation in ottawa and end the situation at potential blockades for on and keep

01:51:16.040 us safe uh this these you don't need to bring in compelling of tow truck drivers because we've we've

01:51:23.160 figured out how to do it for good we have a plan to put an end to this in a concrete and compelling

01:51:29.960 because I'd heard a lot of plans up until that point.

01:51:32.260 But if I had been convinced that other orders of government

01:51:44.680 or any other law in Canada was sufficient to deal with this emergency,

01:51:53.600 then we wouldn't have met the threshold.

01:51:57.000 because part of the threshold for the Emergencies Act is and is unable to be dealt with under any other measures or laws in Canada.

01:52:05.260 And if they had said convincingly or enough of them had said, no, no, you don't need it because we have it under control,

01:52:11.440 which is to a certain extent what they all said to me when I had this conversation with them around the pandemic.

01:52:18.280 I said, listen, there's a lot of pressure for us to look at the Emergencies Act.

01:52:22.020 Do we need to bring in the Emergencies Act?

01:52:24.100 And they all said, no, don't bring in the Emergencies Act.

01:52:27.000 We've got it under control. We're able to do this in our own jurisdictions, in our healthcare systems. We don't need to do it. Public order emergency is different than public welfare emergency, but that principle was there, and we didn't invoke the Act back in the spring of 2020.

01:52:42.960 So, yes, they could have said things that prevented me, that would have said, okay, let's give it a few more days, or let's not do this at all.

01:52:57.040 They said lots of things, but that threshold that I had personally wasn't met.

01:53:02.980 Okay. And you mentioned, I mean, some of them did express opinions around the lines

01:53:08.800 of, well, we kind of got it under control here. This problem isn't really cropping up

01:53:13.080 here, or it's cropping up here in a way that our law enforcement can deal with. So are

01:53:18.560 you drawing a distinction there between, okay, the premiers may say it's under control here,

01:53:24.560 but that doesn't mean it's under control everywhere. So they would have had to come to you with

01:53:28.180 something that would have solved the big problem as you saw it is that um i think there just would

01:53:34.100 have been a sense that that the measures i was proposing weren't going to be useful or effective

01:53:46.420 and what i heard on the contrary uh was uh concerns that we'd shared that this might

01:53:54.900 inflame the protesters to declare a public order emergency and bring in martial law um which was

01:54:02.420 one of the concerns or that they would interpret it as that of course it wasn't martial law and

01:54:06.980 it did not suspend people's fundamental rights and freedoms um but it it at the same time um

01:54:15.060 they expressed these concerns which we had shared but i was balancing off against okay um

01:54:21.140 There is a danger of further inflaming the situation, but the situation was already pretty inflamed,

01:54:29.320 and my concern was if we continue to not do anything, are enough citizens going to start counter-protesting

01:54:36.460 and taking things into their own hands at various places across the country

01:54:40.160 that we do get into dangerous, violent situations?

01:54:44.460 Even Premier Moe, I believe, we could pull it up, but I think people have seen it a few times, highlighted that he didn't have any real, that the six elements we had seemed reasonable enough, but he was in disagreement with the invocation of the Emergencies Act, that those six elements we should maybe move forward with in some way, but without doing the Emergencies Act.

01:55:09.020 That was something that we'd looked at trying to do as well.

01:55:12.300 But it was clear that in order to do those, bring in those tools,

01:55:17.640 the Emergencies Act was the vehicle that was created for that purpose

01:55:22.480 so that we could respond to a national emergency.

01:55:25.620 Jason Kenney, I believe, said,

01:55:27.060 I'm not going to quibble with the use of the Act,

01:55:29.760 but we don't need it here in Alberta.

01:55:32.540 And that was something that came out a number of times,

01:55:36.140 even by those who were supporting it, said,

01:55:39.020 yeah you do what you need to do don't think we need it here but i know this is a um this is a

01:55:44.620 situation where you should probably do it or can you not do it uh in my jurisdiction and just do

01:55:51.900 it for ontario and that was certainly something that that i uh i had reflected on and certainly

01:55:58.300 reflected on further through that conversation but the reality is there were um pop-ups and

01:56:06.060 and troubling reports right across the country that we were getting from all of our various inputs

01:56:14.620 there was a financing of these convoys that was coming from every corner of the country and

01:56:20.940 internationally these were things that were generalized across the country and and therefore

01:56:28.060 required a use of the Emergencies Act.

01:56:31.620 Par exemple, le Premier ministre Legault

01:56:34.220 a exprimé...

01:56:35.820 Premier Legault expressed some concern.

01:56:40.320 He didn't want to have the RCMP suddenly

01:56:44.700 take over all the police interventions

01:56:50.380 and operations in Quebec

01:56:51.480 when he thought he didn't need that

01:56:54.020 and I was able to reassure him.

01:56:56.040 And it's something that I actually

01:56:57.420 incorporated in my my communication subsequently that it was there to be

01:57:07.260 used if necessary but if for instance there was a blockade at lacol and the

01:57:14.100 SQ is perfectly able to deal with it like they they responded very well at

01:57:21.680 the second weekend at an attempted convoy in Quebec City.

01:57:29.440 The RCP was only there to be a support if necessary, and that was the framework.

01:57:40.960 So it was a very useful conversation, and I heard a lot of points of view.

01:57:50.900 It was a good thing for me to be able to hear them, even with different opinions, and just to reassure what I was doing.

01:58:04.580 This entire part is the last question I want to ask you about that day, Prime Minister.

01:58:09.460 So at 3.41, you received the decision note from the clerk.

01:58:13.420 We call it the invocation memo.

01:58:15.160 Technically, it's a decision note.

01:58:18.520 Presumably, you read it.

01:58:19.860 Yes.

01:58:20.140 Okay. And was there anything in it that surprised you? Was that the advice you were expecting to get from the clerk or was it?

01:58:28.500 it was the advice that was consistent with the consensus around the table the day before

01:58:35.540 at the irg you know the clerk and the national security and intelligence advisor and the

01:58:42.420 deputy clerk and all the heads of departments and agencies had had a chance to weigh in

01:58:49.380 on on the various measures and on the invocation and there was a clear consensus coming out of

01:58:57.220 there that this is what we should do but it was a big thing not a small thing to have the head of

01:59:06.020 the public service formally recommend the invocation of the emergencies act and the

01:59:13.140 declaration of a public order emergency um it's not something that had ever been done in canada before

01:59:21.540 it was certainly not something that we undertook to do lightly

01:59:24.580 And as a Prime Minister, I get to sign off and agree with these notes, or in some cases disagree with them.

01:59:41.420 And that was a moment that I took with the weight of the decision I was about to take.

01:59:47.100 And I reflected briefly on, first of all, the reassurance that it gave me that the entire system, all the inputs in the system had come up to the clerk of the Privy Council, the top public servant in Canada, impartial, professional public service, making the recommendation to move forward on this was essential to me.

02:00:13.660 but I also reflected on okay what if I don't sign it what if I say okay we now

02:00:24.100 have advice from the professional public service to invoke a public order

02:00:28.960 emergency and I decide you know what let's give it a few days where the

02:00:39.160 The professional public service had made a determination that the thresholds were met, that the use of it was appropriate and, you know, responsible, and the measures were the right ones that we were going to put in it.

02:00:54.460 And I said, no, you know what, let's wait and see another few days, another week to see if we really need to do it.

02:01:03.660 First of all, what if the worst had happened?

02:01:09.160 those following days what if um someone had gotten hurt what if a police officer had been

02:01:15.160 put in a hospital what if uh when i had an opportunity to do something

02:01:22.120 i had waited and we had unthinkable happen over the coming days even though there was all this

02:01:29.160 warning that it was possibly coming um i would have worn that in a way that we would certainly

02:01:35.160 be talking about in a forum such as this but more than that

02:01:44.600 the responsibility of a prime minister is to make the tough calls and keep people safe

02:01:52.600 and this was a moment where the collective advice of cabinet of the public service

02:02:02.760 and my own inclination was that this was a moment to do something that we needed to do to keep

02:02:13.380 Canadians safe. And knowing full well that this was an inevitable consequence of me signing,

02:02:22.060 I agree, on this note, I was very comfortable that we were at a moment where this was the

02:02:30.040 right thing to do. And we did it. And it is a certain amount of comfort that, first of

02:02:45.580 all, the system is working as it should, that people who are defending civil liberties are

02:02:50.060 able to say, you really should be careful about doing this, maybe you shouldn't have

02:02:53.300 done it, that we have a system pushing back on this, because it's a big thing, not a small

02:02:57.060 thing to do this but that also we were able to solve the situation with it that there was no loss

02:03:08.660 of life there was no uh you know serious violence that we were able to get neighborhoods back under

02:03:17.380 control border border services opened and um there haven't been a recurrence of these kinds

02:03:26.740 of illegal occupations uh since then i'm not going to pretend that it's the only thing that could

02:03:32.020 have done it but it did do it and that colors the conversations we're having now uh with the fact

02:03:41.060 that these could be very different conversations and i am absolutely absolutely serene and confident

02:03:50.820 that i made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation mr commissioner definitely good

02:03:56.980 time for a break okay so we'll take the uh morning break we'll take uh 15 minutes please

02:04:03.220 the commission is in recess for 15 minutes

02:04:11.060 Thank you.

02:04:41.060 Thank you.

02:05:11.060 Thank you.

02:05:41.060 Thank you.

02:06:11.060 Thank you.

02:06:41.060 Thank you.

02:07:11.060 Thank you.

02:07:41.060 Thank you.

02:08:11.060 Thank you.

02:08:41.060 Thank you.

02:09:11.060 Thank you.

02:09:41.060 Thank you.

02:10:11.060 Thank you.

02:10:41.060 Thank you.

02:11:11.060 Thank you.

02:11:41.060 Thank you.

02:12:11.060 Thank you.

02:12:41.060 Thank you.

02:13:11.060 Thank you.

02:13:41.060 Thank you.

02:14:11.060 Thank you.

02:14:41.060 Thank you.

02:15:11.060 Thank you.

02:15:41.060 Thank you.

02:16:11.060 Thank you.

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02:17:11.060 Thank you.

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02:18:11.060 Thank you.

02:18:41.060 Thank you.

02:19:11.060 Thank you.

02:19:41.060 Thank you.

02:20:11.060 Order votre.

02:20:41.060 The Commission has reconvened that Commissioner.

02:20:48.060 I mentioned before the break that you thought it was a good thing that commissions like

02:20:59.600 this one are here to challenge your decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. I'm about

02:21:06.820 put that to the test because as you can imagine uh that decision has come under a lot of criticism

02:21:13.140 and we've heard a lot of that criticism over the last six weeks of these hearings so i'm going to

02:21:18.740 put to you some of the criticisms that we've heard and i'd like to hear your answers on them

02:21:23.860 um the first one is well actually the first one was that the threshold wasn't met but i think

02:21:28.980 we've covered that we don't need to go over that one again um the second one is that invoking the

02:21:35.220 emergency emergencies act was executive overreach it's an anti-democratic act um

02:21:48.020 it exists because it was debated and voted on in parliament many years ago but

02:21:58.420 but duly written into the books and the laws of Canada

02:22:02.740 as a tool available for a situation around emergencies like this.

02:22:13.360 It requires...

02:22:15.800 They're written for situations where the emergency or the urgency

02:22:21.320 requires a government to have tools to put into place

02:22:24.760 in unforeseen circumstances that can't be anticipated years or decades in advance.

02:22:35.340 But that's why it was an important debate when it was brought in.

02:22:39.680 And that's why there are mechanisms afterwards to ensure that it was not used erroneously or lightly.

02:22:52.280 first mechanisms votes a vote in the house next one a parliamentary committee a design to look

02:22:59.400 into it the third one and most importantly this process itself which um is a really important one

02:23:06.680 that i knew from the moment i invoked that we were going to end up in a room such as this doing this

02:23:14.600 work and i would have to explain and we as a government would have to explain and justify

02:23:21.960 this decision to canadians because the use of special temporary emergency powers is something

02:23:32.520 that canadians need to be reassured is within the rules and the principles of our democracy and

02:23:42.440 that's exactly what this is do you think the accountability mechanisms work is this

02:23:49.560 is this a proper check on that power in your view sitting in your chair right now um sitting in this

02:23:56.920 chair and having watched uh the questions posed of officials and ministers and now me i can say

02:24:06.120 that it's not something that any any government would undertake likely this is a serious process

02:24:14.120 where there is a serious challenge function being exercised as it should be

02:24:21.560 as to whether it's the best way of doing things this law was brought in almost 30 years ago

02:24:31.560 there's always ways of reflecting on doing it differently or better

02:24:34.840 but that'll be the will of the house and that'll be based on perhaps recommendations by the

02:24:39.240 commission but um i think this process works okay um the second or another criticism that's been

02:24:49.160 leveled or challenge that's been made is that it wasn't really necessary the situation would have

02:24:55.240 resolved itself and in the end the way things played out the declaration was made the 14th

02:25:01.080 the orders came in the 15th and then by the 23rd it was it was revoked and everything was solved

02:25:07.000 and many of the measures put in were never even used so how do you respond to that you didn't

02:25:12.600 actually have to do it it wasn't a necessary measure at the time um it's hard to prove a

02:25:19.240 hypothetical uh that if we hadn't done it um things could have been resolved uh perhaps

02:25:27.320 perhaps they would have gotten much worse my role was to make what was the responsible call

02:25:40.580 in keeping Canadians safe the act was used in many different ways and far from being as you

02:25:50.840 perhaps suggest a proof point that it wasn't needed that it was only in place for such a

02:25:56.720 period of time I think that goes to the fact that it was needed and it was

02:26:03.920 effective in actually doing with as light a touch as we thought we could

02:26:11.480 have a resolution to this to this ongoing situation and emergency okay

02:26:21.680 And there's also an argument made that this invocation, you were dealing with an act that has never been invoked before, and now it has been.

02:26:31.660 And there's a possibility that this invocation of the act will then open the floodgates, in a sense, to the act being used again and again and again,

02:26:40.720 in particular because and we have your point on this but you invoked it in a circumstance where

02:26:48.080 the threat to the security of canada had not been found by cesus so does this in effect open the

02:26:54.160 floodgates to the emergencies act being used by a decision by the executive in all kinds of

02:27:02.480 circumstances but cesus isn't the decision maker in a matter of public order emergencies

02:27:10.720 the use of the definition in the cesus act as i said before has two very different contexts from

02:27:22.720 the use of it by cesus and the use of it in invocation of a public order emergency context

02:27:28.560 is different the purpose is different the decision maker uh is different um the the the

02:27:36.320 requirements around it the inputs are different um and the fact that the director of cesus

02:27:43.920 while consistently saying it doesn't yet meet the cesus threshold for cesus to act

02:27:50.880 in wiretapping people or whatever it is it is still something that is necessary

02:27:56.800 for a public order emergency but do you worry about the floodgates aspect of this but having

02:28:01.760 done this you've now maybe unleashed the kraken um i think first of all the excellent work

02:28:15.520 this commission and all the across the examiners have been doing over the past number of weeks

02:28:22.160 uh highlights that it's not something to be undertaken lately um and i didn't need to have

02:28:27.840 seen this commission to consider this very much to be a a measure of last resort um this wasn't

02:28:34.800 something we were eager to do um and i dare say that future governments um are likely to

02:28:46.640 look at this experience and say yeah no it's not really not something we want to go through

02:28:50.320 lightly but the law is on the books to assist in dealing with national

02:29:01.240 emergencies and the determination was made by the governor and council by the

02:29:10.360 professional public service that the thresholds were met and that this was

02:29:16.420 necessary and regardless of any setting of precedence um i think it would be the worst

02:29:25.620 thing for me to say even though the thresholds have been met even though it is needed and necessary

02:29:33.300 we're not going to do it because someone might abuse it or overuse it in the years to come

02:29:40.580 when there's a national emergency and serious threats of violence to canadians and you have

02:29:45.540 a tool that you should use how would i explain it to the family of a police officer who was killed

02:29:51.540 or a a grandmother who got run over stopping trying to stop a truck or or a protester who was

02:29:58.740 killed uh if i hadn't used the tools if uh one of the protesters uh one of the occupiers had been

02:30:06.820 uh had been killed uh in a violent clash with someone else um getting this situation under

02:30:13.780 control and protecting the safety of all canadians is a priority on the same theme but slightly

02:30:22.580 different um the act was invoked here in response to to a protest and protest is a very important

02:30:30.980 part of of uh functioning democracy and you touched on this on one of your answers before

02:30:36.340 the break but does this open the door then to to the emergencies act being regularly used as

02:30:42.500 as a tool to quell protest because protest is not necessarily clean it's it's protest can be messy

02:30:48.580 and it can be problematic and it can interfere at times with critical infrastructure we think

02:30:53.860 of indigenous protests environmental protest so what stops this from being used against that

02:31:02.900 um again the checks and balances we have and the need to demonstrate

02:31:09.460 and meet a high threshold. But also from experience over the past seven years, we've seen many

02:31:17.940 protests and disruptions across this country, including protests of, as you say, critical

02:31:25.080 infrastructure and economic – of economic importance. And it never occurred to me or to

02:31:33.280 the government to invoke the Emergencies Act around any of those. Now, your point around

02:31:39.200 And maybe future governments will run to it as a tool now that the seal has been broken.

02:31:47.560 But I have greater faith in Canadians and in our institutions than the fact that we

02:31:57.740 might sort of shrug as our fundamental rights are casually brushed aside in the name of

02:32:06.180 political expediency or a national emergency that actually wouldn't be one.

02:32:16.640 Another criticism that has leveled is that while the protests may have gotten, can we

02:32:22.680 say, out of hand or snowballed and been extremely disruptive, they weren't the actions of the

02:32:28.420 small minority, but a real expression of frustration, of legitimate frustration on behalf of a significant

02:32:35.740 number of Canadians who had been through, either suffered from or felt aggrieved by

02:32:42.420 years of public health measures. And in response to that, they wanted to engage, and they wanted

02:32:53.560 you to speak to them, and they wanted to hear directly from their federal government, and

02:32:57.200 that did not happen. So do you have an answer to that?

02:33:00.860 I think, first of all, we heard them. We knew exactly what they were asking for.

02:33:11.240 They were very, very clear that they wanted an end to mandates.

02:33:16.180 The convoy protesters were expressing their disagreement with very specific public policies,

02:33:25.500 that they were very vocal, both in mainstream communications

02:33:32.260 and through social media on what they wanted,

02:33:36.240 and they were very much heard.

02:33:38.420 They had political parties in the previous election

02:33:42.020 very much carrying those messages and presenting them to Canadians

02:33:48.540 as part of the options that Canadians had to choose in that previous election.

02:33:52.160 So people were well aware of the opinions and concerns and perspective of those individuals.

02:34:05.480 But it was clear that it wasn't that they just wanted to be heard.

02:34:12.080 They wanted to be obeyed.

02:34:14.180 They wanted us to change public policy, public health policy designed to help Canadians

02:34:20.540 and were going to occupy locations across this country

02:34:25.260 and interfere with the lives of Canadians

02:34:27.240 until such a decision was taken.

02:34:30.840 And I can't help but have noticed

02:34:35.000 that when Premier Kenney in Alberta

02:34:39.460 did during the course of these convoy occupations

02:34:46.880 remove a number of mandates instead of decreasing the amount of concern.

02:34:55.080 The convoy at Coutts, the occupation at Coutts, seemed to be emboldened and say,

02:35:01.380 look, it's starting to work, let's keep going, instead of actually de-escalating.

02:35:06.320 So I am very aware that expressing concern and disagreement around positions of public policy

02:35:15.440 is the right and is to be encouraged by any Canadian who wants to.

02:35:23.840 But the occupation and destabilization of and disruption of the lives of so many Canadians

02:35:35.300 and refusal to maintain a lawful protest

02:35:45.060 is not all right um one thing we haven't talked about yet is it i assume you're familiar with the

02:35:53.780 section 58 report to parliament explaining the the reasons for for invoking the emergencies act

02:36:00.020 if we look at that report much of it focuses on the economic consequences of the protests and the

02:36:06.420 economic disruptions and the economic the threats to economic security um and we've you've spoken

02:36:12.420 this morning about how the threshold for invoking the emergencies was met because there were threats

02:36:17.620 of serious violence but we haven't really addressed where economic security fits into

02:36:22.900 this picture so i'd like to hear you on that i think it's a piece of it obviously uh if people

02:36:29.140 are facing losses of income, if we're seeing massive disruption in a country's economy,

02:36:37.900 that will have and that could have real impacts on the stability and security of individuals

02:36:43.120 within that country. But it was an additional concern on the situation. It wasn't the primary

02:36:53.140 or the foundational one. Our job in here was to make sure we were keeping Canadians safe

02:36:58.200 and countering the threats of serious violence

02:37:00.660 that the occupations represented.

02:37:03.440 And that's what we focused on.

