00:02:13.580After calling upon the police forces, we invoked the Emergency Measures Act.
00:02:17.540I don't want to speak for every last serving member of law enforcement, but there was a very strong consensus that we needed to invoke the act.
00:02:34.680Now, Edmonton Lawrence is the writing of MP Marco Mendicino.
00:02:39.880Mr. Mendicino is also Canada's public safety minister.
00:02:44.520and Mr. Mendicino is well a liar I'm sorry but there's no other way to sugarcoat it folks you
00:02:52.820might recall that Mr. Mendicino said that police asked for the emergencies act to be invoked when
00:03:02.140the freedom trucker convoy was in Ottawa he didn't say it once he didn't say it twice he has said it
00:03:09.980more than a dozen times here check out the video evidence we were um following the advice of
00:03:17.020various levels of of law enforcement we invoked the act because it was the advice of non-partisan
00:03:25.660professional law enforcement only after police told us that they needed this special power but
00:03:31.500folks here's the thing there's just one teeny tiny hitch regarding mr mendicino's comments
00:03:37.180And it's this. Law enforcement agencies, ranging from the RCMP to the Ottawa Police Service, have stated that they never asked for the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
00:11:47.520To the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act
00:11:51.320and then subsequently to revoke the Emergencies Act,
00:11:54.060being a communicator on behalf of the government to Canadians
00:11:57.560to keep them apprised of the situation last winter,
00:12:01.520and a number of other roles, but those are the core ones.
00:12:07.020Okay, and we're going to explore a lot of the details of what you just outlined today.
00:12:11.440So we'll start with the time period before the convoy arrived in Ottawa.
00:12:16.400So, Mr. Clerk, can I ask you to pull up ssm.nsc.can401790?
00:12:27.560so mr mendicino to situate you um this is just on january 26th i believe um oh i'm sorry if you
00:12:42.260just scroll down a little bit you would ask commissioner lucky i believe to to brief you
00:12:47.020on the convoy do you do you recall that i do recall that uh by the end of january there were reports
00:12:54.060about a massive protest that was mobilizing from across the country and so to to be sure that we
00:13:01.700were again kept aware of of how police were going to respond to that protest we asked for briefings
00:13:10.260okay and the next document i'll ask you to pull up mr clerk is pb.nsc.can50992
00:13:19.340so these uh to situate you again as the documents being pulled up minister are uh talking points
00:13:27.840for the briefing on january 26 i believe the commissioner lucky's talking points
00:13:32.680um so they're not yours but i'm going to take you through them and you can confirm to us whether
00:13:38.120this was the sort of information that was being provided to you that day so 26 before the convoy
00:13:43.760rise. Scroll down, Mr. Clerk, to where you see the goal. There we go. So the goal of the nationwide
00:13:50.820protest is to disrupt traffic flow and general business of government in the hope that the
00:13:56.540Canadian government will lift all COVID-19 related restrictions. Below that, although the majority
00:14:02.800of information indicates organizers are planning a peaceful event, many social media posts suggest
00:14:09.360some participants may attempt to disrupt government buildings and further cause disruptions
00:14:15.500throughout the city. Was that information conveyed to you? Yes, it was. Okay. Scrolling
00:14:20.520down again to page two, please. It is unknown how long the protesters plan to stay in Ottawa.
00:14:30.360However, the RCMP has located social media posts indicating some participants may stay around the
00:14:37.500downtown core until january 31st in hopes to disrupt the house of commons sitting that day
00:14:44.520so with that information conveyed to you and more broadly can you tell us what your expectation was
00:14:50.760before the convoy arrived of how long it would or might stay that information was conveyed to
00:14:57.920uh me and a number of other colleagues uh at cabinet level and my immediate uh reaction was to
00:15:07.440um question the the quality of the intelligence about the duration with which this protest was
00:15:13.920going to uh to occur um one of the things that struck me was that there were reported reports
00:15:21.680about a significant number of vehicles that were coming from across the country and it certainly
00:15:30.400seemed to me that that just given the amount of time that it would take to get to ottawa and
00:15:36.720other locations in the country where these demonstrations would occur that there there
00:15:42.400may very well be an intention to stay longer than the short period of time that some of those initial
00:15:47.760briefings had suggested that they would stay there combined with some of the public statements
00:15:53.920around the original manifesto which in my opinion was the spark for the so-called freedom convoy
00:16:00.800the stated political and ideological objectives within that the document to force the government
00:16:08.080to reverse course on pandemic policies or else to see the government overthrown or resign suggested
00:16:15.040to me that there may be an entrenchment and as time went on we certainly started to probe those
00:16:21.120questions more once they arrived um at the end of january okay so just to sum that up and to make
00:16:26.880sure i have it right when you say uh question the intelligence you sort of do you mean question the
00:16:31.360assessment in the end of the conclusion that this is likely going to be gone by the end of
00:16:35.360of the weekend you were you were concerned that it would stay longer than that that's correct
00:16:40.080okay um scrolling down to page three please mr clerk
00:16:45.040There we go. Perfect. With respect to the threat picture, there has been an increase in online narratives supportive of the convoy among both ideologically motivated networks. We've heard a lot about ideologically motivated networks in IMVU over the past week or so, as well as in general public discourse.