02:37:05.660 The last question I want to ask you, Prime Minister,

02:37:07.540 is on the question of trust in public institutions.

02:37:12.460 We know you've said that part of your rationale

02:37:14.960 for invoking the Emergencies Act

02:37:17.340 and for reacting to what you were seeing around you

02:37:19.840 was you were seeing a loss of confidence

02:37:22.060 or a loss of faith in Canada's public institutions.

02:37:26.560 that factored into your thinking against that is put that this action has destroyed a lot of

02:37:33.280 people's faith in their public institutions because it was seen as an executive overreach

02:37:38.160 so what is your response to that how do you see this having affected one way or the other

02:37:44.560 um i think we saw during the past couple of years and beyond that in the times we're living in

02:37:52.720 that people's faith in their institutions and in their democracy is really really important

02:37:59.360 in during the pandemic one of the things we knew that was really important was if we wanted people

02:38:05.760 to follow public health advice if we wanted them to stay safe during the pandemic and stay home

02:38:12.960 during those first weeks of of pan-canadian lockdown um we needed to be delivering income

02:38:20.560 supports supports for small businesses support so people could hang on and know that as they did the

02:38:27.440 things that kept themselves and their families safe their institutions were there to support them

02:38:33.840 and building up that confidence in institutions is really important and when people across this

02:38:40.320 country we're noting uh that our police can't even um maintain order in our capital city uh

02:38:53.200 that we cannot maintain the flow of essential goods and services over our most important border

02:39:00.160 crossing that armed protesters at coots in alberta were able to defy the police for so long um

02:39:16.560 people's faith in our country's institutions able to do the basic things around keeping them safe

02:39:25.280 gets eroded, and that is something that one has to take very seriously, that I took very, very seriously.

02:39:33.280 Mr. Commissioner, those are my questions.

02:39:37.280 Okay, thank you very much. We're going to now move into the cross-examinations.

02:39:47.280 So I'd like to call on first the CCLA, please.

02:39:55.280 Good afternoon, Prime Minister. My name is Eva Krajewska, and I'm councillor for the

02:40:10.160 Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Prime Minister, I wanted to start off with a quick

02:40:17.940 chronology leading up to the invocation of the emergencies act um on february 13th you meet with

02:40:25.620 the irg around 4 p.m correct yes and then you meet with cabinet the evening of the 13th correct

02:40:32.820 yes and at that time cabinet cabinet delegates to you the ultimate decision to invoke the

02:40:39.460 emergencies act and clerk charrette characterized this as lefted at referendum to the prime minister

02:40:46.020 correct yes and you consult with your caucus the morning of the 14th correct yes and then with the

02:40:52.980 first ministers the morning sorry it was more of an informing caucus than consulting with them but

02:40:58.420 yes okay that's fine and then you consult with the first ministers also the morning of the 14th

02:41:05.380 you speak to mr jagmeet singh and uh the leader of the opposition miss bergen that same day

02:41:12.580 and you announced the invocation of the EA at a 4.30 press conference that afternoon, correct?

02:41:20.060 Yes.

02:41:20.760 Right. And so the Emergencies Act is invoked on February 14th,

02:41:26.880 and then the measures that are put in place under the Emergencies Act are enacted on February 15th, correct?

02:41:33.940 Yes.

02:41:34.260 And those, if I can put them as two buckets, the two buckets of measures that are invoked on the 15th,

02:41:41.680 The first are, there is now a prohibition on public assembly that may lead to a breach of the peace, correct?

02:41:49.480 And the second are various economic measures that include the freezing of accounts of anyone who is involved in that public assembly that may lead to a breach of the peace, correct?

02:42:00.920 Yes.

02:42:01.600 Right.

02:42:02.480 And now, going back a little bit, you spoke briefly about Windsor.

02:42:07.680 the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge, that was a significant event that was one of the events that

02:42:16.220 led to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, correct? It was one of many, but yes. It was one

02:42:22.120 of many. And you understand that the police, both the Windsor Police Service and the OPP,

02:42:28.600 started to clear that block starting on February 12th? Yes. And that continued on February 13th?

02:42:36.600 Yes.

02:42:37.440 And I believe WPS, Windsor Police Service,

02:42:41.160 tweeted that the Windsor Ambassador Bridge

02:42:45.400 was cleared at 01200 on February 14th.

02:42:50.160 That sounds right.

02:42:51.860 Now, with respect to Coutts,

02:42:53.340 that was another blockade of a border

02:42:56.660 that was causing you and the government

02:42:59.340 a significant concern, correct?

02:43:01.100 Yes.

02:43:01.900 And you were informed by Premier Kenney

02:43:04.260 on February 14th in the morning,

02:43:06.800 that the RCMP had started to make arrests

02:43:09.720 the night before, correct?

02:43:11.060 Yes.

02:43:11.900 And that, in his words,

02:43:13.600 the situation has been secured

02:43:16.140 and they will now proceed with broader arrests

02:43:18.360 and secure the border.

02:43:19.420 You remember that?

02:43:20.260 Yes.

02:43:21.500 And in Alberta,

02:43:23.100 Alberta is one of the provinces that had in place

02:43:26.760 or has in place a critical infrastructure legislation

02:43:30.160 that protects critical infrastructure

02:43:32.000 from blockades, including highways.

02:43:34.260 correct yes now ottawa ottawa the ottawa demonstrations in the blockade they don't

02:43:40.900 get removed until later in the week of february 15th correct correct and for the purpose of that

02:43:47.860 operation the rcmp the opp and the ops they form a joint command yes and prime minister you agree

02:43:57.860 that the emergencies act and the orders enacted under the emergencies act there was nothing in

02:44:04.020 in those order that created the joint command no right yes i agree that that the emergencies act

02:44:14.100 did not address creation of joint commands although it did allow for the easy deputization

02:44:22.980 of rcmp officers to enforce municipal bylaws and municipal rules without having to go through

02:44:32.020 the usual processes that are required if they want to do that, which allowed for a greater

02:44:40.320 integration. Correct. It did away with the administrative process that was taking some

02:44:47.200 time of having the RCMP enforce local bylaws. So it did facilitate the coming together of those

02:44:53.100 three forces. But the joint command in and of itself, that was something that the police

02:44:58.000 could have created and could have done

02:44:59.980 without the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

02:45:02.180 Yes.

02:45:02.880 Right.

02:45:03.620 And we heard evidence from Commissioner Lucky of the RCMP

02:45:08.780 that she had signed off on a plan to enforce

02:45:13.420 and remove the protesters in Ottawa on February 13th

02:45:18.020 that she had confidence in,

02:45:19.700 that she, the OPP, and the OPS had confidence in.

02:45:23.300 Did you hear that testimony?

02:45:25.860 No, I disagree with that.

02:45:28.000 Okay, you disagree with that?

02:45:29.740 Yes, I do not believe that the plan that was either signed off on supposedly by the RCMP

02:45:36.940 or presented by the Ottawa Police Services on the 13th was, in any real regards,

02:45:44.900 an actual plan for clearing the protests.

02:45:48.240 And is this a plan that you saw or that you were just spoken to about?

02:45:52.540 I was spoken to about. I did not see it myself.

02:45:54.260 Okay. And were you spoken to about it by Commissioner Luckey or by Minister Mendocino?

02:45:58.580 I don't remember.

02:45:59.660 You don't remember.

02:46:00.160 But as of February 13th, your impression was that the plan that was in place at that time was not one that you or the RCMP had confidence in?

02:46:11.680 It was not one that we had confidence in, no.

02:46:14.580 Okay. All right. I will leave it there because I think there are other parties here that understand that better than I do.

02:46:23.860 okay so in terms of the legal tools that were available in ottawa uh we heard evidence from

02:46:30.980 superintendent burnier who was the event commander for the ottawa police services you're familiar

02:46:37.220 with that yes okay he testified that he did not communicate to anyone that he needed or the ops

02:46:44.580 needed additional tools in order to implement their plan did you hear that evidence uh in in

02:46:50.580 hindsight yes during this process during this process but at the time you did not hear from

02:46:56.980 ops or superintendent bernie that the ops required additional legal tools or legal resources

02:47:04.020 um what we saw consistently was uh the

02:47:09.460 the occupation was continuing and the the ability of the police to resolve it was not was not there

02:47:25.700 right and you spoke about that earlier with miss chowdhury that both you

02:47:29.300 the government and i think both uh clerk charrette and deputy clerk juan all expressed the view that

02:47:36.740 the view or even frustration that the police had not been using the legal tools available

02:47:43.860 to them to remove the demonstration or had not been able to use or had not been able to use those

02:47:49.060 tools yes okay and uh prime minister brenda lucky the commissioner of the rcmp also on the on the

02:47:57.940 13th she was of the view that existing legal tools had not been exhausted and she communicated this

02:48:04.340 to the chief of staff of minister to minister mendoza i was not aware of that at the time uh

02:48:11.540 as we went around the virtual table at the irg that day um the consensus from everyone including

02:48:20.580 the uh commissioner of the rcmp uh was clear that there that we were advancing uh on these uh extra

02:48:28.660 tools um and i as i said i don't disagree with that assessment that not all tools had been used

02:48:38.660 that was part of the problem that not all tools were being used uh to uh end uh this occupation

02:48:45.620 right and uh prime minister we talked about the threshold for invoking a national emergency you

02:48:51.380 spoke about that briefly in um your examination in chief and you understand that the other than

02:48:58.900 the cease then the threshold in the ceases act part of the test is whether the the matter exceeds

02:49:05.860 both the capacity and the authority of a province to deal with the matter you understand that yes

02:49:12.180 and deputy clerk drawing said that authority refers to legal authority and capacity refers to

02:49:19.940 operational capacity and you would agree with that okay yes and when you i'm taking you back

02:49:27.540 now to your press conference at 4 30 on the 14th at that press conference you specifically referred

02:49:36.660 to the fact that there were serious challenges to law enforcement's ability to effectively enforce

02:49:43.460 the law you remember that yes and that the emergencies act will be used to strengthen

02:49:48.740 and support law enforcement agencies at all levels of the country you remember saying that yes and

02:49:54.180 that the police will be given more tools to restore order in places where public assemblies can

02:49:59.300 constitute illegal and dangerous activities yes and so at that time that was one or one of the

02:50:06.900 main justifications that you stated publicly for the invocation of the emergencies act yes

02:50:12.340 and that was again because many of your ministers and many of the people in the public service had

02:50:21.940 expressed frustration with the police inability to exercise those legal tools no it wasn't just

02:50:30.340 because people had expressed frustration um it was real concern as you mentioned that a number

02:50:38.020 of places were moving in the right direction in terms of resolving the situation at Coutts,

02:50:45.620 resolving the situation at the Ambassador Bridge.

02:50:48.220 There was a very real and present concern that it is one thing to clear a lane or two,

02:50:55.000 it is another thing to keep a border location or otherwise open.

02:51:02.220 And what we had seen was intentions for the convoy to pop up again at the Blue Water Bridge

02:51:07.860 and sarnia at fort erie there was discussion of the call there were more activities starting in

02:51:13.300 surrey and bc at other border crossings there was a ongoing concern that it wasn't just about

02:51:20.100 ending the places that were there it was ensuring that they simply didn't shift to another locale

02:51:26.980 because many of these uh convoy uh participants had come a long way across the country and were

02:51:35.380 mobile enough to go to another nearby location and so you're you're you're in a sense making sure

02:51:41.300 it was almost preventative preventative in terms of we've removed them and we want to prevent them

02:51:46.420 from relocating and restaging at another location would that be fair yes that was a concern but at

02:51:52.580 the same time there was very much a concern that it be temporary that we brought in that we not

02:51:58.340 keep the emergencies act in place for a minute longer than necessary and when the uh rcmp suggested

02:52:05.620 that they wanted it in place for three weeks or they would need it in place for up to three weeks

02:52:09.780 uh you know we we took that very seriously as a request but we ended up saying no uh we're going

02:52:15.140 to end it as quickly as we can and we did prime minister you spoke about how you are advised that

02:52:21.140 it would be impermissible for the government to direct the police and that was a line that you

02:52:25.700 and your staff and your ministers understood very clearly correct yes we were very careful about that

02:52:30.900 you're very careful about that but you'd agree that when you invoke the emergencies act and you

02:52:35.540 very publicly say to the police these are tools that you now have that you are publicly signaling

02:52:42.660 this is the road we want you to walk down now and and use these tools in order to deal with

02:52:47.220 of these demonstrators. Do you agree with that? We were very clearly saying that we need to restore

02:52:55.620 enforcement of the law and we need to restore public order. But as I said clearly a little

02:53:01.240 earlier, in the situation of a theoretical blockade at Lacalle, I was very clear with

02:53:07.580 the Premier of Quebec and indeed in communications that if the public order emergency tools weren't

02:53:14.900 necessary they didn't need to use them and and quebec did not invoke their own emergencies act

02:53:20.740 correct they did not uh i'm not sure but i i'll thank your word for it but i don't think quebec

02:53:25.380 invoked their emergencies act for the purpose of the thing uh for the convoy now my last area of

02:53:30.580 question uh prime minister is with respect to the cesus act and its integration into the

02:53:36.900 uh emergencies act i under so you you've stated under the cesus act when cesus determines that

02:53:44.100 they are going to use surveillance on a person they need to meet the left sec the threshold at

02:53:51.300 section two correct yes and that's because the surveillance of one person without other legal

02:53:57.300 authority is something that is very serious and that requires a high legal threshold correct

02:54:02.100 Now, I understand your evidence that for the purpose of the Emergencies Act, we are dealing with a different context, yes, a different purpose, and we're dealing with a different decision maker, correct?

02:54:15.860 But I would put to you that when invoking the Emergencies Act, that threshold, the level of threshold of the security threat that must be met, cannot be any lower than it is when CSIS is proposing to surveil one person.

02:54:35.800 That the threshold is no different. Do you agree with that?

02:54:39.140 Yes, I do.

02:54:40.220 Thank you, Prime Minister. Those are my questions.

02:54:45.860 Okay, next is the Canadian Constitution Foundation.

02:54:55.860 Commissioner, my friend has asked to switch spots.

02:55:00.860 I see that.

02:55:01.860 We've advised the parties. Yes, I am not Mr. Kittredge, and no parties have objected.

02:55:08.860 Okay, well, in the spirit of cooperation, that's fine with me.

02:55:13.860 Thank you, sir.

02:55:14.860 And have you given up your time on the Canadian Constitution?

02:55:17.820 Oh, no, not at all.

02:55:20.260 Just want to be clear.

02:55:22.780 I hope spring's eternal, but I'm afraid not.

02:55:25.100 Okay.

02:55:27.120 All right.

02:55:28.040 Well, good morning, Mr. Prime Minister.

02:55:31.800 I'd like to quickly circle back.

02:55:33.680 Could you introduce me?

02:55:34.580 Oh, I'm sorry.

02:55:35.520 Particularly given my mistake.

02:55:38.680 I'm Rob Kittredge for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms,

02:55:42.160 and we share standing at these hearings with the Democracy Fund and Citizens for Freedom.

02:55:48.260 I'd like to circle back to a bit of a constitutional conversation I had the other day.

02:55:56.900 Cabinet confidentiality, the principle that members of Cabinet are free to express their opinions on issues before Cabinet,

02:56:03.700 fully in private meetings and discussions with you and their Cabinet colleagues.

02:56:07.680 Are you familiar with that principle?

02:56:10.220 Yes, I am.

02:56:10.720 and the principle of uh cabinet solidarity uh where once decisions are presented to the public

02:56:17.600 or to parliament they are collective decisions of cabinet and can't be repudiated or criticized by

02:56:23.360 your ministers and if they were to do that they would have to resign their post that is the

02:56:29.760 principle yes all right um tow trucks have come a lot come up a lot at this commission

02:56:37.760 and my friends and the Commissioner know me by now as a bit of a towing aficionado.

02:56:42.640 It's been a while since I've brought up the subject, but I thought maybe you and I could

02:56:46.240 have a little talk about it. As you know, in order to legitimately and legally declare a public order

02:56:51.760 emergency pursuant to the Emergencies Act, the purported emergency cannot be effectively dealt

02:56:57.040 with under any other law of Canada. You're taking the position that the emergency declaration was

02:57:02.720 justified in part because towing services were required and could not be procured is that accurate

02:57:09.120 um that's a bit of a leap um we say that the emergencies act was required uh because the

02:57:19.760 situation as a whole could not be resolved uh by with under existing authorities and was not being

02:57:26.240 resolved under existing authorities right but uh towing service procurement was part of that

02:57:31.840 total picture that you're talking about wasn't it um one of the barriers that we heard regularly

02:57:37.920 from uh police of jurisdiction to removing uh the uh trucks occupying various locations was

02:57:46.320 the difficulty in securing towing services yes that was one of the barriers they were facing in

02:57:52.320 being able to restore public order right so uh one of the measures that you act that you put in

02:57:57.760 place through the Emergency Measures Regulations was an ability to compel tow truck drivers

02:58:02.820 to provide towing services, wasn't it?

02:58:04.860 Yes, it was.

02:58:05.860 So I'd say that would be a fairly significant part of the reason why you would have had

02:58:09.480 to invoke the Emergencies Act, wouldn't you agree with that?

02:58:12.560 It was an element of the solutions to the situation that we were dealing with, yes.

02:58:18.640 It was one of a handful of powers that you created using the Emergency Measures Regulations,

02:58:25.600 is that right?

02:58:26.600 Yes.

02:58:27.600 say it's relatively important would you agree with that it was important in in yes solving solving the

02:58:35.040 emergency situation yes certainly relevant to the invocation of the emergencies act

02:58:43.840 the invocation of the emergencies act wasn't because people couldn't find tow trucks the

02:58:50.960 invocation was because there was a public order emergency that posed serious threats to canadians

02:58:57.600 And the inability to solve this public order emergency that posed a serious threat to the safety of Canadians was compounded by the inability to actually move those trucks, for example.

02:59:15.160 And that would be one of the ways that the emergency couldn't have been effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada, wouldn't you say?

02:59:27.600 municipalities and provinces have contracts with tow truck companies to

02:59:35.200 keep the highways clear to keep the roads clear and tow parked cars that are

02:59:39.780 illegally parked all the time so they had theoretically the authority to

02:59:46.100 compel people under breach of contract to actually tow vehicles that they that

02:59:53.080 that were illegally parked um for various reasons they were unable or unwilling to use the civil

03:00:02.440 powers they have under contract or perhaps it would just take too long for them to be able to

03:00:06.600 do it but in feedback with everyone from alberta to ontario to elsewhere uh was that they needed

03:00:13.880 to be able to compel uh those tow trucks to actually do uh the job of clearing the streets

03:00:19.480 and you in fact put that power into the emergency measures right yes we did and so a discussion of

03:00:24.200 that of tow trucks is relevant to this discussion we're having right now yes um and uh we talked

03:00:31.560 about cabinet uh solidarity earlier there's been a waiver of cabinet confidence the related

03:00:36.840 partial waiver i should say of cabinet consonant confidence the related principle that would have

03:00:41.400 allowed you to withhold documents from this commission uh you've disclosed quite a few and

03:00:45.960 would you say you've been pretty transparent with the commission um there have been hundreds of uh

03:00:52.600 public uh inquiries over the course of of our country's history and uh only four times were

03:00:59.480 there waivers of cabinet confidence for this situation it was extremely important to me

03:01:05.240 that all the inputs or as many inputs as possible uh that cabinet received in

03:01:11.720 making the determinations uh that we did uh were are visible to canadians so yes we've waived

03:01:19.880 cabinet confidence in terms of the inputs that cabinet heard to make the decision but the actual

03:01:25.400 deliberations as you point out uh remain secret great um so you you wanted to make sure that uh

03:01:31.400 the relevant uh matters were visible to canadians uh can i pull up poe jcf2 please

03:01:37.800 So this is a document as it's coming up. We've been having a bit of an argument over the last

03:01:43.560 little while about some redactions that were made in the documents disclosed by my friends for Canada.

03:01:50.840 And there were some disputes about parliamentary privilege and irrelevance. But in this particular

03:01:58.040 document, I'd like you to take a look at this. This first document was what was originally

03:02:02.040 disclosed and this document the second one uh had some redactions removed that uh that and those

03:02:09.400 documents were ordered disclosed last night um and uh were uh canada took the position last night

03:02:18.680 that there were uh there was reason to insist on uh this that this uh redaction or that this document

03:02:26.440 be produced not be produced unredacted um but i wonder if maybe you could uh and at the end of

03:02:32.200 the day this was produced at 10 26 a.m this morning so i'm a little more unprepared for this

03:02:37.320 cross than i normally am um but uh i wonder if you could look at that first redaction on the uh

03:02:43.880 on the original disclosure and see if you can see the reason for the redaction that's

03:02:48.040 highlighted in the black box there um it appears to say parliament uh irrelevant

03:02:55.960 and parliamentary privilege right so i'm looking at the irrelevant one uh could you identify on

03:03:01.400 the other side what uh information was blacked out as irrelevant by your government um americans

03:03:09.160 offer offering tow trucks yeah and uh wouldn't you say that uh discussion of tow trucks was relevant

03:03:16.280 to the discussion we're having here today uh i'm not the one who made these redactions

03:03:22.360 uh it's the professional public service that made those redactions so you'd have to ask them

03:03:26.600 right well i think we will be but um uh in any event uh i would put it to you that tow trucks

03:03:32.760 weren't in fact required uh that the power to compel tow trucks was not used for anything

03:03:38.040 other than convenience and uh that tow trucks had been secured at all important locations prior to

03:03:44.280 the invocation of the emergencies act and i i gotta say it's uh it's interesting to close on

03:03:50.120 this tow truck point i hadn't expected that to happen but uh would you agree with me that tow

03:03:54.840 trucks weren't in fact needed at the time of the invocation of the act mr commissioner brian gover

03:03:59.960 for the government of canada and uh if my friend is going to put that to the witness he ought to

03:04:05.160 put the proposition correctly i remind my friend that uh the evidence of commissioner karik of the

03:04:14.040 Ontario Provincial Police was that the powers under the Emergency Measures Regulation in

03:04:19.240 relation to tow trucks were used. I refer specifically to his February 22nd, 2022 report

03:04:27.640 to Deputy Solicitor General Di Tomasso which shows that clearly those powers were used. Thank you.

03:04:35.400 Right, well I would respond by saying that the evidence so far has shown that

03:04:39.800 uh that that that while the while strictly speaking there was an indication of or there

03:04:45.800 was a use of that power under the act uh by the opp it was basically used as a method to ensure

03:04:51.320 that the payment was made it's it's supposed to come to me and i think those happen to be areas

03:04:56.840 that i'm going to have to deal with what is in fact the case but you can pose your question in

03:05:03.160 a different way if you wish but i think whether or not they were used whether or not it was required

03:05:09.320 is something i will i think i think we're burying the lead a little bit here and uh i'll ask you

03:05:14.440 again uh you would agree that a discussion of tow trucks and information about tow trucks is relevant

03:05:20.040 to the duck to the work of the commission and the uh discussion that we're having here today

03:05:24.280 wouldn't you i know there was a lot of time spent on tow trucks during the past six weeks right well

03:05:29.000 thank you very much okay thank you next is now the canadian constitution foundation or have i

03:05:36.120 it is okay thank you i don't want to get it wrong again

03:05:44.280 it's been a long six weeks commissioner uh good morning prime minister my name is sujit chowdhury

03:05:48.680 i'm counsel for the ccf um a prime minister i'd like to uh shift gears a bit and uh ask you some

03:05:56.840 questions about your role as chair of the cabinet and so it is it's true would you agree that one

03:06:03.320 of your chief responsibilities as prime minister is to share the cabinet yes and it's a serious

03:06:09.880 responsibility yes and so yesterday uh there was a panel uh testifying from the prime minister's

03:06:17.720 office i i'm sure you're aware and uh your chief of staff uh katie telford uh answered questions

03:06:24.760 about your role as chair of the cabinet are you aware of her testimony yes and so she uh under

03:06:32.360 cross-examination uh she testified that you are the ultimate decision maker for determining

03:06:39.960 the information and documentation shared at cabinet meetings um is there do you have any

03:06:44.840 reason to disagree with what she said um yeah that was in a a series of questions uh you know

03:06:52.360 linked to you know who ultimately decides who's in the room or not uh the reality is the authority

03:06:57.960 rests with me. If I, in seeing what the public service has prepared for me as a list of subjects

03:07:08.760 in Cabinet or attendees at Cabinet or documents to be provided at Cabinet, if I have significant

03:07:16.500 issue with any one of them, I can say, no, we're not going to present that to Cabinet,

03:07:20.220 and it won't go to cabinet but as par for the course um i do not spend um time

03:07:28.760 going over in advance every possible document going to cabinet to say yes this can go this

03:07:35.160 can go this shouldn't go this can't go it's an exceptional circumstance so there's advice

03:07:39.220 provided to you by the privy council office is that what you're saying on what documentation

03:07:43.860 and information goes to cabinet it's presented to you for review and then you sign off on it yes or

03:07:49.220 now um no for example um if we're dealing in cabinet with a particular uh mc from our particular

03:08:01.700 proposal from a given department uh they will put forward that document that proposal

03:08:10.100 i will as par for the course as all cabinet members do read through that documentation as

03:08:15.940 as part of our deliberations that we're about to have but for me i have the power to say

03:08:24.260 no you know what we're not going to discuss this today or this document's not going to go in

03:08:29.620 uh which i do from time to time if we decide no it's not ready to go forward we're not going to

03:08:34.340 do that uh but i guess i'm not entirely sure what what power you're trying to get get me to admit

03:08:40.260 to having or not sure so well why don't we talk about the february 13th cabinet meeting

03:08:44.580 uh so the questions are about that and so you you'd agree sir that that was uh an extraordinarily

03:08:50.100 important cabinet meeting yes a historic meeting even yes uh and though uh even though it was

03:08:57.860 happening uh at a time of great um pressure of great urgency uh you would have taken care to

03:09:05.780 determine uh in your capacity as chair of cabinet that cabinet had all the relevant information

03:09:13.060 documentation before it um the way cabinet works is we do an awful lot of work in cabinet committees

03:09:22.740 we do not uh as a par for a course dig into every item that comes forward in a fulsome way

03:09:30.500 because we have subgroups of cabinet that dig into that so there will have been before any

03:09:36.580 cabinet meeting including that one subgroupings meeting to debate to discuss things that then

03:09:43.460 get reported back to cabineters so but you would agree that under the emergencies act as you as you

03:09:50.180 as you stated this morning in testimony the power to declare a public order emergency

03:09:54.740 rests with what you called the cabinet and prime minister which is the governor governor

03:09:59.300 which is the full cabinet not a cabinet subcommittee no that's right okay subcommittees

03:10:03.860 deliberate but as a as a matter of uh generality they don't make final determination and you agree

03:10:10.020 there's no way you could have gone to that you could have declared a public

03:10:13.380 order emergency without having a full cabinet meeting um

03:10:21.060 in this case it was something very important to me i could imagine

03:10:27.620 catastrophic scenarios in which a government might have to declare a public order emergency

03:10:33.540 without a meeting of full cabinet either because of urgency or because of circumstance that prevents

03:10:41.220 cabinet from gathering so but in this case there was such a meeting yes and so i chose to have a

03:10:46.580 meeting so i'd like to ask you some questions of what you've termed as the inputs to that meeting

03:10:51.300 and just to be abundantly clear to my friend from the attorney general of canada i'm not going to

03:10:55.780 ask you about the content of any of those inputs that might be protected by confidence i just

03:11:00.900 simply want to ask you of certain documents where inputs are not to the cabinet meeting if i may

03:11:06.260 so the first uh is that we've heard in testimony that there was a legal opinion

03:11:11.620 that explained the diff the difference in the definition of threats to the security of canada

03:11:16.580 in the cses act and the emergencies act and you've testified to that this morning

03:11:20.180 do you know sir if that illegal opinion was provided to the full cabinet at its meeting of

03:11:25.140 february 13th in matters of legal opinion in many situations most situations we hear from

03:11:36.340 the attorney general and justice minister who reports to cabinet on uh this or that uh legal

03:11:44.020 opinion so was that written opinion provided to the cabinet sir uh i believe it was a report from

03:11:50.420 uh a verbal report from the minister of justice i'd like to ask you about another document uh

03:11:56.020 which is that we've heard about a threat assessment prepared by cesus and you're familiar with that as

03:12:00.580 well and director vigno testified uh that he'd concluded or cesus had concluded that there

03:12:07.940 wasn't a threat to national security under 2c of the cesus act he also testified that that threat

03:12:13.700 assessment was provided to the irg on february 13th so my question is was this threat assessment

03:12:19.620 provided to the full cabinet on the evening of february 13th uh in our reporting to cabinet

03:12:27.860 there was a reporting on the consensus reached by the irg including the director of cses who

03:12:39.300 recommended uh and agreed with the invocation of a public order emergency we were not at cabinet

03:12:45.620 dealing with whether or not CSIS had the authority to move forward with a wiretap on one person or

03:12:51.620 another it was a discussion on the invocation of a public order emergency which requires reasonable

03:12:58.100 grounds for the governor and council to make a determination so sir you'd agree that that

03:13:03.300 document was not provided to the full cabinet on the feb on february 13th you said which document

03:13:10.180 is that? The CSIS threat assessment. And if I could rephrase what you said, you just said

03:13:14.600 the IRG considered that report. It discussed it. No, no. Throughout the IRGs, CSIS, as

03:13:23.240 a par for a course, would mention that the threshold had not been met for CSIS operations

03:13:32.800 within this of a particular type, according to their context and their mandate.

03:13:39.760 But we were not looking as an IRG or a cabinet as to whether or not CSIS would be allowed to do this or that thing.

03:13:49.160 We were looking at, certainly by this end, whether or not we had a threshold met for the invocation of a public order emergency.

03:13:59.660 So, Prime Minister, Director Vigneault testified that a written threat assessment was prepared by CSIS, and he testified that he provided that to the IRG.

03:14:10.240 Yes.

03:14:10.540 Are you saying that that document was not provided to the IRG?

03:14:14.760 No, that would have been provided to the IRG.

03:14:16.500 But would you agree that it wasn't provided to the full cabinet?

03:14:19.640 Yes, I agree that it was, that the report was given that the narrow CSIS threshold was not met for a CSIS operation, but because that was not the issue at play in this cabinet discussion.

03:14:41.360 The issue was, was the threat of serious violence threshold met in the context of a public order emergency?

03:14:51.140 Was the discussion at play?

03:14:52.600 And, Prime Minister, this morning in your testimony, you addressed the policing plan that was prepared by the OPS.

03:14:59.980 And I believe you stated, we should read it, we should look at it, because it wasn't much of a plan.

03:15:07.160 Is that fair?

03:15:08.400 That is my understanding of it.

03:15:09.820 So sir, I'd like to pull the plan up on the screen, please.

03:15:13.440 It's, and Mr. Registrar, it's PB NSC CAN 407734.

03:15:19.320 four zeros seven seven three four

03:15:39.000 thank you mr registrar uh prime minister is this the document or is this the plan you're referring

03:15:43.560 to i have not uh i have heard about this i haven't ever actually seen it so so sir what i'd like to

03:15:50.760 do so you've not read this no i have not okay so i certainly have not read it on the 13th okay and

03:15:55.800 so i i'd like to just um mr registrar i'd just like to walk the prime minister through the pages

03:16:01.480 not so he could read it because we don't have time but just to point out that this is a heavily

03:16:04.840 redacted document so page one is the cover page page two is a is this signature page if we could

03:16:13.160 go down page three is a description of the situation and the mission and then mr registrar

03:16:18.280 if you could please please scroll down uh the rest of this document has been redacted so that's page

03:16:23.800 four page five page six uh page seven page eight so prime minister you said we should read this

03:16:31.320 plan we can't uh it's your it's within your legal authority to instruct your council to remove these

03:16:37.960 redactions for the sake of the of the transparency of this commission sir would you would consider

03:16:42.680 that request i object to that on behalf of the government of canada it's brian gover once again

03:16:48.440 this is putting the prime minister in an odious position uh we had no notice that they would

03:16:55.640 attempt this uh in cross-examination these things require careful consideration do not lend themselves

03:17:03.560 to decisions in the moment and we maintain our objection commissioner sorry sir this was in our

03:17:15.880 document list um that we circulated within time uh to council for the attorney general they had

03:17:21.960 noticed that we would be putting this document and the question is a fair one in response to

03:17:26.440 to the prime minister's testimony this morning that he said you should read it i think it it

03:17:32.200 is fair in a sense but i think what's being raised is it's a little more complicated than

03:17:38.360 the federal government or the prime minister releasing these this is a police operational

03:17:44.280 plan of the ops involving officers from the ops and from opp involving strategy etc and i would

03:17:53.400 be very surprised if the federal government would order its release without consulting

03:17:59.560 with the various police services and i i i think that's the unfairness that's being referred to and

03:18:05.640 quite fair frankly i agree now it's having said that he made reference to the plan and

03:18:12.680 there is an issue about reading it for sure but i think the context is is important here so

03:18:18.280 commissioner with that with with your ruling there and i thank mr governor for his point

03:18:22.360 Prime Minister, can I put it to you this way?

03:18:23.940 You said we should read the plan, but I think to a degree we can't.

03:18:28.480 Indeed.

03:18:30.500 As I said, I haven't read the plan, but we're in a situation where, as can be imagined,

03:18:36.640 I have access to unredacted information.

03:18:42.540 And what I know and my understanding of this plan was, and I'm happy to testify to that,

03:18:48.180 that it was not a complete plan of engagement.

03:18:51.180 And, Prime Minister, and again, I think I would like to raise this, again, I'm looking to Mr. Gover in anticipation of his reaction.

03:19:02.500 As you know, there's a legal opinion that over which solicitor client privilege has been asserted.

03:19:08.000 We asked Minister Lamedi to release that opinion, and in a public statement this week, he said he couldn't because he lacked the authority to.

03:19:16.160 That would be up to his client, and he then clarified that his client is a governor and counsel.

03:19:21.040 so again for the record sir and this has been an issue for all week not just this morning

03:19:27.120 would you advise that that opinion be released in the interest of transparency

03:19:33.760 mr commissioner it's brian gover once again for the government of canada

03:19:38.800 solicitor client privilege of course is a very substantial right in our legal system it's one

03:19:44.800 that the supreme court of canada is recognized as a constitutional dimension

03:19:49.920 i remind my friends that in this case as the prime minister has said cabinet confidence has been

03:19:56.640 waived for the fourth time in 155 years to provide evidence of inputs we know that the decision note

03:20:05.280 that was referred to in testimony by the clerk of the privy council referred to the advice of the

03:20:11.280 public service that that it was appropriate to invoke the emergencies act in my submission

03:20:19.600 we need not go further with the inquiry and pierce the veil of solicitor client privilege

03:20:26.320 setting but in my submission could be a dangerous precedent going forward and one this is certainly

03:20:32.960 an issue that requires careful consideration and not one to require a prime minister to respond to

03:20:39.680 in the spur of the moment thank you

03:20:44.800 okay well i think uh you have a refusal uh essentially uh by uh council so i think you're

03:20:51.200 gonna have to move on okay thank you commissioner and and and so i have one final question sir so

03:20:57.440 uh there has been a lot of discussion this week about legal thresholds and how they differ um

03:21:04.000 under the emergencies act on your on your government submission than they do under the

03:21:08.160 cesus act and you testified about this this morning i i just want to ask you one question

03:21:14.400 the the emergency was revoked on february 23rd correct um yes we can take we can take my word

03:21:22.240 for it and and and prior to that revocation uh there was a great deal of public debate

03:21:29.440 and public discussion um about um the about the case for the emergency made by the government is

03:21:36.080 that right yes and sir i i'd put it to you that not until this commission has the government of

03:21:42.800 canada ever publicly communicated that the threshold for declaring a determining a threat

03:21:48.480 to national security is different under the emergencies act than under the cease effect not

03:21:53.840 once why is that sir it's in the first line of the public order emergency

03:22:02.840 section of the emergencies act that the governor and council can on reasonable

03:22:12.060 grounds declare a public order emergency if in their reasonable opinion

03:22:19.940 I'm paraphrasing obviously, there are threats to the security of Canada and it is a national emergency.

03:22:30.660 That doesn't mention CSIS threshold anywhere.

03:22:35.940 Commissioner, I think those conclude my questions. Thank you.

03:22:39.940 Okay, thank you. Just before I go to the next cross-examiner,

03:22:44.940 There seems to be some reactions in the crowd that, in my view, are inappropriate.

03:22:53.020 This is, I think, a very important process and very serious.

03:23:00.460 There are a lot of people outside, as I understand it, who would like to come in.

03:23:04.900 I would ask you to please refrain from comments or laughing or whatever.

03:23:14.280 uh and try and keep it serious uh that would be appreciated and not only appreciated i if

03:23:21.800 necessary it will be enforced so could i ask that it you continue to be attentive and

03:23:32.360 pay the attention that is required for what's going on

03:23:36.280 so with that brief comment uh call on the ottawa police service please

03:23:43.560 Good afternoon, Prime Minister. My name is Jessica Barrow, and I am counsel for the Ottawa

03:23:56.540 Police Service. Prime Minister, we've heard evidence from you about your understanding

03:24:02.340 of intelligence information as well as operational planning at various points throughout the

03:24:08.340 events in ottawa and i just want to clarify your role as it relates to that information and i take

03:24:14.400 it it's not your role as prime minister to collect intelligence information is that correct no it's

03:24:19.320 not similarly it's not your role to review the details of an operational plan no it's certainly

03:24:24.760 not and that's because you rely on highly trained police officers to perform the work that they're

03:24:30.500 best at which is performing those functions and then it gets briefed up to you is that fair yes

03:24:35.160 And I assume that you regularly rely in particular on the intelligence and operational planning expertise of the RCMP as they are the National Police Service, correct?

03:24:46.420 Yes.

03:24:47.000 And of course, you trust them to perform those functions effectively.

03:24:50.900 Okay. So we've heard considerable evidence to date from the Commission that an integrated planning cell arrived in Ottawa on February 8th. Were you aware of that?

03:25:01.680 That sounds right.

03:25:03.380 And we also heard that Superintendent Bernier from Ottawa Police Service took over as event commander on February 10th and established what he referred to as an integrated command structure, which we heard described from him as including experts from subject matter areas such as negotiations, public order, intelligence, etc.

03:25:23.460 Were you aware of that?

03:25:25.040 That sounds reasonable, yes.

03:25:27.420 Okay. And the experts involved in both the integrated planning cell and the ultimate integrated

03:25:34.380 command structure included senior and specially trained officers from OPS, RCMP, OPP and other

03:25:40.860 municipal police services. Would you agree with that? Yes, I was aware of that.

03:25:45.420 And as you indicated, you would have, of course, leave it up to those experts to draft,

03:25:50.300 review and approve operational plans. Is that fair? Yes. Okay. And you certainly wouldn't have

03:25:55.980 had the capacity in your role to engage in any kind of line-by-line review or assessment

03:26:01.820 of the viability of those operational plans no okay and so i want to focus because we've

03:26:07.660 heard a fair bit of evidence about this this morning uh in relation to the time frame of

03:26:12.140 february 12th onwards and the operational plans that existed at that time you participated in

03:26:18.700 an irg meeting on february 12th is that correct yes uh yes and so i'd like to pull up the minutes

03:26:25.820 from that meeting if we can it's ssm nsc can 214 please

03:26:37.420 and in particular i'm looking for page six mr clerk

03:26:55.820 And so we see in the second paragraph that this is an update from the Minister of Public Safety and we see the last sentence of that.

03:27:06.820 During the discussion, confirmation was obtained that the OPS Chief of Police accepted the plan and the Commissioner of the RCMP agreed to be able to provide additional details of that plan at the next call.

03:27:18.820 Do you recall that?

03:27:21.620 i'm looking at the sentence before where it says there appears to be a lack of a plan in ottawa

03:27:26.500 with the chief of ottawa police services having yet to approve the plan developed with the rcmp

03:27:31.140 and opp right and then subsequent to that we see that in the middle of the meeting there's

03:27:35.620 confirmation uh that the ops chief has agreed to the plan and that commissioner lucky agrees

03:27:42.500 to provide additional details to this group subsequently in relation to the details is that

03:27:47.300 fair fair okay and so this was put to commissioner lucky in her testimony and my understanding of her

03:27:54.660 evidence is that she never did subsequently provide the details of that plan to this group

03:28:00.420 on the 13th or otherwise would you disagree with that evidence um no i agree because uh what we

03:28:07.140 heard was the plans uh were not adequate they were um not uh operational plans at that point

03:28:15.380 okay but you didn't ever hear the details of the plan and she certainly doesn't say in this meeting

03:28:20.340 that from her perspective it was not an adequate plan she's just saying i'll provide you an update

03:28:24.580 later i can't speak to what she was knowing or not but i can say that when we were briefed on the

03:28:33.460 13th as to the operational plan or readiness of

03:28:41.780 enforcement in in ottawa we were understanding that there was not a full operational plan at that

03:28:50.740 point okay so your understanding of what occurred on the 13th was that you were provided some level

03:28:55.380 of information that led you to believe that there was no complete operational plan is that fair

03:28:59.940 That was consistent with everything we heard throughout the course of the three weeks, that there were not yet concrete plans to be able to actually do the work that Canadians were hoping to see.

03:29:17.560 Right. So I understand that there are various planning timeframes, but I'm specifically talking about the 13th and whether you were provided details of a complete operational plan to end the protests in Ottawa.