00:17:03.960And then scrolling down a little bit more, the convoys attracting individuals who are not aligned with any specific ideology or group, but who have experienced personal hardships, such as job loss due to COVID-19, and are upset with provincial or federal government responses as COVID continues to impact daily life.
00:17:24.520Open-source monitoring has identified associated posts advocating violence, and there's potential for anti-government groups to join the demo with violent intentions.
00:17:37.300Then it talks about online posts feeding the conspiracy narrative with misinformation and disinformation, raising tensions, scrolling down a little bit more, please, Mr. Clerk.
00:17:47.060open source reports also suggest that police are setting up roadblocks
00:17:53.900and such reports seem to fuel unintended some truckers agitation a post to the event facebook
00:18:01.300group asked for known mp's addresses in ottawa including the pm's residence and cottage and
00:18:07.140this suggests that the convoy should break apart to to these locations that all information that
00:18:11.800was conveyed to you yes and if i could just be permitted to expand briefly because you
00:18:16.780touched on a few important points and if i could just ask for the technicians to scroll back up
00:18:25.580so right under the words on january 22nd 2022 there's a number of bullet points that i just
00:18:33.020want to shed some additional light on so the the fact that the convoy was attracting individuals
00:18:40.940with different grievances was one of the phenomenon around the expressly stated ideological
00:18:48.060political and in some cases extremely uh extreme stated objectives of the freedom convoy um and
00:18:57.980this was something that that again was the a recurring theme in our discussions with law
00:19:03.420enforcement with the security and intelligence community the fact that um it was pulling uh
00:19:09.260in people with different grievances not just in relationship uh to the pandemic but grievances um
00:19:16.300regarding the government and other democratic institutions um similarly um the the potential
00:19:23.100for violence was stated at the outset i mean there was a number of very public statements
00:19:28.380uh by individuals like pat king who had said that um that this could end in bullets or that
00:19:34.940it would end in bullets potentially um was a signal of intent at least that was my opinion that
00:19:42.540certainly not all i mean there were many um thousands of canadians who participated
00:19:47.340in in these demonstrations and in the blockade who were there for entirely legitimate and lawful
00:19:52.540purposes but some were prepared to uh to become violent um there's a bullet point there about
00:19:59.500threats to public figures. We were concerned about whether or not the blockade might target
00:20:06.200the Prime Minister. And then, as you will have heard by now, there were subsequent many threats
00:20:11.160that were made towards not only elected public figures, but equally law enforcement and
00:20:17.200representative of the media, which to me, again, signaled that this was a movement that in some
00:20:25.600cases was prepared to attack our democratic institutions to force change around policies
00:20:32.580okay i'll just stop you there and scroll down to the next page please mr clerk because i think this
00:20:37.260is or actually i think it's page six uh this is touching on the point that you just made minister
00:20:42.440mundogino so at the top of that page uh it says effective january 11th something uh for
00:20:51.300announcements and public functions has been put in place for eight individuals and it lists off
00:20:55.960minister jadie freeland yourself other ministers and dr tam and without obviously getting into
00:21:01.740what's behind that section 37 redaction is it fair to assume that that that means that some sort of
00:21:06.840there was a security risk identified that's exactly correct and the rcmb had briefed in the early days
00:21:13.860of the convoy certainly within the first week that there needed to be a significant change
00:21:19.700in the security posture regarding the ministers that are in that paragraph and in part I think
00:21:27.740that was a response to the heightened degree of posts that were violent in nature the overtly
00:21:35.640criminal threats that were being made against the lives and the security and safety of identifiable
00:21:41.840public figures and so as a result of that the security detail did change around a number of
00:26:00.200And the email that you put up, which is dated Friday, January 28th, at about 5.38 p.m., reflects the questions that I intend to put to the table.
00:26:11.540So looking at latest estimate on numbers, both in terms of vehicles and people, trying to ascertain whether or not there was any intelligence of individuals who may be on a watch list regarding threats to national security.