03:29:32.100 My understanding was there was not a complete operational plan to end protests in Ottawa as of the 13th.

03:29:39.160 Okay. I'd like to bring up OPP 1851, please.

03:29:47.560 Okay, so let's just start with the title page.

03:30:01.420 This is called Integrated Mobilization Operational Plan, and if we could scroll down to page

03:30:07.300 two, you can see at the top that the plan was written by the integrated planning cell

03:30:13.060 that has multiple services listed there.

03:30:17.180 dated the 13th and we see that there's sign off here from superintendent phil lew of the rcmp

03:30:24.700 uh chief superintendent carson party of the opp and acting superintendent rob bernier

03:30:30.940 of the ottawa police service you see that okay and so i just want to if you look at the bottom

03:30:35.660 of this uh the screenshot here you can see that this is a 73 page document you see that

03:30:41.580 okay okay and so obviously we don't have time unfortunately to fully digest this entire document

03:30:49.260 um but is it fair to say that um prior to the police operation on february 18th to 20th as

03:30:57.100 well as prior to the invocation of the emergencies act you had never seen this document no okay

03:31:05.260 no it is it yes it is fair to say that no i had never seen it thank you for that clarification

03:31:09.980 um and so you suggested multiple times in your evidence this morning uh that to your knowledge

03:31:16.200 the operational plan that existed at the time of the of february 13th was by no means an actual

03:31:22.060 plan to actually end the protests in ottawa is that a fair representation of your evidence that

03:31:26.860 was my understanding yes okay and you also testified that it was not a plan that you or

03:31:31.940 the rcmp had confidence in is that correct at least that was your understanding if there

03:31:39.600 wasn't a plan, then we probably didn't have confidence in it.

03:31:45.040 Fair enough.

03:31:45.480 But as you can see here, there is a 73-page document dated February 13th that a senior

03:31:50.960 member of the RCMP has signed off on.

03:31:54.140 Yes.

03:31:54.840 Okay.

03:31:55.480 So if we just scroll down, as I said, we don't have time to review the entire document,

03:31:59.260 but we do have a table of contents here.

03:32:01.600 And so I just want to go through a few components of the parts or component parts of the overall

03:32:05.920 plan so that you understand kind of the general scope of it.

03:32:09.600 and so if we scroll down a little bit we see there's a deployment plan right a

03:32:17.460 reference to a deployment plan sorry the entire deployment plan is on page 13 yes

03:32:23.760 so I'm just I'm just trying to understand the scope of the plan since I

03:32:26.640 only have 10 minutes we can't actually digest the entirety of the plan so you

03:32:30.280 can see that there's some content in relation to deployment plan so is this

03:32:36.300 table of contents yes so the entire deployment plan fits onto one page description of the

03:32:43.820 deployment plan is okay and then we see a reference to investigative plan

03:32:52.700 correct i i i can't speak to whether this is a good plan or a complete plan or not i haven't

03:32:58.620 read this obviously right and so you hadn't read it obviously no then i rely on the inputs of uh

03:33:05.580 the experts around me to reassure me or not that there is a capacity to move forward okay so let's

03:33:13.100 turn to page eight and we see the objectives listed if you could scroll down and it says to

03:33:21.340 facilitate a resolution through de-escalation graduated measurable and multi-phased response

03:33:27.180 while ensuring the safety of participants citizen and members of participating agencies and return

03:33:31.980 the city of ottawa to a state of normality and so you referenced earlier in relation to the planet

03:33:37.900 from your understanding all it was was to continue the negotiations essentially that were already

03:33:42.780 taking place correct listen i am i am hesitant to speak to fragments but i don't know that that

03:33:55.580 objective one looks like the enforcement action that actually happened later that week okay well

03:34:05.820 if they talk about a de-escalation uh graduated measurable and multi-phased response um sounds

03:34:17.420 like something that would take longer than the 24 to 48 hours that the enforcement action actually

03:34:23.260 took on uh friday and saturday but i'm no expert on this so my lawyers are probably glaring at me

03:34:28.940 for uh opining on this too much fair enough well i can tell you that the experts on the plan

03:34:34.220 have testified and they have testified that this was the plan that they were acting on

03:34:39.260 on the weekend of february at 18th when they completed the pou operation would you have any

03:34:44.140 reason to disagree with that uh i think evaluating various testimonies is the job of the commissioner

03:34:50.540 fair enough okay um and i just want to pull up you're pretty close well not pretty close

03:34:55.340 you're over the end so if you can try and wrap it up please thank you

03:35:03.340 and so to circle back to the comments you provided in relation to the readiness of police plans as

03:35:08.220 of the 13th um i take it you would agree with me that perhaps there was a little bit more substance

03:35:13.740 to the plan than you were aware of on the 13th i am unable to speak to that okay and we've heard

03:35:21.740 evidence that the ottawa police were required to acquire approximately 2200 additional police

03:35:27.260 officers from across the country to support this plan and to successfully complete the pou operation

03:35:33.500 that occurred on the weekend of february 18th would you have any reason to disagree with that

03:35:38.620 um i wasn't aware of i wasn't following at that presentation of evidence so i can't comment on

03:35:44.380 that fair enough and uh you may have heard or not uh that this was the largest pou operation

03:35:49.660 in canadian history that i was aware of okay thank you very much for your time those are my questions

03:35:56.860 okay well thank you um this is a little early two minutes early we don't normally give an

03:36:01.980 hour and two minutes for lunch but i think uh today we will uh as a special occasion thank

03:36:08.380 you for your generosity so we'll come back at two o'clock the commission is in recess until two o'clock

03:36:31.980 Thank you.

03:37:01.980 Thank you.

03:37:31.980 Thank you.

03:38:01.980 Thank you.

03:38:31.980 Thank you.

03:39:01.980 Thank you.

03:39:31.980 Thank you.

03:40:01.980 The act was invoked here in response to a protest, and protest is a very important part of a functioning democracy, and you touched on this in one of your answers before the break,

03:40:26.820 But does this open the door then to the Emergencies Act being regularly used as a tool to quell protest?

03:40:34.560 Because protest is not necessarily clean.

03:40:37.340 Protests can be messy and can be problematic, and it can interfere at times with critical infrastructure.

03:40:43.620 We think of Indigenous protest, environmental protest.

03:40:46.880 So what stops this from being used against that?

03:40:51.200 Again, the checks and balances we have and the need to demonstrate and meet a high threshold.

03:41:04.200 But also from experience, over the past seven years we've seen many protests and disruptions across this country,

03:41:12.200 including protests of, as you say, critical infrastructure and of economic importance.

03:41:18.200 And it never occurred to me or to the government to invoke the Emergencies Act around any of those.

03:41:27.200 Now, your point around maybe future governments will run to it as a tool now that the seal has been broken.

03:41:37.200 But I have greater faith in Canadians and in our institutions than the fact that we might sort of

03:41:48.320 shrug as our fundamental rights are casually brushed aside in the name of political expediency

03:41:57.360 or a national emergency that actually wouldn't be one.

03:42:02.880 Another criticism that has levelled is that while the protests may have gotten, can we say, out of hand or snowballed and been extremely disruptive, they weren't the actions of a small minority, but a real expression of frustration, of legitimate frustration on behalf of a significant number of Canadians who had been through, either suffered from or felt aggrieved by years of

03:42:32.880 of public health measures and um in response to that they wanted to engage and they wanted you

03:42:43.600 to speak to them and they wanted to hear directly from their federal government and that did not

03:42:47.440 happen so do you have an answer to that um i think first of all

03:42:52.880 we heard them. We knew exactly what they were asking for. They were very, very clear that they

03:43:02.960 wanted an end to mandates. The convoy protesters were expressing their disagreement with very

03:43:12.860 specific public policies that they were very vocal, both in mainstream communications and

03:43:22.700 through social media on what they wanted, and they were very much heard. They had political

03:43:29.540 parties in the previous election very much carrying those messages and presenting them

03:43:37.800 to Canadians as part of the options that Canadians had to choose in that previous

03:43:41.580 election so people were well aware of the opinions and concerns and perspective of those individuals

03:43:55.900 but it was clear that it wasn't that they just wanted to be heard they wanted to be obeyed

03:44:04.300 they wanted us to change public policy public health policy designed to help canadians and

03:44:10.780 were going to occupy locations across this country

03:44:15.140 and interfere with the lives of Canadians

03:44:17.100 until such a decision was taken.

03:44:20.700 And I can't help but have noticed

03:44:24.920 that when Premier Kenney in Alberta

03:44:29.340 did, during the course of these convoy occupations,

03:44:36.740 remove a number of mandates instead of decreasing the amount of concern.

03:44:44.940 The convoy at Coutts, the occupation at Coutts, seemed to be emboldened,

03:44:51.080 saying, look, it's starting to work, let's keep going, instead of actually de-escalating.

03:44:56.180 So I am very aware that expressing concern and disagreement

03:45:02.940 around positions of public policy is the right

03:45:06.940 and is to be encouraged by any Canadian who wants to.

03:45:12.940 But the occupation and destabilization

03:45:19.940 and disruption of the lives of so many Canadians

03:45:23.940 and refusal to maintain a lawful protest

03:45:31.940 lawful protest is not all right.

03:46:01.940 Thank you.

03:46:31.940 Thank you.

03:47:01.940 Thank you.

03:47:31.940 In order for CSIS to be able to do a particular operation, it has to meet this matter of threats

03:47:44.360 to the security of Canada.

03:47:46.320 And you touched on this in one of your answers before the break, but does this open the door

03:47:51.500 then to the Emergencies Act being regularly used as a tool to quell protests?

03:47:57.000 Because a declaration of public order emergency under the Emergencies Act is about the governor

03:48:04.320 and council finding reasonable grounds that there are threats to the security of Canada

03:48:11.400 sufficient to invoke the Checks and Balances we have and the need to demonstrate and the

03:48:22.200 purpose is very different. The people doing the deciding in the case of the CSIS Act,

03:48:29.200 if this is met as a definition, it's CSIS itself that decides that this is met and there's

03:48:35.200 checks and balances afterwards. But for the purpose of declaration of a public order emergency,

03:48:42.200 it's the Governor and Council. So the context within now which we look at this

03:48:51.200 And this definition is very different from the deliberately narrow frame that CSIS is allowed to look at, what inputs it can take in, what proofs it needs to establish this are very well prescribed so that CSIS can be in our institutions than the fact that we might sort of shrug.

03:49:11.060 Whereas the Declaration of Public Order Emergency

03:49:14.780 casually is open to inputs, sure, from CSIS,

03:49:19.700 but also from the RCMP, also from transport, from immigration,

03:49:24.080 from the whole of government, from the clerk,

03:49:26.140 from the National Security Intelligence Advisor.

03:49:28.700 So within Threats of Security of Canada,

03:49:32.520 what we had to determine was, does the situation going on

03:49:40.640 But a real expression of frustration, a legitimate frustration on behalf of a significant number of Canadians who had been through activities within Canada directed towards or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political or

03:50:10.640 ideological objective um first of all that was what we were looking at is that threshold are

03:50:20.640 there activities they were asking supporting they were very very clear that they wanted serious

03:50:26.240 violence uh serious violence uh the four political ideological goals were were expressing their

03:50:34.000 If that threshold was met in our reasoned policies, that part of invoking a public order emergency was met.

03:50:42.580 The other part of it is communication and social media on what they wanted, and they were very much heard.

03:50:50.880 I was very much focused on, was this bar hit, yes or no, for the purposes of invoking the emergency options that Canadians had to choose

03:51:03.380 in that previous election.

03:51:04.660 So there has been a bit of back and forth at this commission

03:51:09.060 on whether opinions and concerns, words are of different

03:51:15.740 or can be read differently or broader when they're used

03:51:20.500 in a public order emergency than they're used for the CSIS.

03:51:24.300 It's not the words that are different.

03:51:25.620 The words are exactly the same in both cases.

03:51:28.700 The question is, who is doing the interpretation

03:51:31.620 to help Canadians come in and what is the purpose of locations across this country

03:51:37.520 and interfere with the lives of Canadians

03:51:39.480 was to be able to give us in special, temporary measures

03:51:45.580 as defined in the public order that would put an end to this.

03:51:51.940 Threats of serious violence was the key ones.

03:51:55.580 And can you elaborate on what those threats were?

03:51:59.380 What led to that conclusion?

03:52:01.620 And again, we went around the table with officials from all different agencies and heads of departments to talk about this.

03:52:10.920 There was the militarization of vehicles, for example.

03:52:16.680 We'd seen, sorry, weaponization of vehicles.

03:52:20.440 We'd seen, you know, cars ramming into police officers or other cars at coots.

03:52:25.920 We saw an incident like that in Surrey, I believe.

03:52:32.460 We saw trucks used as potential weapons, certainly in Ottawa with their presence and unknown interiors.

03:52:44.520 There was the use of children as human shields, deliberately.

03:52:49.120 In the interiors, there was the use of children as human shields deliberately, which was a real concern both at the Ambassador Bridge and the fact that there were kids on Wellington Street, that people didn't know what was in the trucks, whether it was kids, whether it was weapons, whether it was both.

03:53:10.980 police had no way of knowing those. There was presence of weapons at Coutts, as we saw. There

03:53:18.280 was a concern around weapons being stolen in Peterborough that we didn't know, but 2,000 guns

03:53:24.580 that we didn't know where they had gone at that point. We later found out that they didn't go

03:53:28.740 there, but there was, that was a real concern that we had about what was happening to them.

03:53:34.080 There were a number of others as well. There was the fact that police trying to invoice

03:53:40.560 in force laws were met with active resistance and a group of 30 police officers trying to

03:53:50.460 interdict someone or arrest someone who was carrying a jerry can into the site in Ottawa

03:53:56.600 got swarmed by 100 people and they had to leave because there were threats to their safety and

03:54:02.140 they weren't able to arrest that individual. There were layers of danger that CSIS kept

03:54:08.400 Bringing up to us that the presence of people promoting ideologically motivated violent extremism in the convoys had a danger of triggering not necessarily them to act but lone wolf actors or people who could be radicalized to take actions that were violent.

03:54:39.400 Threats of serious violence was the key ones.

03:54:43.400 And can you elaborate on what those threats were?

03:54:47.400 What led to that conclusion?

03:54:49.400 And again, we went around the table with officials

03:54:53.400 from all different agencies and heads of departments.

03:55:08.400 Thank you.

03:55:38.400 Thank you.

03:56:08.400 We heard evidence from Commissioner Lucky of the RCMP that she had signed off on a plan

03:56:23.400 to enforce and remove the protesters in Ottawa on February 13th that she had confidence in,

03:56:30.660 that she, the OPP, and the OPS had confidence in.

03:56:34.460 Did you hear that testimony?

03:56:36.460 No, I disagree with that.

03:56:38.460 Okay, you disagree with that?

03:56:40.460 Yes.

03:56:41.460 I do not believe that the plan that was either signed off on,

03:56:45.460 supposedly by the RCMP, or presented by the Ottawa Police

03:56:50.460 Services on the 13th, was, in any real regards,

03:56:55.460 an actual plan for clearing the protests.

03:56:58.460 And is this a plan that you saw or that you were just spoken to about?

03:57:03.460 I was spoken to about. I did not see it myself.

03:57:05.460 And were you spoken to about it by Commissioner Luckey

03:57:07.960 or by Minister Mendocino?

03:57:09.600 I don't remember.

03:57:10.680 You don't remember.

03:57:11.260 But as of February 13th, your impression was that the plan

03:57:15.980 that was in place at that time was not one that you

03:57:20.480 or the RCMP had confidence in.

03:57:22.660 It was not one that we had confidence in, no.

03:57:25.580 Okay.

03:57:35.460 Threats of serious violence was the key ones.

03:57:40.460 And can you elaborate on what those threats were?

03:57:44.460 What led to that conclusion?

03:57:46.460 And again, we went around the table with officials

03:57:50.460 from all different agencies and heads of departments

03:57:54.460 to talk about this.

03:57:55.460 There was the militarization of vehicles, for example.

03:58:01.460 example. We'd seen, sorry, weaponization of vehicles. We'd seen, you know, cars ramming

03:58:07.840 into police officers or other cars at coots. We saw an incident like that in Surrey, I believe.

03:58:17.620 We saw trucks used as potential weapons, certainly in Ottawa with their presence and

03:58:27.040 unknown interiors. There was the use of children as human shields deliberately, which was a real

03:58:37.020 concern, both at the Ambassador Bridge and the fact that there were kids on Wellington Street,

03:58:42.420 that people didn't know what was in the trucks, whether it was kids, whether it was weapons,

03:58:48.460 whether it was both. Police had no way of knowing those. There was presence of weapons at Coutts,

03:58:55.080 as we saw. There was a concern around weapons being stolen in Peterborough that we didn't know,

03:59:01.800 but 2,000 guns that we didn't know where they had gone at that point. We later found out that

03:59:06.560 they didn't go there, but that was a real concern that we had about what was happening to them.

03:59:12.340 There were a number of others as well. There was the fact that police trying to enforce

03:59:19.620 laws were met with active resistance and a group of 30 police officers trying to

03:59:28.660 interdict someone or arrest someone who was carrying a jerry can into the site in Ottawa

03:59:34.820 got swarmed by 100 people and they had to leave because there were threats to their safety and

03:59:40.360 they weren't able to arrest that individual. There were layers of danger that CSIS kept

03:59:46.620 uh bringing up to us that the presence of people promoting um ideologically motivated violence

03:59:54.680 violent extremism in uh the convoys uh had a danger of triggering not necessarily them to act

04:00:05.020 but lone wolf actors or people who could be radicalized to take actions that were violent

04:00:12.080 are you drawing a distinction there between okay the premiers may say it's under control here but

04:00:20.580 that doesn't mean it's under control everywhere so they would have had to come to you with

04:00:24.280 something that would have solved the big problem as you saw it is that um i think there just would

04:00:30.180 have been a sense that that the measures i was proposing weren't going to be useful or effective

04:00:40.740 and what i heard on the contrary uh was uh concerns that we'd shared that this might

04:00:50.580 inflame the protesters to declare a public order emergency

04:00:54.260 but we'd shared that this might inflame the protesters to declare a public order emergency

04:01:01.940 and bring in martial law um which was one of the concerns or that they would interpret it as that

04:01:09.140 Of course, it wasn't martial law, and it did not suspend people's fundamental rights and freedoms.

04:01:14.660 But at the same time, they expressed these concerns, which we had shared, but I was balancing off against, okay, there is a danger of further inflaming the situation.

04:01:30.300 but the situation was already pretty inflamed and my concern was if we continue to not do anything

04:01:36.860 are enough citizens going to start counter-protesting and taking things into their

04:01:41.160 own hands at various places across the country um and we also obviously heard from from mr vigno

04:01:51.380 saying and the thesis assessment that there was no threat to the security of canada under the

04:01:56.240 CESIS Act. And then we heard Mr. Vigneault say, but I still thought that there was no threat to

04:02:02.920 the security of Canada under the CESIS Act. And then we heard Mr. Vigneault say, but I still

04:02:09.060 thought that the act was necessary, and I conveyed that to the Prime Minister. So can you tell us,

04:02:16.380 was there consensus on the use of the act? What did you hear about whether or not

04:02:23.140 people agreed with this interpretation whether you should vote the act yes there was consensus

04:02:28.500 around the irg table on sunday the 13th there is no question about it and and uh director vigno's

04:02:36.020 um answer on that is absolutely consistent uh cesus for example wouldn't feel that they had

04:02:45.140 the capacity to bring in a wiretap against one of the convoy organizers under the CSIS Act,

04:02:53.220 because the tools that they have and the threshold they have to meet for what is a threat to the

04:03:00.140 security of Canada, according to CSIS's evaluation, was not met. And that was something we heard from

04:03:08.920 the very beginning. CSIS continued to say from the beginning of the protest, we haven't yet,

04:03:14.300 under the CSIS Act reached a level of threats to Canada. But the director of CSIS is also one of

04:03:22.580 the national security advisors to me. And in looking at the frame and scope of the situation

04:03:30.200 we were in, was very comfortable in saying, yeah, for the purposes of the CSIS Act, this is not met.

04:03:37.460 But for the purposes of the Public Order Emergencies Act that the governor and council has to make a reasonable decision about, we feel that it is met.

04:03:47.980 And that was the consensus from officials around the table.

04:03:52.160 And again, it was about not even just sort of that binary, okay, do we declare the emergency or not?

04:04:01.740 It's do we declare a public order emergency so that we can bring in these specific measures?

04:04:08.360 And as we went around the table on that, and my expectation is, and that was a virtual table, I believe,

04:04:14.020 but my expectation is always if you have significant disagreements, this is the time to speak up.

04:04:20.980 There was no voice saying, hold it, we don't think you should do this, or I don't think you should do this.

04:04:30.620 In order for CSIS to be able to do a particular operation, it has to meet this matter of threats to the security of Canada.

04:04:43.120 And then they can go and do that wiretap.

04:04:45.360 This definition within a declaration of public order emergency under the Emergencies Act is about the governor and council finding reasonable grounds that there are threats to the security of Canada sufficient to invoke the Emergency Measures Act.

04:05:13.200 So both the context and the purpose is very different.

04:05:18.360 The people doing the deciding, in the case of the CSIS Act,

04:05:22.580 if this is met as a definition, it's CSIS itself that decides that this is met.

04:05:28.540 There's checks and balances afterwards.

04:05:31.260 But for the purpose of declaration of a public order emergency,

04:05:35.900 it's the governor and council cabinet and the prime minister making that determination.

04:05:39.860 So the context within which we look at this definition is very different from the deliberately narrow frame that CSIS is allowed to look at, what inputs it can take in, what proofs it needs to establish this are very well prescribed so that CSIS can be, so that CSIS is responsible in what it does.

04:06:04.040 Whereas the declaration of public order emergency is open to inputs, sure, from CSIS, but also from the RCMP, also some from transport, from immigration, from the whole of government, from the clerk, from the national security intelligence advisor.

04:06:21.140 So within threats to the security of Canada, what we had to determine was, does the situation going on across the country constitute a threat to the security of Canada?

04:06:37.080 Yes or no? And then we looked at particularly C. Are there activities within Canada directed towards or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective?

04:07:07.080 that was what we were looking at.

04:07:11.640 Is that threshold met?

04:07:13.400 Are there activities supporting the threats or acts of serious violence,

04:07:19.860 a threat of serious violence for political or ideological goals?

04:07:26.600 If that threshold was met in our reasoned opinion,

04:07:31.840 then that part of invoking a public order emergency was met.

04:07:35.320 The other part of it is, does it constitute a national emergency?

04:07:38.960 And there's elements on that that I won't get into unless you ask me about.

04:07:42.140 But I was very much focused on, was this bar hit, yes or no,

04:07:50.240 for the purposes of invoking the Emergencies Act?

04:07:58.580 There has been a bit of back and forth at this commission

04:08:02.300 on whether these words are different

04:08:08.940 or can be read differently

04:08:11.360 or are broader when they're used in a public order emergency

04:08:14.880 than they're used for the CSIS.

04:08:17.420 It's not the words that are different.

04:08:18.740 The words are exactly the same in both cases.

04:08:21.740 The question is, who's doing the interpretation?

04:08:25.280 What inputs come in?

04:08:26.700 And what is the purpose of it?

04:08:28.760 And the purpose of it for this point

04:08:31.300 was to be able to give us in special temporary measures

04:08:38.740 as defined in the Public Order Emergency Act

04:08:40.980 that would put an end to this national emergency.

04:08:48.420 So you've stated under the CSIS Act,

04:08:52.180 when CSIS determines that they are...

04:08:54.180 So you've stated under the CSIS Act,

04:08:58.440 when CSIS determines that they are going to use surveillance on a person, they need to meet the

04:09:04.980 threshold at section two, correct? Yes. And that's because the surveillance of one person

04:09:11.660 without other legal authority is something that is very serious and that requires a high legal

04:09:16.960 threshold, correct? Now, I understand your evidence that for the purpose of the Emergencies Act,

04:09:23.760 we are dealing with a different context yes yes a different purpose yes and we're dealing with a

04:09:30.240 different decision maker correct but i would put to you that when invoking the emergencies act

04:09:35.820 that threshold the level of threshold of the seer of the security threat that must be bet

04:09:42.920 cannot be any lower than it is when cses is proposing to surveil one person that the

04:09:51.960 threshold is no different do you agree with that yes i do thank you prime minister those are my

04:09:57.240 questions the responsibility of a prime minister is to make the tough calls and keep people safe

04:10:07.600 and this was a moment where the collective advice of cabinet of the public service

04:10:19.360 and my own inclination was that this was a moment to do something

04:10:27.460 that we needed to do to keep Canadians safe.

04:10:32.260 And knowing full well that this was an inevitable consequence

04:10:37.720 of me signing, I agree, on this note,

04:10:41.880 I was very comfortable that we were at a moment

04:10:44.780 where this was the right thing to do.

04:10:47.240 and

04:10:48.960 we did it

04:10:54.080 and it is a certain amount of

04:10:56.720 comfort

04:10:58.100 that first of all the system is working as it should

04:11:03.800 that people who are defending civil liberties are able to say

04:11:07.240 you really should be careful about doing this maybe you shouldn't have done it

04:11:10.080 we have a system pushing back on this because it's a big thing not a small thing

04:11:13.820 to do this

04:11:14.440 But that also we were able to solve the situation with it, that there was no loss of life, there was no serious violence, that we were able to get neighborhoods back under control, border services opened,

04:11:37.720 And there haven't been a recurrence of these kinds of illegal occupations since then.

04:11:46.260 I'm not going to pretend that it's the only thing that could have done it, but it did do it.

04:11:52.360 And that colors the conversations we're having now with the fact that these could be very different conversations.

04:11:59.720 and I am absolutely, absolutely serene and confident

04:12:06.180 that I made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation.

04:12:13.560 The act was invoked here in response to a protest,

04:12:17.440 and protest is a very important part of a functioning democracy,

04:12:22.740 and you touched on this in one of your answers before the break,

04:12:25.740 But does this open the door then to the Emergencies Act being regularly used as a tool to quell protest?

04:12:33.480 Because protest is not necessarily clean.

04:12:36.280 Protests can be messy and can be problematic, and it can interfere at times with critical infrastructure.

04:12:42.540 We think of Indigenous protest, environmental protest.

04:12:45.800 So what stops this from being used against that?

04:12:50.140 Again, the checks and balances we have and the need to demonstrate and meet a high threshold,

04:13:01.660 but also from experience over the past seven years, we've seen many protests and disruptions

04:13:09.440 across this country, including protests of, as you say, critical infrastructure and of

04:13:16.100 economic importance. And it never occurred to me or to the government to invoke the Emergencies

04:13:23.740 Act around any of those. Now, your point around maybe future governments will run to it as

04:13:31.080 a tool now that the seal has been broken. But I have greater faith in Canadians and in our

04:13:42.940 institutions than the fact that we might sort of shrug as our fundamental rights are casually

04:13:51.880 brushed aside in the name of political expediency or a national emergency that actually wouldn't be

04:14:01.600 one. Another criticism that is leveled is that while the protests may have gotten, can we say,

04:14:11.700 out of hand or snowballed and been extremely disruptive.

04:14:15.540 They weren't the actions of a small minority,

04:14:17.980 but a real expression of frustration,

04:14:20.800 of legitimate frustration on behalf

04:14:23.140 of a significant number of Canadians

04:14:25.600 who had been through, either suffered from

04:14:29.040 or felt aggrieved by years of public health measures.

04:14:34.080 And in response to that, they wanted to engage.

04:14:39.080 they wanted to engage and they wanted you to speak to them

04:14:43.280 and they wanted to hear directly from their federal government

04:14:45.660 and that did not happen.

04:14:46.880 So do you have an answer to that?

04:14:50.900 First of all, we heard them.

04:14:57.360 We knew exactly what they were asking for.

04:14:59.700 They were very, very clear that they wanted an end to mandates.

04:15:04.080 The convoy protesters were expressing their disagreement with very specific public policies, that they were very vocal, both in mainstream communications and through social media, on what they wanted.

04:15:24.860 and they were very much heard.

04:15:27.180 They had political parties in the previous election

04:15:30.800 very much carrying those messages

04:15:33.340 and presenting them to Canadians

04:15:37.300 as part of the options that Canadians had to choose

04:15:39.900 in that previous election.

04:15:41.200 So people were well aware of the opinions and concerns

04:15:48.800 and perspective of those individuals.

04:15:52.700 but it was clear that it wasn't that they just wanted to be heard they wanted to be obeyed

04:16:02.240 they wanted us to change public policy public health policy designed to help canadians and

04:16:09.820 we're going to occupy locations across this country and interfere with the lives of canadians

04:16:16.160 until such a decision was taken.

04:16:19.680 And I can't help but have noticed that when Premier Kenney in Alberta

04:16:28.260 did, during the course of these convoy occupations,

04:16:36.580 remove a number of mandates, instead of decreasing the amount of concern,

04:16:43.880 The convoy at Coutts, the occupation at Coutts, seemed to be emboldened and say, look, it's starting to work, let's keep going, instead of actually de-escalating.

04:16:55.100 So I am very aware that expressing concern and disagreement around positions of public policy is the right and is to be encouraged by any Canadian who wants to.

04:17:10.160 But the occupation and destabilization of and disruption of the lives of so many Canadians

04:17:24.160 and refusal to maintain a lawful protest is not all right.

04:17:40.160 so sir what I'd like to do so you've not read this no I have not okay so I certainly had not

04:17:46.480 read it on the 13th okay and so I'd like to just um Mr. Registrar I'd just like to walk the prime

04:17:52.060 minister through the pages not so he could read it because we don't have time but just to point

04:17:56.220 out that this is a heavily redacted document so page one is the cover page page two is a is this

04:18:03.660 signature page if we could go down page three is a description of the situation and the mission

04:18:09.040 And then, Mr. Registrar, if you could please scroll down, the rest of this document has been redacted.

04:18:15.560 So that's page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7, page 8.

04:18:21.800 So, Prime Minister, you said we should read this plan. We can't.

04:18:25.480 It's within your legal authority to instruct your council to remove these redactions.

04:18:31.440 For the sake of the transparency of this commission, sir, would you consider that request?

04:18:35.720 I object to that. On behalf of the Government of Canada, it's Brian Gover once again.

04:18:40.880 This is putting the Prime Minister in an odious position.

04:18:45.100 We had no notice that they would attempt this in cross-examination.

04:18:51.620 These things require careful consideration, do not lend themselves to decisions in the moment, and we maintain our objection.

04:19:03.120 uh commissioner sorry sir uh this was in our document list um that we circulated within time

04:19:12.240 uh to counsel for the attorney general they had noticed that we would be putting this document

04:19:16.000 and the question is a fair one in response to the prime minister's testimony this morning that he

04:19:20.800 said you should read it i think it it is fair in a sense but i think what's being raised is

04:19:28.400 it's a little more complicated than the federal government or the prime minister releasing these

04:19:33.760 this is a police operational plan of the ops involving officers from the ops and from opp

04:19:43.200 involving strategy etc and i would be very surprised if the federal government would order

04:19:49.280 its release without consulting with the various police services and i i think that's the unfairness

04:19:56.320 that's being referred to, and quite frankly, I agree.

04:20:00.060 Now, having said that, he made reference to the plan,

04:20:04.140 and there is an issue about reading it, for sure,

04:20:07.620 but I think the context is important here.

04:20:10.540 So, Commissioner, with your ruling there,

04:20:13.000 and I thank Mr. Gover for his point,

04:20:14.660 Prime Minister, can I put it to you this way?

04:20:16.220 You said we should read the plan,

04:20:17.960 but I think you would agree we can't.

04:20:20.800 Indeed.

04:20:22.840 As I said, I haven't read the plan,

04:20:24.960 But we're in a situation where, as can be imagined, I have access to unredacted information.

04:20:34.860 And what I know and my understanding of this plan was, and I'm happy to testify to that, that it was not a complete plan of engagement.

04:20:43.860 And Prime Minister, and again, I think I would like to raise this again.

04:20:50.620 I'm looking to Mr. Gover in anticipation of his reaction.

04:20:54.180 As you know, there's a legal opinion over which solicitor-client privilege has been asserted.

04:21:00.280 We asked Minister Lamedi to release that opinion, and in a public statement this week, he said he couldn't because he lacked the authority to.

04:21:08.520 That would be up to his client, and he then clarified that his client is his governor and counsel.

04:21:13.340 So again, for the record, sir, and this has been an issue for all week, not just this morning,

04:21:19.180 would you advise that that opinion be released in the interest of transparency?

04:21:25.960 Mr. Commissioner, it's Brian Gover once again for the Government of Canada.

04:21:31.040 Solicitor-client privilege, of course, is a very substantial right in our legal system.

04:21:36.580 It's one that the Supreme Court of Canada has recognized as a constitutional dimension.

04:21:41.960 I remind my friends that in this case, as the Prime Minister has said,

04:21:47.680 Cabinet confidence has been waived for the fourth time in 155 years to provide evidence of inputs.

04:21:54.520 We know that the decision note that was referred to in testimony by the Clerk of the Privy Council

04:22:01.180 referred to the advice of the public service that it was appropriate to invoke the Emergencies Act.

04:22:10.300 In my submission, we need not go further with the inquiry and pierce the veil of solicitor-client privilege, setting what, in my submission, could be a dangerous precedent going forward.

04:22:24.100 This is certainly an issue that requires careful consideration and not one to require a Prime Minister to respond to in the spur of the moment.

04:22:33.700 Thank you.

04:22:34.300 i'm wondering if you can describe if someone asked you um when did the emergencies act come

04:22:44.560 into play as a possibility uh how would you answer that well as as an idea um it would have been from

04:22:53.560 the very beginning in the back of our minds is you see a situation that um is an emergency is

04:23:01.400 out of control, has a potential for real impact on citizens, potential for violence,

04:23:08.200 real concerns about what's going on, not just in Ottawa, but right across the country.

04:23:13.800 The Coutts blockade that started up on the same first weekend that the Ottawa occupation did.

04:23:21.780 These are the things that you say, okay, as we look at a whole range of potential

04:23:31.200 outcomes in this there might be a moment where we have to invoke the emergencies act um it wasn't

04:23:38.560 seriously thought of because i will say certainly in my thinking right now it was a fairly binary

04:23:44.080 reflection it was oh we might have to invoke the emergencies act there was no reflection of

04:23:49.360 what we would have to invoke the emergencies act to do it was just understanding that if this

04:23:55.440 situation continues and is unable to get under control by anything else the federal government

04:24:01.120 It might have to give the provinces more powers, give police more powers, do something to put an end to this.

04:24:07.640 So whenever we said, yeah, we're looking at all options, it would have been in the back of our minds.

04:24:18.820 I'm wondering if you could describe.

04:24:20.900 There's a willingness to discuss, but you were concerned about setting a precedent where a blockade could equal a change.

04:24:31.120 in public policy. Is that fair?

04:24:33.120 Yeah, I think we have a robust functioning democracy

04:24:39.120 and protests, public protests are an important part

04:24:43.120 of making sure we're getting messages out there

04:24:46.120 and Canadians are getting messages out there

04:24:48.120 and highlighting how they feel about various issues.

04:24:50.120 But using protests to demand changes to public policy

04:24:58.120 is something that I think is worrisome.

04:25:02.340 Okay.

04:25:04.560 So, thank you, Mr.

04:25:05.760 Although, sorry, to a certain extent.

04:25:06.900 No, no, please go on.

04:25:07.720 Yeah, protests.

04:25:08.520 If you're out protesting that the government is, you know,

04:25:10.660 shutting down a safe injection site or something,

04:25:13.320 you are asking for changes in public policy.

04:25:15.760 But there is a difference between occupations

04:25:19.900 and, you know, saying we're not going until this has changed

04:25:26.640 in a way that is massively disruptive and potentially dangerous

04:25:32.060 versus just saying, yeah, we're protesting because we want public policy to change

04:25:38.140 and we're trying to convince people to get enough of them,

04:25:40.600 that politicians will listen to enough people saying,

04:25:43.040 okay, I'm going to lose votes if I don't change this.

04:25:45.860 That's the usual way protests can be effective in our democracies.

04:25:53.860 So just stopping there, Prime Minister,

04:25:55.700 do you remember what you were referring to when you start talking about you shouldn't need more

04:26:00.200 tools? I mean, that whole question around. So just stopping there, Prime Minister,

04:26:10.600 do you remember what you were referring to when you start talking about you shouldn't need more

04:26:14.820 tools um i mean that whole question around legality or illegality of the protest um they didn't have

04:26:28.340 a permit to protest um they not not certainly as long as they had um they were illegally parked

04:26:35.380 They were engaged in disruptive activities.

04:26:40.380 There are any number of municipal and provincial by-law infractions

04:26:46.380 and legal infractions that they were engaged in by just being there.

04:26:50.380 And there is a sense that, you know, and this was based on an earlier conversation

04:26:56.380 I had with Bill Blair about how one proceeds in this,

04:26:59.380 in this, is, you know, you can enforce small things as a way of keeping the situation under

04:27:08.960 control and creating boundaries and balances and moving towards it.

04:27:13.660 It's an approach.

04:27:16.260 The issue here was that there were things that they could do and things that I know

04:27:22.560 were tried that they realized were unsafe for them to do.

04:27:30.000 There are stories of police officers getting swarmed

04:27:32.200 when they tried to arrest someone with a jerry can filled with gasoline.

04:27:37.180 There was a sense that giving out simple tickets

04:27:42.420 wasn't really having much of an impact as they did that,

04:27:48.080 and taking stronger measures was going to be resisted

04:27:52.260 and met with significant resistance.

04:27:57.320 But these are things that if they feel they didn't have the resources

04:28:03.980 to enforce a prohibition on bringing in jerrycans

04:28:07.880 or a prohibition of parking on the approach to the Ambassador Bridge,

04:28:13.900 well, let us give you more resources to do that.

04:28:17.720 Between the OPP and the RCMP,

04:28:19.700 we should be able to get the numbers up.

04:28:22.260 in a way that could lead for an ability to use those existing tools on the books.

04:28:30.060 Prime Minister, can you tell us, just the readout doesn't actually say that much,

04:28:33.240 so can you tell us about your recollection of that call?

04:28:39.880 There were sort of two goals I had in that call.

04:28:45.440 The first one was to reassure him that despite the disruptions to trade and real impacts on both sides of the border, which were economic, yes, but were also people to people.

04:28:59.680 We knew from the pandemic that thousands of health care workers crossed the Ambassador Bridge every day from Canada to go work in Detroit in their hospitals.

04:29:11.120 There are real meaningful connections across that crossing that were being disrupted in meaningful ways.

04:29:17.860 And I wanted to reassure President Biden that Canada was going to be able to solve for this

04:29:25.320 and that we were going to continue to be a reliable partner for trade and for people-to-people ties and a safe neighbour.

04:29:35.060 that was sort of in response to his concerns around disruptions to activities on both sides

04:29:44.420 of the border because of the blockage. But the second thing I wanted to talk about was just

04:29:48.820 sort of the general context, the fact that the 911 centre being overwhelmed in Ottawa

04:29:56.040 a couple of days before happened from American calls, that there was a significant amount of

04:30:04.600 amplification from certain sectors of the American political sphere. And there was also

04:30:15.400 a significant amount of money flowing and support for these occupation activities in Canada that

04:30:25.440 were coming from people in the United States sympathetic to that cause and opposed to both

04:30:33.060 he and I in our public health policies, but also in our general policies.

04:30:39.980 Okay. Would you say that President Biden shared your level of concern about the situation?

04:30:48.020 No. I think I was much more concerned about the blockage to the lives and the disruption and the

04:30:57.660 potential security concerns. I think he was very concerned, but I don't think anyone was more

04:31:03.120 concerned than me. We heard evidence from Commissioner Lucky of the RCMP that she had

04:31:11.960 signed off on a plan to enforce and remove the protesters in Ottawa on February 13th that she

04:31:20.440 had confidence in, that she, the OPP, and the OPS had confidence in. Did you hear that testimony?

04:31:26.340 um no I disagree with that okay you disagree with that yes I I do not

04:31:33.360 believe that the plan that was either signed off on supposedly by the RCMP or

04:31:39.420 presented by the Ottawa Police Services on the 13th was in any real regards an

04:31:46.580 actual plan for clearing the protests and is this a plan that you you saw or

04:31:52.260 that what you were just spoken to about I was spoken to about I did not see it

04:31:55.860 Okay, and were you spoken to about it by Commissioner Lucky or by Minister Mendocino?

04:31:59.860 I don't remember.

04:32:00.860 You don't remember.

04:32:01.860 But as of February 13th, your impression was that the plan that was in place at that time

04:32:08.860 was not one that you or the RCMP had confidence in?

04:32:12.860 It was not one that we had confidence in, no.

04:32:15.860 Okay.

04:32:25.860 Are you drawing a distinction there between, okay, the premiers may say it's under control here, but that doesn't mean it's under control everywhere.

04:32:34.980 So they would have had to come to you with something that would have solved the big problem as you saw it?

04:32:39.720 I think there just would have been a sense that the measures I was proposing weren't going to be useful or effective.

04:32:52.760 of. And what I heard on the contrary was concerns that we'd shared that this might inflame the

04:33:03.980 protesters to declare a public order emergency and bring in martial law, which was one of the

04:33:11.040 concerns or that they would interpret it as that. Of course, it wasn't martial law and it did not

04:33:15.800 suspend people's fundamental rights and freedoms um but it it at the same time um they expressed

04:33:24.020 these concerns which we had shared uh but i was balancing off against okay um there is a danger of

04:33:31.960 of further uh inflaming the situation but the situation was already pretty inflamed and my

04:33:38.000 concern was if we continue to not do anything uh are enough citizens going to start counter

04:33:44.100 protesting and taking things into their own hands at various places across the country

04:33:48.300 threats of serious violence was the key ones and can you can you elaborate on on what those

04:33:57.000 threats were what led to that conclusion um and again we went around the table with officials

04:34:03.460 uh from all different agencies and heads of departments uh to talk about this there was

04:34:10.060 uh the um militarization of vehicles for example we'd seen uh sorry weaponization of vehicles we'd

04:34:18.940 seen uh you know cars ramming into police officers or other cars at coots uh we saw an incident like

04:34:26.120 that in um in uh surrey i believe uh we saw trucks uh used as as uh potential weapons certainly in

04:34:36.940 in Ottawa with their their presence and unknown interiors there was a use of children as human

04:34:46.220 shields deliberately which was a real concern both at the Ambassador Bridge and the fact that there

04:34:52.880 were kids on Wellington Street that people didn't know what was in the in the trucks whether it was

04:35:00.020 kids whether it was weapons whether it was both police had no way of knowing those there was

04:35:05.720 presence of weapons uh at coots as we saw there was a concern around weapons being stolen uh in

04:35:12.980 peterborough uh that we didn't know about 2 000 guns that we didn't know where they had gone at

04:35:17.560 that point uh we later found out they didn't go there but there was that was a real concern

04:35:22.020 that we had about what was happening to them um there were a number of others as well there was

04:35:27.560 The fact that police trying to enforce laws were met with active resistance and a group of 30 police officers trying to interdict someone or arrest someone who was carrying a jerry can into the site in Ottawa got swarmed by 100 people and they had to leave because there were threats to their safety and they weren't able to arrest that individual.

04:35:55.300 There were layers of danger that CSIS kept bringing up to us that the presence of people promoting ideologically motivated violent extremism in the convoys had a danger of triggering, not necessarily them to act, but lone wolf actors or people who could be radicalized to take actions that were violent.

04:36:25.300 the responsibility of a prime minister is to make the tough calls and keep people safe

04:36:36.560 and this was a moment where the collective advice of cabinet of the public service

04:36:48.340 and my own inclination was that this was a moment to do something

04:36:56.420 that we needed to do to keep Canadians safe.

04:37:01.220 And knowing full well that this was an inevitable consequence

04:37:06.660 of me signing, I agree, on this note,

04:37:10.840 I was very comfortable that we were at a moment

04:37:13.740 where this was the right thing to do.

04:37:16.200 and

04:37:17.920 we did it

04:37:23.240 and it is a certain amount of

04:37:25.680 comfort

04:37:27.060 that first of all the system is working

04:37:32.080 as it should

04:37:32.740 that people who are defending civil liberties are able to say

04:37:36.200 you really should be careful about doing this

04:37:38.060 maybe you shouldn't have done it

04:37:39.040 we have a system pushing back on this

04:37:40.780 because it's a big thing not a small thing to do this

04:37:43.400 but

04:37:44.620 But that also we were able to solve the situation with it, that there was no loss of life, there

04:37:55.420 was no serious violence, that we were able to get neighborhoods back under control, border

04:38:05.020 services opened, and there haven't been a recurrence of these kinds of illegal occupations

04:38:14.540 that i'm not going to pretend that it's the only thing that could have done it but it did do it

04:38:21.500 and that colors the conversations we're having now uh with the fact that these could be very

04:38:27.740 different conversations and i am absolutely absolutely serene and confident um that i

04:38:36.700 made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation

04:38:39.260 i'm wondering if you can describe if someone asked you um when did the emergencies act come

04:38:48.740 into play as a possibility uh how would you answer that as as an idea um it would have been from the

04:38:57.900 very beginning in the back of our minds as you see a situation that um is an emergency is out of

04:39:06.060 control is has a potential for real impact on citizens potential for violence uh real concerns

04:39:13.380 about what's going on not just in ottawa but right across the country uh the coots blockade that

04:39:19.240 started up on the same first weekend uh that the ottawa uh occupation did these are the things that

04:39:27.940 um you say okay as we look at a whole range of potential outcomes in this there might be a

04:39:37.200 moment where we have to invoke the emergencies act um it wasn't seriously thought of because

04:39:44.240 i will say certainly in my thinking right now it was a fairly binary reflection it was oh we might

04:39:50.680 have to invoke the emergencies act there was no reflection of what we would have to invoke the

04:39:55.060 Emergencies Act to do. It was just understanding that if this situation continues and is unable to

04:40:02.500 get under control by anything else, the federal government might have to give the provinces more

04:40:07.760 powers, give police more powers, do something to put an end to this. So whenever we said,

04:40:13.900 yeah, we're looking at all options, it would have been in the back of our minds.

04:40:17.580 the act was invoked here in response to to a protest and protest is a very important part of

04:40:28.460 are we ready perfect

04:40:41.460 the next group the government of alberta please

04:40:47.580 good afternoon prime minister my name is stephanie bose i'm counsel for the province of alberta

04:40:58.780 you were asked this morning if any of the first ministers could have said or done

04:41:04.060 anything to change your mind about the emergencies act and i understood your evidence to be yes if

04:41:11.420 one of them had said they had alternate tools and they thought it would end the situation

04:41:15.980 if they had figured out how to obtain towing services and if they had convinced you that

04:41:21.040 the laws in Canada were sufficient to deal with the protests is that a correct understanding

04:41:25.580 uh it would have had to been more of them one of them but yes this was a national emergency

04:41:30.880 we were facing but if there was uh if there was compelling reasons why the emergencies act

04:41:36.880 wasn't necessary it certainly would have given me pause thank you you would agree that this is the

04:41:43.460 very reason why proper and adequate consultation is so important and in fact required under the

04:41:50.260 emergencies act yes that makes sense okay don't you agree then that giving the first minister's

04:41:56.880 advance notice and time to prepare would have allowed the first ministers to share with you

04:42:01.740 the details and the input that you indicated to the commission would be important to your

04:42:06.640 decision-making um throughout the two weeks three weekends leading up to those conversations we had

04:42:16.780 many engagements with the provinces the officials ministers and indeed there was a letter from the

04:42:24.640 province of Alberta asking for exactly that help with a tow truck resources so they felt very

04:42:30.940 strongly that the federal government needed to step up with extra tools and extra support so

04:42:38.060 that they could get those vehicles towed from coots so there was engagement with the provinces

04:42:45.020 throughout and they were certainly we were certainly all talking about what would be

04:42:49.180 needed to put an end to these these occupations and blockades and certainly there's been a lot

04:42:54.300 of evidence before this commission about how alberta solved the tow truck problem so i won't

04:42:58.460 get into that but you would agree that none of the engagement you had with the provinces

04:43:03.580 discussed at all the use of the emergencies act and whether it was necessary in the provinces

04:43:10.460 the consultation on the use of the emergencies act needed to center around what we'd actually do

04:43:20.780 with the act if i had consulted uh with the premiers early on without saying these are the

04:43:28.780 six things we would do with the emergencies act their first question would be okay you might want

04:43:34.140 to do this emergencies act but what are you going to do with it what powers will you be giving

04:43:40.620 yourself or the federal government or our our officials and police services so there

04:43:48.140 There was ongoing conversations about tools and the consultation on the Emergencies Act was done when we had a very clear list of the things we would actually be bringing in with the Emergencies Act.

04:44:01.760 I will put to you that the way the First Minister's meeting was arranged, which was a short notice invitation with no indication of the topic of discussion,

04:44:10.640 meant that the discussions you did have with the First Ministers

04:44:14.600 could not possibly provide you with the details that you needed to consider.

04:44:20.040 I disagree.

04:44:22.720 In your evidence today, you said that at the First Ministers' meeting,

04:44:27.500 you heard Premier Kenney say there was a plan for Coutts,

04:44:30.900 but that you had heard that before and you were not convinced that morning

04:44:34.240 that it would be put to use. Is that correct?

04:44:36.120 um no i had no reason to doubt premier kenny's um goodwill and uh hopes that uh coots would be

04:44:49.160 resolved uh soon but i also knew that coots had been in place for at that point three weeks

04:44:56.560 there had been an ebb and a flow there were moments where traffic was let through moments

04:45:01.740 where people showed up more intensely and it goes to the preoccupation we had that even if

04:45:11.180 as he indicated there were good chances that it would be cleared in the coming moments there was

04:45:18.140 going to be a continued challenge to hold open that area given the current current context

04:45:25.500 minister mendicino said at the irg the afternoon previous which you were present at that there was

04:45:34.460 going to be enforcement action at coops correct uh yes it was something that we had been monitoring

04:45:40.860 for a while uh it would turn out that the rcmp who had intended to do enforcement action as the

04:45:50.300 provincial police force uh many days if not a week before had to suspend it because of uh genuine

04:45:57.500 concerns around officer safety and the presence of significant uh numbers of weapons and uh

04:46:05.020 problematic individuals in that so it was something we were anticipating and hoping

04:46:10.700 was going to happen certainly hoping was going to happen peacefully but it was something that

04:46:15.340 we had been hoping would happen for a while yes certainly because what we saw was that

04:46:22.380 the actions at coots changed from public order policing activity into a criminal investigation

04:46:30.300 and around 8 pm on the night of the 13th commissioner lucky emailed minister mendicino

04:46:35.580 and jody thomas and advised them that the rcmp had an enforcement plan ready for execution

04:46:41.740 and that they were indeed on the cusp of enforcement in coots and that proved to be true

04:46:47.340 correct yes it did it was that was good news that it was true yes so then why were you doubtful when

04:46:54.460 premier kenny told you that he believed the situation had been secured and the rcmp would

04:47:00.540 now proceed with broader arrests and secure the porter when exactly what you had been told the

04:47:05.500 night before about rcmp enforcement did in fact happen we had been told throughout the process

04:47:13.020 uh throughout these weeks that things were about to happen sometimes they happened sometimes they

04:47:17.420 didn't and not just at coots but elsewhere so there was an understanding that inevitably things

04:47:23.260 were more difficult than uh then well reality is always more difficult than plans uh it was good

04:47:30.460 news uh that the province was able to clear but i will also say or that the the situation was able

04:47:36.060 to be cleared in the province at that point i will also say that it was done in part with resources

04:47:42.220 drawn from british columbia and one of the things uh that premier horgan uh attested to or said in

04:47:49.260 that meeting was um he understands it's a national emergency he understands and agreed with our use

04:47:55.260 of things but he was very concerned that even as he was worried about what was happening at

04:48:00.860 the surrey border crossings as he was worried about uh convoy activity uh in the interior

04:48:06.700 in other parts of bc uh he had had to give up a number of police officers to help with enforcement

04:48:13.900 in in alberta and while yes it was good news that alberta looked like it was going to be resolved

04:48:21.500 there was a constant challenge that uh the whack-a-mole challenge that was uh brought up

04:48:26.940 in other contexts uh that things kept coming back and we had a level of concern uh that even if one

04:48:35.660 place was resolved the threat environment the concerns we had uh were going to replicate

04:48:42.380 themselves elsewhere and you understood that the police um the extra rcmp officers that were brought

04:48:49.580 into alberta were of course brought in under the provincial police service agreement not under any

04:48:54.300 powers created under the emergencies act no because they were brought in well before well

04:48:58.780 before the uh the emergencies act but it did go to the challenge facing being a national emergency

04:49:07.340 uh when we see police well when we saw the police action uh in ottawa at the end of that week

04:49:13.500 it drew on police uh members uh from uh from forces spread across ontario and beyond

04:49:22.140 the emergencies act didn't change that though it facilitated that it didn't create police

04:49:28.780 it didn't create police officers no but it highlighted that uh you couldn't just look at

04:49:34.860 one place and say oh we have enough resources to fix in this one place it was a broad challenge

04:49:41.260 across the country at the same time so alberta being on a hopeful track at that moment was

04:49:48.380 obviously good news but it wasn't sufficient to say oh great there's no more national emergency

04:49:55.740 all right i'm going to put to you the fact that you did have evidence that the laws in the

04:50:01.100 provinces were sufficient to handle the blockades and i'll give you two examples one is that the

04:50:06.940 windsor police along with the opp cleared the blockade and the ambassador bridge was reopened

04:50:13.020 before you made your decision correct um yes with the caveat that they a lot of the people who were

04:50:23.420 leaving uh the ambassador bridge were purportedly headed towards uh the sarnia crossing or the fort

04:50:30.780 erie crossing uh meaning that there were there were still real concerns that even as we settled

04:50:36.780 things in one place uh the rhetoric across the country and the online activity indicated that

04:50:43.180 people were not going home but they were looking for the next thing they could engage with right

04:50:50.220 so the police powers were able to deal with the problem correct in they were able to clear

04:50:58.220 the blockade they were able to clear the clear lanes at that moment yes in that spot okay but

04:51:06.060 there was a real concern there would be more right or the other example of the other example is coots

04:51:12.780 where where the rcmp were able to safely conduct a criminal investigation execute search warrants

04:51:18.540 and make arrests correct yes and that protesters in coots indicated to rcmp that they wanted to

04:51:26.220 leave the protest because they didn't want to be associated with the criminal elements uncovered

04:51:30.780 correct uh i i can't speak to what their intent was okay we've heard evidence in this commission

04:51:38.540 so the commission knows um what uh one of the protesters did indicate the intent was

04:51:43.900 now these are in fact the type of decreases in troublesome protest activity that you had been

04:51:49.660 hoping to see in the weeks prior weren't they yes and um definitely examples of how existing

04:51:58.460 legal tools and police powers were effective at dealing with the legal portions of protests

04:52:03.740 correct yes all right you're pretty well out of your time so and that's okay i think i think i

04:52:14.540 will end there thank you very much prime minister for answering my questions today thank you thank

04:52:19.980 you next uh is uh the convoy organizers please

04:52:35.900 the lawyers representing freedom corp and the protesters were who were here in ottawa in january

04:52:51.740 and february of 2022 i want to first talk to you about the events that led up to the invocation of

04:52:58.620 the emergencies act you would agree with me that the emergencies act was invoked on valentine's day

04:53:05.260 monday february 14th correct yes and you are aware that this commission has received evidence from

04:53:12.780 the police and other witnesses that on monday february 14th the ambassador bridge was reopened

04:53:19.580 as was coots all the borders were reopened correct uh yes and there was concern that more

04:53:27.660 uh locations were going to be uh closed acutes didn't open till tuesday

04:53:35.260 okay well we'll review the record for that on the sunday night february 13th there was an irg

04:53:41.420 meeting and you were there and in fact you were the chair of that meeting is that correct yes

04:53:46.940 and at the irg meeting you were advised that there were breakthrough there was a breakthrough

04:53:51.180 agreement between the mayor of ottawa and the convoy organizers to move trucks out of the

04:53:56.380 downtown residential areas isn't that correct uh that is not how i remember it no okay well

04:54:02.940 i can advise you that at the inquiry it was confirmed by the documents your officials filed

04:54:09.180 here and by witnesses namely jody thomas she confirmed that at that irg meeting you were

04:54:16.140 briefed that there was an agreement with the mayor does that do you recall that with whom

04:54:22.060 but with the mayor and who some of the convoy organizers which ones well tamara leach who's

04:54:29.980 present here in this room signed a letter it was made publicly available on the news

04:54:36.860 on sunday february 13th and you were advised of that agreement at the irg meeting and we were

04:54:44.940 also advised uh that that agreement wasn't holding and that many of the convoy had decried it as

04:54:53.020 fake news and not actually an agreement that they would abide by and you learned that on twitter

04:54:58.220 is that correct no we learned that at the at the irg by whom by our collected officials thanks

04:55:05.420 and now you should be aware that this commission has also received evidence from city officials

04:55:15.160 and others that the next day on monday the 14th over 100 protest vehicles had moved out of the

04:55:21.820 downtown residential areas under the mayor's agreement prior to your 4 30 pm announcement

04:55:29.080 invoking the emergencies act is that right uh i can't speak to that but i'm sure others have or

04:55:35.800 will they have and you are aware of the evidence before this commission from police officials and

04:55:42.280 others who testified that the efforts by the truckers to further vacate the downtown residential

04:55:49.000 areas under the mayor's deal were blocked by the police on both tuesday and wednesday february 15th

04:55:56.920 and 16th are you aware of that no i am not my understanding was the police were allowing anyone

04:56:03.480 who wanted to leave to leave okay would you agree with me that it would have been a far better

04:56:10.440 outcome if you and your colleagues would have allowed the de-escalation agreement

04:56:15.400 with the mayor to be completed and there would have been no need to invoke the extraordinary

04:56:20.840 powers of the emergencies act including the significant and violent police actions and

04:56:27.320 freezing canadians bank accounts if i could interrupt uh commissioner it's brian gover

04:56:33.400 on behalf of the government of canada the agreement was to move the protesters to wellington

04:56:39.160 my friend is misstating the evidence in my submission i could provide some clarity okay go

04:56:47.640 ahead um it's very well known in the agreement with the mayor that it was to remove vehicles

04:56:57.080 from the downtown residential areas and yes mr gover thank you to move to wellington

04:57:05.320 but out of residential areas apart from wellington so thank you

04:57:14.120 can you now are you able to answer the question

04:57:17.640 uh i believe the answer was no but you can repeat the question if you like sure

04:57:25.240 if you had allowed the de-escalation agreement in other words moving trucks outside and other

04:57:32.040 protest vehicles outside of the downtown area there would be no need to invoke the emergency

04:57:39.640 act mr commissioner i i object again because characterizing this as a de-escalation agreement

04:57:46.760 in my submission is a misnomer.

04:57:49.340 This was an agreement that didn't hold,

04:57:52.420 but it was to move vehicles from residential areas to Wellington Street.

04:57:58.540 Well, I'll let the question stand.

04:58:00.680 I think it's a question of interpretation.

04:58:03.380 Go ahead.

04:58:04.100 So, no, I don't agree.

04:58:06.100 Thank you.

04:58:11.240 Your officials have testified that they were following the convoy

04:58:15.580 as it began moving from regions of Canada towards Ottawa.

04:58:19.140 And you are aware that thousands of Canadians lined the highways

04:58:22.620 and overpasses to cheer the truckers.

04:58:24.720 Is that right?

04:58:26.980 I can't speak to the number, but yes.

04:58:29.820 There were many supporters, yes.

04:58:33.100 Mr. Prime Minister, I would like to read to you an excerpt

04:58:36.060 from three of the many statements that Canadians prepared for this commission,

04:58:40.220 Canadians who supported the convoy and explained why.

04:58:42.880 and i would like i would ask the registrar to bring up document id hrf four zeros one six six zero

04:58:54.880 if you could turn to page 274 please

04:59:04.480 and while that comes up i'll just start reading the statement

04:59:06.960 274. Elizabeth Klapik provided a statement about how the government's COVID mandates and lockdowns 0.96

04:59:18.760 disrupted her life. Starting at paragraph three, she said, the truckers and the Canadians who

04:59:25.440 lined the roads, overpasses and highways restored the hope that I had almost lost.

04:59:31.640 These patriotic Canadians told me that I am not alone, that I matter.

04:59:36.160 I will never forget the hope and pride I felt watching these amazing truckers

04:59:41.280 driving along Canadian highways, crowded with patriotic Canadians flying their flags

04:59:52.920 and holding their signs of support.

04:59:58.240 I will never forget the tears I shed as I regained that almost lost hope, that love for my home and native land, that love for my fellow Canadians.

05:00:10.820 At page 235, Ottawa resident Karen Hanna, who obtained a sociology degree from Ottawa University, starting at paragraph 5, stated,

05:00:23.980 for months. The leader of our country publicly shamed people like me and my husband. Our own

05:00:33.420 family members turned on us, blamed us, and some even told us we don't deserve health care.

05:00:41.140 Paragraph 17. One of my most emotional moments was dancing on Rideau Street beside a local man.

05:00:47.220 He had tears streaming down his face.

05:00:49.780 All he wanted was a hug.

05:00:51.960 It was very overpowering for him.

05:00:54.840 I met a girl, 22 years old, who just hopped in her car from Winnipeg and just kept driving.

05:01:00.160 She stayed the entire time.

05:01:02.460 I met people who were like family to me.

05:01:05.940 People who gave up everything to come to Ottawa for justice and an explanation.

05:01:10.100 At page 116, here is one of many, many concerned parents and spouses.

05:01:20.260 Sam Crozier, at paragraph 8, says,

05:01:23.180 I am not asking for help. I am begging you to please listen, hear my heart, feel my pain, and help work towards the true North strong and free that we were promised.

05:01:38.160 my husband an army veteran who now has ptsd and not from anything he has seen or done in the

05:01:44.840 forces but from what our own government has done our government has destroyed my life i a once

05:01:51.440 optimistic full of life person find myself struggling to stay above water now i struggle

05:01:57.700 to find joy in anything and daily fear a new announcement being made that will further punish

05:02:03.800 us i have written the same email to every member of parliament daily and been ignored by a large

05:02:13.220 collection of the people meant to be our leaders meant to be listening to us mr prime minister

05:02:19.520 you have now heard the statements from some of the many concerned canadians who felt compelled

05:02:26.320 to support the protesters do you now understand the reason so many canadians came to ottawa

05:02:34.240 with such resolve in the midst of a harsh cold canadian winter

05:02:41.360 because of the harms caused by your government coveted mandates and they wanted to be heard

05:02:46.720 I am moved, and I was moved as I heard these testimonies, as I saw the depth of

05:03:00.560 hurt and anxiety about the present and the future expressed by so many people.

05:03:08.480 that COVID pandemic was unbelievably difficult on all Canadians. And my job throughout this pandemic

05:03:19.840 was to keep Canadians safe. And the way that I chose to do that was to lean on

05:03:25.920 public health officials, lean on experts and science on the best way to keep Canadians safe.

05:03:33.360 and because Canadians got vaccinated to over 80 percent we had fewer deaths in Canada than places

05:03:43.120 that didn't reach that and every heartbreaking story I hear of a family who sat beside the bed

05:03:50.880 of a loved one dying because they had believed that the vaccines were more dangerous than the

05:03:59.520 disease i take personally because i wish i could have done more and i don't convince people to

05:04:09.760 get vaccinated but i only have 10 minutes so thank you that was helpful uh mr prime just just to

05:04:16.960 interrupt you you're gonna have to shorten it because you're you're uh already over your time

05:04:21.680 okay thank you a number of people have testified in this inquiry referencing your widely published

05:04:28.480 comments and calling the unvaccinated racists and misogynists and we have heard testimony in this

05:04:35.200 inquiry about how some of your officials wanted to label protesters as terrorists would you agree

05:04:41.360 with me that one of the most important roles of a prime minister is to unite canadians and

05:04:45.760 not divide them by engaging in name calling uh i did not call people who were unvaccinated

05:04:53.920 names i highlighted there's a difference between people who are hesitant to get vaccinated for

05:05:04.180 any range of reasons and people who deliberately spread misinformation that puts at risk

05:05:12.480 that life and health of their fellow canadians and my focus every step of the way and the primary

05:05:21.100 responsibility of a prime minister is to keep canadians safe and alive right so in terms of

05:05:28.460 safety uh you when you met with our refrain minister blair public safety minister minister

05:05:38.380 mendicino national security intelligence advisor jody thomas and rcmp commissioner brenda lucky

05:05:44.780 and today you testified that the federal government was committed to exhausting all alternatives to

05:05:50.460 a resolution prior to making a decision to invoke the extraordinary powers of the emergencies act

05:05:57.180 do you agree that that accurately describes your government's position that the invocation of the

05:06:02.700 emergencies act was a measure of last resort was not something to be taken lightly thank you

05:06:07.980 and something to do when when other options were not effective and you are aware that the opp along

05:06:15.900 with others developed an engagement proposal and you were advised of that proposal at the irg

05:06:21.980 meeting on february 12th correct um it was a proposal but we had and it was presented to us

05:06:29.660 we had more questions uh about uh how it would actually work uh there it was not a complete

05:06:35.660 proposal my last question mr prime minister when did you and your government start to become so

05:06:41.500 afraid of your own citizens that's a very unfair and we are not those are my questions

05:06:52.140 thank you uh if there's any more trouble that side of the room is going to be expelled is that clear

05:07:01.260 clear enough. Next I'll call on the City of Ottawa please.

05:07:26.860 Good afternoon Prime Minister. My name is Alyssa Tompkins. I'm counsel for the City

05:07:30.860 of Ottawa. I just wanted to take you to a couple of statements on your witness summary

05:07:36.640 to start. So if we could bring that up, it's WTS 6084, please, Mr. Clerk. And we'll be

05:07:46.860 going to page four. And just if we can scroll down to where we're talking about challenges

05:07:56.480 in ottawa so the first point uh you make is that uh the lesson learned was not to let the trucks

05:08:05.760 park because that makes it more difficult to remove them and you noted the decision makers

05:08:10.480 in toronto and quebec city heeded this lesson prime minister are you aware that since that time

05:08:16.000 uh the city of ottawa in preparation for two events has indeed closed roads so the cities

05:08:21.920 learn that lesson as well you'll agree excellent okay um the second um about their resources

05:08:30.480 uh you state that there appeared to be a breakdown of communication between ops and the city and you

05:08:37.200 state it was unclear for instance whether the mayor's request for additional police officers

05:08:42.560 was made with the support of the ops or the ottawa police services board now are you talking about

05:08:48.240 the letter that you received from mayor watson um i'm talking about the the fact that we were

05:08:54.640 regularly briefed throughout uh that there were different requests coming from uh the police

05:09:02.080 then from the mayor then from other elements within the ottawa's orbit okay well i'm a bit

05:09:10.800 short on time but i'll put to you that the letter you received from the mayor was co-signed by the

05:09:16.240 chair of the ottawa police services board so by the time the letter came it was clear it was from

05:09:21.280 the opsb as well correct perhaps i can bring it up um okay i i don't know that it serves us um

05:09:29.200 i'll i'll put to the record and given my short time we'll we'll deal with it after and in terms

05:09:34.560 of ops also by by that point um well why don't we go to the readout of the call so the letter came

05:09:42.080 just to situate you the letter came um february 7th and the next day on february 8th you had a

05:09:48.560 call with mayor watts and do you remember that yes i do but we'll bring up the readout so it's uh

05:09:53.120 ssm.can.nsc.00002837

05:10:07.120 okay and um so there there's nothing in here let's scroll down uh to page two but if we go through

05:10:29.520 it there's no there's no concern expressed by you during this call that that there's any uncertainty

05:10:34.400 about whether ops or the opsb are aware of the resource request so by this point is that clear

05:10:41.920 in your mind i'm sorry uh would that it is clear that that mayor watson is asking for 1800 officers

05:10:55.040 yes yes i mayor watson was regularly clear in wanting um many more officers it wasn't

05:11:04.160 always clear what the plan for those officers would be those we turn to the ops for that and

05:11:10.160 the ops uh tended to give us different numbers than the city of ottawa was giving us that was

05:11:16.880 how i was briefed through it okay no and well i will i there was other evidence on that i'm not

05:11:21.680 going to take you to it but i think you're saying that uh you were briefed on that but we can rely

05:11:27.120 on the evidence of those individuals here okay but in a contemporary way as i was watching things

05:11:34.880 unfolded the briefings i received and what was consistent was there was confusion or misalignment

05:11:42.720 between different sectors of the city of ottawa and the ottawa police forces in terms of what

05:11:49.600 they needed how they needed how they were being delivered uh and that was that was one of the

05:11:54.000 realities we were dealing with okay but um that concern was not expressed in this call to mr

05:12:00.240 watts and you'll agree um sorry scroll down a bit further uh

05:12:13.920 oh yeah there are moments where you are saying one thing and he is saying another is there anywhere

05:12:18.640 we can help around that i think that was me expressing uh that there were different messages

05:12:23.520 coming out of the policing side versus the mayor's side yeah and he responds about the police solution

05:12:32.800 issue so just to your to your suggestion that we didn't talk about the differences between those

05:12:39.200 i actually did talk about the differences between what different uh groups were saying

05:12:45.040 okay well we can debate the particularities of that um point this is the day after you received

05:12:50.960 the letter co-signed by the opsb and there's nothing on this call saying that there's concern

05:12:57.600 that the ops didn't provide that number there are moments where you are saying one thing and

05:13:04.880 the police are saying another is there any way we can help around that right and we'll see the mayor

05:13:10.800 responds one thing was when he said it's not a police solution but it is a police police solution

05:13:17.120 so that's what the mayor understood you to be expressing a concern about and if we stroll down

05:13:22.400 uh then we get to a discussion about um mr ford and that that's actually where i i wanted to get

05:13:31.600 to you took a lot of time you're out of time so please uh get to the point quickly yep so if we

05:13:39.840 keep going and um oh there we are so you express um that the federal government will be there with

05:13:47.660 the resources and uh there's something about conflating um and i think you testified earlier

05:13:55.000 about it's the source of the mandates but uh you say doug ford has been hiding from his responsibility

05:13:59.820 on it for political reasons as you highlighted and important that we don't let them get away

05:14:04.140 from that and we intend to support you on that and the mayor says if they keep dragging their feet

05:14:08.560 I'm happy to call them out. It would be nice if we have something firmed up from the federal

05:14:12.400 government to shame them. Ford didn't even make an effort to come and see what's going on. So

05:14:17.280 part of the reason that you'll agree, the part of the reason the mayor was reaching out to the

05:14:21.960 federal government directly was to give him additional ammunition to put pressure on the

05:14:26.680 province, correct? I can't speak to the mayor's intentions in reaching out to me. I know that I

05:14:34.780 reached out to the mayor to talk about the situation in Ottawa and to express that I had

05:14:39.220 expressed to Commissioner of the RCMP and others that we should be providing whatever resources

05:14:45.480 can help the City of Ottawa. And all I'm saying is that when the mayor went to both the province

05:14:51.060 and the feds, he's explaining to you here that one of the reasons he's doing that, because he's also

05:14:56.220 reached out to Ford, is that he's hoping you'll give him something so that he can also push on

05:15:00.960 for so he he knows he has to go to the province too yeah but we don't um we don't provide uh police

05:15:08.800 officers in order to uh shame or make political points we're providing police officers to be

05:15:15.600 useful on the ground and to be able to deliver things so uh maybe there are political points

05:15:21.280 to be to be scored or made but our focus every step was what can we do to help deliver the

05:15:27.920 resources uh that ottawa obviously needed uh in order to move forward on dealing with this

05:15:35.360 occupation but you'll agree that the mayor was frustrated as were you that the province was not

05:15:40.640 providing the resources they read it they needed on an expedited as i believe i testified my

05:15:46.320 understanding was that the opp was engaged but it was at the political level uh that there wasn't

05:15:52.640 as much engagement at that particular point as we know uh as time went by uh the province got

05:15:58.720 very much activated and engaged and indeed i i had a call with premier ford the very next day

05:16:04.640 in which he showed his engagement all right thank you very much prime minister i appreciate

05:16:09.680 you answering my questions okay next is the ottawa coalition please

05:16:28.800 good afternoon mr prime minister my name is christine johnson i'm counsel for the ottawa

05:16:33.440 coalition of residents and businesses i want to use my time with you today prime minister

05:16:39.040 to unpack the evidence that you've provided that in your mind this demonstration in ottawa was not

05:16:46.800 a peaceful protest so you've already told us um i believe um in response to some questions from my

05:16:54.480 friend with the commission and my friend with the ccla that you obviously believe that protest

05:16:59.840 is a very important part of a functioning democracy you also acknowledged and i think

05:17:04.400 most people in Ottawa would agree that peaceful protests may sometimes cause inconvenience for

05:17:10.320 people and may also sometimes cause temporary uh interference with critical infrastructure even

05:17:18.240 but during the convoy demonstrations in Ottawa you'd agree that we weren't seeing near acts

05:17:23.600 of civil disobedience or temporary interference with critical infrastructure we were seeing

05:17:29.280 unlawful conduct that significantly interfered with the community's ability to live and exist

05:17:36.560 yes thank you and it's your view that as early as the first weekend of the demonstration in ottawa

05:17:43.200 some convoy participants were engaged in serious illegal activity by blocking and occupying city

05:17:49.120 streets defacing public property and harassing residents yes as was evidenced by my call with

05:17:55.280 yasser nakvi who highlighted a number of those things and a few more and from that first weekend

05:18:01.040 onwards this became even worse and more concerning to you yes reports of people being harassed for

05:18:07.040 wearing masks the constant noise the people not feeling safe in their own streets there

05:18:13.760 were many examples of that and you mentioned to us this morning that you grew concerned

05:18:18.960 in particular over counter protests rising up um were you aware in particular of uh the

05:18:25.600 counter protest that has now been coined as the battle of billings bridge on february 13th

05:18:31.040 that was i believe remind me i believe that was where a number of residents prevented trucks from

05:18:36.640 getting to the downtown car that's correct and is it fair to say that this counter protest was

05:18:42.000 actually quite successful in getting some trucks to leave very peacefully uh it's possible that it

05:18:48.560 achieved those but um having civilians uh having to do things that would be more appropriate for

05:18:58.960 trained police officers to be doing i think we can both agree is not an ideal situation

05:19:04.320 right and so was the government worried that uh given the success even of this counter protest

05:19:10.080 they might become more frequent if there was no government action and you were worried that

05:19:14.000 that that was what might ultimately lead to a violent conflict yes when i talked about threats

05:19:20.240 of serious violence the increase of counter protests and citizens taking issues into their

05:19:30.880 own hands increases the possibility of conflict and and violence right and we've seen one document

05:19:40.160 that i want to ask you but i won't pull it up but um a cesis report that we've been taken to

05:19:45.120 a number of times in this inquiry um that described the situation in downtown ottawa

05:19:51.920 and cesis communicated downtown ottawa mood was actually quite festive not threatening to passers

05:19:58.320 by i take it this was not your assessment based on what you were seeing and hearing for yourself

05:20:03.440 i think there were moments of uh festiveness and and collegiality amongst people who were there

05:20:14.320 at the same time cesus also reported to uh to me uh and to cabinet uh that there were uh imve

05:20:24.720 um purveyors of extremist ideology within the protest and one of the concerns was

05:20:33.920 people could be inspired or convinced or amplified in their behaviors to actually

05:20:42.080 lash out and take actions in ways that were threats to to public safety and in addition

05:20:48.080 to that you were hearing in fact uh that many ottawa residents business owners and workers

05:20:52.720 didn't find did in fact find the convoy quite threatening so to those passers by at least

05:20:57.920 there there was threatening behavior yes um and you in your witness statement uh you also suggest

05:21:03.840 that in your mind this was not a peaceful protest because of the threat of violence that existed

05:21:08.320 towards law enforcement when they were trying to manage the demonstration i think a uh protest

05:21:17.120 in which law enforcement are prevented

05:21:21.320 from being able to do their jobs

05:21:26.440 because of threats of violence to themselves

05:21:30.320 ceases to be a legal or peaceful protest.

05:21:36.320 And my last question for you following from that

05:21:38.940 is that when the government was ultimately considering

05:21:42.320 the invocation of the Emergencies Act,

05:21:44.580 CESA's advised Cabinet that invoking the Act could further inflame extreme anti-government rhetoric and even incite violence.

05:21:52.160 To your mind, hearing that assessment, does that not in and of itself confirm to you the threat of serious violence that was ever-present amongst these demonstrations?

05:22:01.800 Yeah. If someone's telling me, oh, you know, you should be careful about actually enforcing the law because that might make people more violent,

05:22:11.480 that's not necessarily a good argument as to why we should sort of let it slide or not intervene.

05:22:19.840 When people are emboldened or digging in to their illegal behaviors

05:22:28.960 and that enforcement of public order is actually a threat,

05:22:36.240 and this is actually something that Jason Kenney brought up at the FMM,

05:22:40.060 highlighting that these are not rational actors.

05:22:43.340 These are conspiracy theories, and he was concerned, as we were,

05:22:47.400 that the invocation of the Emergencies Act could have people who are irrational overreact.

05:22:54.160 But at the same time, we had to balance that risk against the risk

05:22:59.420 that people who were already starting to get fed up and engage in counter-protests

05:23:07.640 uh would start taking more and more into their own hands which was a greater risk i think thank you

05:23:14.120 very much prime minister those are all my questions for you thank you next i'd like to call on the

05:23:19.640 ontario provincial police please good afternoon mr prime minister chris diana council for the opp

05:23:34.440 just bear with me for a moment while i set my timer

05:23:41.000 all right perhaps mr clerk if we can start by bringing up document ssm.nsc.can50625

05:23:51.720 and while this document is coming up uh prime minister it's the transcript of your call with

05:23:57.320 the premiers to situate you in time and place which i believe was february 14th in the morning

05:24:01.720 is that correct yes all right if we can turn to page six please

05:24:11.000 scroll down a little bit all right where it says pm on the second line down i'm just going to read

05:24:17.080 let's read it out it says on a personal note everything i've heard about rcmp and opp have

05:24:21.960 been excellent opp commissioner regarded very highly by federal officials windsor operation

05:24:27.560 was outstanding we'll continue to collaborate so i take it that that's what you were hearing from

05:24:33.320 your senior officials that you'll be had been very effective to date uh yes and i would have

05:24:38.520 mentioned i you're always looking for positive things to say uh in these fmms uh where sometimes

05:24:44.040 there are contentious issues but that would have been the the understanding i had of the past

05:24:48.440 previous uh previous days it may not have held from the very beginning of the protest i won't

05:24:53.000 speak to that but at the at that moment yes that was what i was hearing from officials and that

05:24:57.080 And that would have been in accordance with your own personal views

05:24:58.940 over what you had seen in recent days happening in Ontario in any event, right?

05:25:05.400 Yes, that there was progress, yes.

05:25:10.400 I take it that your government had full confidence in the OPP

05:25:12.980 to discharge its policing responsibilities within the province of Ontario?

05:25:18.340 It is not up to the federal government to determine who is policing.

05:25:24.340 policing so it's not it's not up to us to have a confidence in the opp to execute provincial

05:25:30.100 responsibilities no but my point is you and this is not a call where the media was on this was you

05:25:35.140 were talking to the premiers and you without prompting brought up the opp and the opp commissioner

05:25:40.100 so i take it that your government was satisfied with what it had seen at the time of that call

05:25:44.980 with the opp i i was prompted because the premier was talking about uh about the opp before so it

05:25:50.740 wasn't entirely unprompted but i was happy to say yes i'm not trying to argue about it yes

05:25:55.620 things seem to be working well at that point right and because by that point and we've established

05:25:59.860 early in your evidence that the ambassador bridge had been fully open to traffic correct uh yes and

05:26:05.300 that wasn't an obp led enforcement uh if you say so and we also know at that point i think you

05:26:12.260 testified that you were aware that the obp had sent subject matter experts to lead the integrated

05:26:18.180 planning team in ottawa yes i knew that they had sent experts to support in ottawa right and they

05:26:23.380 were working with other police services but you may have heard some of the evidence of carson party

05:26:27.140 who was leading the exercise from the opp correct uh i hadn't but i i'm sure that's true and you

05:26:34.500 also mentioned some other areas of difficulty in ontario mentioned the blue water bridge

05:26:40.900 you mentioned fort erie those are the other areas the opp was actively engaged in correct

05:26:45.540 i i assume yes and to your knowledge there were never there was never a an occupation or a blocking

05:26:54.360 of either of those crossings i believe there were slow rolls headed towards uh one or both of them

05:27:00.540 at one point uh there was chatter about people moving from the ambassador bridge to one or two

05:27:07.380 of the others uh but i don't believe those i'm quite sure that those blockades never actually

05:27:12.540 fully materialized right and the opp were actively engaged in those movements correct uh yes both

05:27:18.380 before and after the invocation of the emergencies act right now in that context where the opp is

05:27:23.180 active across the province of ontario you would agree that opp commissioner kareek

05:27:28.940 could have provided valuable input on what tools might be useful under the emergencies act

05:27:33.660 um i'm fairly certain that the opp did provide inputs we as a federal cabinet got our inputs

05:27:47.680 through the rcmp but part of the rcmp's role was to inform us on suggestions and requirements by

05:27:58.280 all other police organizations as well no and fair enough and you may not have heard the evidence

05:28:03.360 both deputy minister stewart and commissioner lucky thought that the opp had been consulted but

05:28:08.400 in fact they had not been and i guess what i'm putting to you is the notion that if we're dealing

05:28:13.200 with the question of either necessary or useful tools if if the protest is happening in ontario

05:28:20.080 it would be a good idea to seek some input from the opp correct um it would not be up to me to

05:28:27.520 call the opp it would not be up to the uh necessarily even the federal minister to do it

05:28:33.600 our expectation my expectation certainly would have been uh that it would be for the rcmp to work

05:28:39.280 with uh their fellow police organizations on coordination and i would have assumed that that

05:28:45.360 was done and that could be done quickly through from commissioner to commissioner correct yes

05:28:51.280 and for purses of transparency and commissioner i understand i've hit my five minute mark and

05:28:55.360 for my last question for purposes of transparency we know that there is a consultation record as

05:29:01.200 we've seen here when you talk with the premiers that there should also be a written record of

05:29:07.040 consultation with law enforcement so that for accountability purposes when we go back and take

05:29:11.760 a look at the circumstances in terms of the tools that there's no ambiguity about what was needed or

05:29:17.120 what tools might be useful would you agree with that suggestion um i i know the commission will

05:29:22.720 be uh reflecting on suggestions on how to uh how to move uh move forward in future emergencies

05:29:28.960 so you would agree with my suggestion then correct uh it's not up to me to to agree with what needs

05:29:34.560 to happen in the future okay but you wouldn't disagree then i think more consultation is is

05:29:39.520 good but understanding that uh in an emergency one needs to move quickly all right thank you mr

05:29:44.400 prime minister okay thank you the uh next is uh former chief former chief slowly's council please

05:30:00.960 mr prime minister i'm rebecca jones council for former chief slowly

05:30:06.480 and you've testified today about the situation facing the country and the city of ottawa in

05:30:12.960 particular when the emergencies act was invoked right and this included threats of violence at

05:30:20.240 trucks with weapons in coots um trucks with unknown contents in ottawa and children in ottawa at the

05:30:28.720 site of the occupation right yes and she slowly described the situation uh in ottawa as a tinder

05:30:35.760 box and i take it you'd agree with that yes that was one of our concerns that it could get worse

05:30:41.600 very quickly right there was always a risk of escalation yes and you testify that it is the

05:30:47.920 responsibility of the prime minister to make tough calls and keep people safe right uh yes

05:30:55.520 and others as well but yes that is one of the roles it's not your only responsibility

05:31:00.080 um i take it that is also the role of a police chief yes and the prime minister and a police

05:31:06.960 chief don't take steps just because people are demanding them right um we certainly need to take

05:31:15.200 into account uh the perspective and concerns and um expectations of citizens uh that's an important

05:31:26.080 input into leadership but ultimately we have to getting the decision right is more important than

05:31:33.280 making the popular decision right and you testified that as of the date of the emergencies act the

05:31:40.960 fact that there had not yet been any serious violence was obviously a good thing but that

05:31:45.920 you couldn't say there there was no threat of that right indeed and i'm going to suggest that

05:31:52.160 the fact that there had been no serious violence was not only a good thing but it was a credit

05:31:57.280 to municipal police forces all police forces chief slowly and all of his policing partners

05:32:06.240 um yes and a credit to uh residents and a credit to people who were there on the ground um there

05:32:18.160 was no violence it would have taken one person on any side to create situations of violence so

05:32:24.560 uh we are it is fortunate that that there was no violence uh no significant violence uh at that

05:32:30.800 point right at any point and it is to the credit of the police among others that there was no

05:32:36.160 serious violence right i i'm not positioned to evaluate how much what the police did or didn't

05:32:44.640 do in ottawa uh was directly responsible for the lack of violence okay now in uh 2021 uh

05:32:53.760 then chief slowly was invited to the prime minister's uh listening circle to speak about

05:32:57.680 policing reforms you remember that i do and uh mr prime minister you thanked him for his

05:33:02.960 presentation and you thanked him for his leadership in leading police reform in canada right yes

05:33:09.360 and um i take it you agree that it's important to have voices

05:33:13.840 like peter slowly's at the table in canadian policing

05:33:17.920 you mean uh diverse canadians in positions of power yes yes okay and the convoy related events

05:33:31.680 across canada in late january and february of this year i take you'll agree with me they

05:33:38.460 were a trauma for the nation um there were certainly a very challenging time and many

05:33:45.600 Canadians experienced them as trauma yes right and this trauma landed more heavily on the shoulders

05:33:52.000 of certain individuals uh like Chief Soleil and his family than on others is that fair

05:34:01.200 um I think there

05:34:08.320 there's a lot of trauma to go around on all sides

05:34:11.120 okay now i want to return in the time i have left to the issue of the readiness of the operational

05:34:19.360 plan as of february 13th and you've been at candidate acknowledging that you didn't read

05:34:25.200 the operational plan on february 13th which of course makes sense that i wasn't given the

05:34:30.960 operational plan and nor would you expect to be that's right okay and you can't comment

05:34:36.400 on whether or not it was a good or complete plan you testified i i can't comment from personal

05:34:43.760 knowledge but my understanding both at the time and subsequently from people who are aware of

05:34:51.280 the plan was that it was not a complete plan okay so we're gonna have to put aside subsequently

05:34:58.320 um it was the plan that cleared the occupation in ottawa uh is the evidence here but at the time

05:35:03.920 sorry that was that was a plan of the 17th that cleared cleared the occupation it's not the plan

05:35:08.960 of the 13th well we will put that aside um we we will disagree on that issue mr prime minister but

05:35:16.080 um what i believe you're saying is that at the time on february 13th or as of february 13th

05:35:24.640 um that was your view based on what you were being told i take it um by the commissioner of the rcmp

05:35:33.920 sorry what was my view that the plan was the plan wasn't ready yes okay that was my view and um

05:35:42.080 i just want to take you please to trn 23 page 69 please

05:35:53.600 and mr prime minister this is the testimony of commissioner lucky before uh this inquiry

05:36:03.920 I believe it may be page 69 in the pdf.

05:36:22.480 There we are.

05:36:24.260 And so if you start scrolling down, you'll see that Commission Council is asking about

05:36:30.040 status of the plan and please of course take your time to read it as of february 13th

05:36:41.480 and you will see that commissioner lucky confirms yes that was when it was completed

05:36:47.320 and that would be on february 13th and then commission council says and we've heard some

05:36:52.760 evidence about this from other police agencies but essentially uh that it was a team effort the rcmp

05:36:58.680 was there the opp and the ops correct and and commissioner lucky says yes and commission council

05:37:06.280 says and i understand it you in particular commissioner lucky and perhaps the rest of

05:37:11.880 your team who looked at it were generally satisfied with the plan as an operational

05:37:16.840 plan to deal with the situation in ottawa and commissioner lucky says yes both myself and

05:37:22.760 commissioner karik were briefed on the plan the friday before that like i think it was around

05:37:27.320 february 11th we got the actual briefing from the planners on the plan and yeah yes we were

05:37:33.320 satisfied with the plan okay so i i put that to you mr prime minister to suggest that what happened

05:37:41.160 here was that you were not briefed by commissioner lucky on the 13th as to her satisfaction and the

05:37:48.600 rcmp satisfaction on the integrated plan to clear ottawa um i can only speak to what i both

05:38:00.440 knew then and what i know now what i knew then was uh what i was uh what my understanding was

05:38:08.360 then was that uh there was not a complete plan uh or a workable or operational plan to

05:38:17.160 clear ottawa at that point and i now know uh that indeed there was not uh a plan uh on that weekend

05:38:27.160 it's important that we that we stick with what you understood on february 13th yes so i understood

05:38:33.160 then was that there there was not an adequate and i i i hear you on that what i'm suggesting to you

05:38:38.920 based on what you've seen was commissioner lucky's evidence that there's a disconnect here and

05:38:44.200 perhaps what happened and i'm going to suggest what happened is that commissioner lucky didn't

05:38:48.840 brief you and your cabinet on the fact that there was a complete plan on the 13th

05:38:56.840 i can't comment on that okay thank you thank you next call on the city of windsor please

05:39:12.200 Good afternoon, Mr. Prime Minister. My name is Jennifer King, and I am legal counsel to the City of Windsor.

05:39:19.660 Mr. Prime Minister, I would like to start by taking you to one document, SSM CAN NSC 402698.

05:39:28.080 This is a readout of a call that you had with Mayor Dilkens of Windsor on February the 10th.

05:39:33.500 Do you recall that conversation?

05:39:36.060 Yes.

05:39:37.000 On the first page, there are some takeaways. I just wanted to read out the first one.

05:39:42.200 The mayor appeared confident that a plan and resources are in place.

05:39:46.180 He only needed the injunction to operationalize the plan by Saturday.

05:39:51.360 PM provided reassurance that the federal government is there.

05:39:55.920 If you could scroll to page two towards the bottom of the page, Mr. Clerk.

05:40:00.700 And you'll see here, Mr. Prime Minister, that it indicates that you said,

05:40:06.200 as I was speaking with police officers and various folks,

05:40:09.160 no question on the ground operationally who has jurisdictions.

05:40:12.200 I can assure you that the RCMP is working closely with the OPP.

05:40:16.580 Because this is our problem, and I want you to be reassured that we are out there and operationally totally linked.

05:40:23.020 So I just wanted to stop there.

05:40:24.460 What did you mean, Mr. Prime Minister, when you said this is our problem?

05:40:28.780 It is our problem together.

05:40:31.300 It is our as in different orders of government together, as I assume what I meant on this one,

05:40:37.240 because the rest of the sentence is really showing that I knew

05:40:41.580 and had been apprised that in regards to what was happening in Windsor,

05:40:48.460 the OPP and the RCMP were working well together.

05:40:52.080 And hopefully it continues on, and hopefully the politics will recede a little

05:40:55.940 because some of that stuff coming out of QP is a little inconsistent.

05:40:59.880 What does QP mean here?

05:41:02.180 Probably question period on the federal side,

05:41:04.320 because I think he was talking about the challenges he was facing in council chambers as well

05:41:10.460 and some of the debates that were happening at the municipal level.

05:41:13.620 Right. Okay. You can take that down, Mr. Kirk. Thank you.

05:41:16.460 You testified this morning, Mr. Prime Minister, about jurisdictional issues that arose

05:41:20.240 related to the governmental response to the blockades and occupations in January and February.

05:41:25.760 In Windsor, there's a provincial highway connected to an international border crossing

05:41:30.100 by a municipal road through a community, right?

05:41:33.120 Yeah.

05:41:33.280 Would you agree that the response to the blockade required communication and collaboration between all three levels of government?

05:41:41.100 Yes.

05:41:42.060 Certainly this morning you testified that when three orders of government are able to work seamlessly together, you get better results, right?

05:41:48.520 Yes.

05:41:49.140 You would agree with me that there was not a pre-existing plan or framework establishing the jurisdictional responsibilities of each of the three levels of government when responding to the unprecedented circumstances of these blockades of critical infrastructure?

05:42:04.080 uh i can't speak to the existence or not of that but it it is uh clear that uh that if there was

05:42:11.680 it wasn't as uh effective as it could have been and if there wasn't perhaps there should have been

05:42:16.880 okay and you testified this morning about the two tracks of work coming out of the irg meeting on

05:42:21.600 february 10th the clerk of the privy council told this commission that track one was to determine

05:42:27.280 everything that could be done within the existing set of powers duties and functions under the law

05:42:32.080 right yes so there was no pre-existing plan or framework setting out the various authorities

05:42:37.680 available to all three levels of government to respond to these blockades sorry i don't i

05:42:44.560 understand what you're asking so it wasn't predetermined it wasn't pre-collected the

05:42:48.480 different authorities that were available to the different levels of government but that sounds

05:42:53.120 like uh operational police coordination and that's not something that as prime minister i would be

05:43:00.800 particularly closely involved in well certainly the three levels of government were considering

05:43:05.680 and and the irg was considering the different authorities and powers available to them to assist

05:43:12.880 yes the the the irg and the federal government was looking to offer resources to police of

05:43:19.840 jurisdiction in helping out yes okay so the commission has heard during this hearing several

05:43:24.800 times the winds are started reaching out to the province and to the federal government

05:43:28.640 shortly after the blockade was cleared asking for the three levels of government to sit down

05:43:33.760 debrief and work together to develop a plan to protect these international border crossings

05:43:39.920 minister blair just give you a heads up testified that he did not recall this request but said it

05:43:45.120 struck him as a reasonable request do you agree yes and minister mendicino testified that a planning

05:43:50.400 process to protect border crossings must include every level of government of course the city of

05:43:55.600 Windsor and other border communities as well. Do you agree? That makes sense, yes. And so you'll

05:44:00.240 agree that all three levels of government must collaboratively develop a framework to protect

05:44:04.480 the critical infrastructure in Canada? Yes. Mr. Prime Minister, you said in your remarks

05:44:10.720 on the revocation of the Emergencies Act on February 23rd that even as this emergency is over,

05:44:16.880 we need to make sure our institutions are prepared and ready for the future.

05:44:20.560 this issue won't just go away and in fact um mr prime minister the next threat may be different

05:44:26.480 than the blockades that we experienced earlier this year what are you doing mr prime minister

05:44:31.120 to ensure that such a plan is developed on an urgent basis um i have made it clear to

05:44:39.360 the appropriate ministers that working in particularly mr minister blair minister of

05:44:44.880 emergency preparedness that preparing for emergencies of all types must be a priority

05:44:50.960 for this government and must involve working with partners at all orders of government thank you

05:44:58.960 next i'd like to call on the windsor police service please

05:45:06.640 sir patterson i'm counsel to the windsor police service

05:45:09.200 um minister blair testified earlier this week and he agreed that the windsor enforcement operation

05:45:16.400 on february 12th and 13th was a success with no loss of life or serious injury to public

05:45:23.840 protesters or police uh would you agree with minister blair's assessment i have no reason

05:45:29.200 to disagree yeah no okay and you're aware the ambassador bridge was reopened by police in the

05:45:35.280 early hours morning sorry early hours of the morning of february 14th correct yes okay my

05:45:42.080 friend for the opp took you to the first minister's conference call on february 14th 2022 at ssm nsc can

05:45:52.960 625 please and i'll just put your comments back up it's the same paragraph we're going to look at

05:46:00.640 again on page six my focus obviously will be a little bit different than the opps

05:46:14.000 um and in that paragraph uh for the comments attributed to you you say um the windsor operation

05:46:20.080 was outstanding and would that accurately reflect your comments that you gave to the

05:46:24.720 the first ministers that day uh yes those seem to be my comments okay great thank you those are my

05:46:32.960 questions okay with that pat on the back we'll go to uh the government of saskatchewan please

05:46:46.000 good afternoon sir i'm mitch mccadam one of the lawyers for the government of saskatchewan

05:46:51.760 and I want to ask you a few questions about COVID-19 and the Emergencies Act.

05:46:58.880 I would ask the clerk to please bring up poe.sas.701.

05:47:07.300 sir this is a letter that you sent to premier mo of saskatchewan on april 8 2022 2020 pardon me

05:47:25.800 about covid19 in the emergencies act and i think you talked this morning a little bit about

05:47:31.100 considering and invoking the Emergencies Act

05:47:35.080 to deal with the pandemic back in March and April of 2020, didn't you?

05:47:38.980 Yes.

05:47:40.120 And I take it that similar letters would have been sent to all the premiers?

05:47:45.360 Yes.

05:47:47.620 And if we can go to the top of page two of this letter,

05:47:51.760 at the end of the first paragraph,

05:47:54.320 it refers to the fact that you are formally initiating a consultation process

05:47:59.620 under the Emergencies Act. That's correct, isn't it?

05:48:03.340 Yes.

05:48:03.940 It was a formal process.

05:48:05.760 Yes.

05:48:07.800 And, Clerk, if we could go back to the first page

05:48:10.560 and the bottom of the letter.

05:48:15.060 It indicates that you had already discussed the Emergencies Act

05:48:19.220 with the Premiers during at least two telephone conferences,

05:48:22.800 one on March 23rd and one on April 2nd.

05:48:25.640 That's correct, isn't it?

05:48:27.860 Yes.

05:48:29.620 and also in that same paragraph it refers to the fact that ministers from at least four different

05:48:37.220 departments have spoken to their provincial counterparts about whether measures under the

05:48:42.340 emergencies act could assist in the collective efforts to deal with the pandemic that's correct

05:48:47.740 too isn't it yes and if we can go back to page two please

05:48:56.500 in the fourth paragraph on that page it refers to you asking the minister of public safety

05:49:07.060 and the deputy prime minister to also reach out to their provincial counterparts

05:49:11.500 to discuss this that's correct as well yes so i i take it that back in 2020 there was an effort

05:49:19.820 involving a number of different federal departments to reach out to their provincial counterparts to

05:49:24.620 discuss the emergencies act in this context yes and if we look at the end of

05:49:34.820 that paragraph I take it that there was a plan that you are going to convene

05:49:39.080 another telephone conference with the premiers to discuss this topic further

05:49:42.800 correct I had a lot of telephone conferences with the premiers around

05:49:46.700 then yes okay thank you clerk if I could next ask you to pull up another document

05:49:53.300 It's SAS.702, please.

05:50:10.460 We'll just wait for a moment while the letter gets pulled up.

05:50:17.120 Prime Minister, you'll see that this is a letter from Scott Moe,

05:50:21.420 sent as chair of the council of the federation to you about covid 19 and the emergencies act

05:50:27.660 on april 14th do you recall this letter yes

05:50:33.180 and if we look at the end of the first paragraph in this letter it refers to another conference

05:50:38.620 call with the premiers about this matter on april 9th that's true right yes

05:50:45.420 and in premier mo's letter he shared with you the opinion of the premiers

05:50:49.820 that it was neither necessary nor advisable to invoke the emergencies act at this time

05:50:54.780 that's correct isn't it yep and that's what you heard at the conference call on april 9th correct

05:51:00.140 yes and as a result the emergencies act was not ever invoked by your government to deal

05:51:06.940 with the covet 19 pandemic was it that is correct except in so much as the most recent use of the

05:51:15.180 emergencies act was linked to the covet pandemic at least indirectly okay understood

05:51:23.340 and sir would you agree with me that the provinces had the capacity and the authority

05:51:27.500 or the tools to deal with the pandemic back in 2020 2020 yes and the provinces

05:51:36.780 and the provinces were dealing with it i think your words this morning were they had it under

05:51:40.700 control uh they certainly had more appropriate tools and experience to deal with the public

05:51:47.980 health emergency than uh the federal government did to to do that to take over the public health

05:51:54.540 side of the public health emergency yes okay healthcare delivery is the provinces in this

05:51:59.820 country so that's the point understood and where federal assistance was required it could be

05:52:06.060 provided without invoking the emergencies act correct yes now prime minister we've all already

05:52:13.100 heard today a lot about the consultation with the provinces in february of this year in particular

05:52:19.980 on the morning of february 14th so i won't go that through that with you again but i just ask

05:52:25.580 you if you will agree with me that the consultation process that was followed in february of this year

05:52:31.340 was very different from the process that was followed back in the spring of 2020 yes it was

05:52:37.840 thank you sir those are all of my questions if i can allow to elaborate as to why they were

05:52:44.420 different absolutely prime minister um the emergencies act isn't a monolithic act it

05:52:52.000 actually has many different categories and types of emergencies within it um in the spring of 2020

05:52:58.960 what we were talking about was a public welfare, a public health emergency.

05:53:05.180 I don't have the exact categorization, but one can imagine that a public health emergency like a pandemic

05:53:11.860 would require a different set of tools than or a different perspective

05:53:17.120 and certainly a longer-term opportunity with more opportunities to write letters back and forth

05:53:25.420 and consult with the whole council of the federation and draw paperwork in response to

05:53:31.340 the consultation and we certainly took advantage of that because in the section of public order

05:53:38.540 emerge sorry of the emergencies act that refers to public health emergency and invocation of the

05:53:44.540 emergencies act it says clearly you have to have that consultation done before in the section on

05:53:53.660 a public order emergency the requirements for consultation uh is i believe laid out that if

05:54:03.340 there is no time for consultation that consultation can actually happen afterwards uh after the

05:54:09.660 invocation uh it certainly highlights that it wouldn't be ideal uh but it recognizes that a

05:54:15.340 public order emergency might require a much more rapid reaction time than a public health emergency

05:54:25.340 and the fact that we were looking at two different parts of the same emergencies act

05:54:29.980 i think goes a long way towards explaining why we were able uh to do an extensive consultation

05:54:37.580 even though as i'd said from the outcome outset it wasn't i wasn't leaning towards

05:54:43.100 it wasn't our intention to invoke a emergencies act around the public health but we wanted to

05:54:49.100 do the consultation because people were concerned that that we look at all tools to deal with this

05:54:54.620 pandemic and we did but when it came to the exigency and the urgency of the public health

05:55:04.220 sorry the public uh order emergency we went from a saturday a sunday establishing the uh six or so

05:55:16.060 different tools that we would bring in to consulting the very next morning with the

05:55:22.540 premiers that with this freshly established list of tools and then invoking just hours later and

05:55:29.740 And those compressed timelines made it a very different context

05:55:33.440 from one type of invocation of the Emergencies Act to another.

05:55:39.420 Prime Minister, you'll understand that we as lawyers

05:55:42.560 are always looking for precedents,

05:55:44.400 and this is the only other precedent

05:55:46.660 where your government has considered invoking the Emergencies Act.

05:55:50.280 Isn't that true?

05:55:51.860 Yes.

05:55:53.260 Thank you. Those are all of my questions.

05:55:55.940 Thank you. Next, I'd like to call...

05:55:59.740 Thank you.

05:56:29.740 Thank you.

05:56:59.740 Thank you.

05:57:29.740 Thank you.

05:57:59.740 Thank you.

05:58:29.740 Thank you.

05:58:59.740 Thank you.

05:59:29.740 Thank you.

05:59:59.740 Thank you.

06:00:29.740 You

Juno News - November 25, 2022

Justin Trudeau Testifies ｜ Emergencies Act Inquiry

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