00:26:28.240um the third uh the third question that i put in the email there uh which which is written as
00:26:37.060latest on what if scenarios what i was really i think foreshadowing was a discussion around
00:26:44.160potential contingencies um like what if the convoy doesn't uh disengage what if they don't
00:26:53.720leave and from a very early point as i had said earlier had had concerns that that this was not
00:27:02.680just going to be a one or a two day event that it was going to last much longer and so i wanted to
00:27:09.400extract from the community the law enforcement community the intelligence community
00:27:14.840what do we do if that's the case how do we make sure that we keep public safety
00:27:19.720um and and what are the contingencies around that okay um so just a couple of things the first is
00:27:26.580is for the record and and for ease of understanding you'll see the the notation plus four zeros there
00:27:33.080that means that the time stamp is in greenwich meantime uh so it's minus five hours so that was
00:27:37.940around 12 30 there you go and as you say you're you're asking what if scenarios what if they don't
00:27:43.540leave? What if it lasts beyond Monday? What if it turns violent? What if they come before
00:27:50.080parliamentary residences? And we know now at this point that what ended up happening as of,
00:27:57.660I think, January 28th was a group of ministers consisting of yourself, I believe Minister
00:28:04.500LeBlanc, Minister Blair, and Minister Algebra were briefed daily by a variety of officials from
00:28:12.560pco and various agencies under public safety would that have been done in response to this request
00:28:19.500i think it was understood early on that we were going to need to take a whole of government
00:28:26.360approach responding to the convoy so the initial group that you just highlighted of ministers was
00:28:32.960eventually expanded and then ultimately as i'm sure we'll get into the prime minister convened
00:28:37.860a meeting of the incident response group which included a number of others but i should highlight
00:28:43.220the the two last points which are in the email uh to uh to mike jones which which uh suggests that
00:28:50.660at the time i was also concerned about making sure that we were staying up on threat assessments
00:28:56.080as well to senators as well as the governor general in addition to elected parliamentarians
00:29:02.540And finally, I wanted to get a sense of what outreach was being done to the organizers.
00:29:10.040And my thinking there was, let's try to allow for the space for a lawful protest.
00:29:16.360Keep it within the boundaries of the law.
00:29:17.480This is the first time hearing of any of these threats to the governor general and senators.
00:29:25.260And so I wanted to make sure that there was some lines of communication with the organizers of the convoy from the early days.
00:29:32.120I hope he has proof. So we'll just skip a little bit ahead. If he doesn't have proof, Matt, he should be arrested on the spot. It doesn't leave on Sunday or Monday as expected. And then we're into the first week of the protests. So I'll ask you a few questions about what that first week was like from your perspective. And with the assistance right now of the following document, by the way, there is no proof. There's no proof for any of this. We would have seen it already.
00:30:02.120okay so minister mendicino this is a text from mike jones who's in the blue well there's no one
00:30:15.980there's no one else i think in the and it's not blue but there we go now it's blue um and the
00:30:21.440text is to brian clow can you tell us who brian clow is yes brian clow is the deputy chief of
00:30:27.300staff to the prime minister okay so just scrolling down a little bit please mr clerk so we can see
00:30:31.720the text so this is sunday february 6th and and mr jones mike jones writes to mr plow so my boss
00:30:40.040that would be you yes is pretty amped up he's concerned that ops have lost jurisdiction as
00:30:46.380there's no control at all over what's happening on wellington also concerned for pm safety if he is
00:30:52.780returning to this what does that mean if he was returning this week just pausing there
00:30:58.920My recollection is that he was out of Ottawa for some period of time and then would be returning to Ottawa and to ultimately the House of Commons.
00:31:11.200And so I was outlining my concern about his ability to, for him and his staff and the RCMP that work with him, to protect him, to get into and out of Parliament safely.
00:31:29.800Because by then, and the date of this text is Sunday, February the 6th, so we're fully now, I think, about a week into the convoy, and this would have been after the first weekend.
00:31:43.180And the concerns that I was expressing was that by that first weekend, it was my opinion that it was virtually impossible to enforce the law on Wellington Street, given the rampant behavior, not only the noise that was being made by the excessive honking of horns well into the evening, but some of the early reports.
00:32:10.120They'd already stopped talking by then, Marco.
00:32:11.900And again, bear in mind, this is Sunday, February 6th.
00:32:16.780By then, there were a number of press conferences that the Ottawa Police Service had held expressing serious concerns around the reports of intimidation, harassment, and violence, if memory serves.
00:32:28.880I think there was a press conference where the Ottawa Police Service had indicated that there were reports of firearms that had been brought into the nation's capital.
00:32:40.120And subsequently, again, I'm going from memory, but there was at least one arrest that was
00:32:45.520reported of somebody that was making their way potentially to the convoy where the firearm
00:32:53.600You know, there were efforts, I think, by law enforcement to try and get the situation
00:32:59.320under control, but they were overwhelmed.
00:33:01.840So there were a series of events leading up to the text that Mike Jones had sent to the
00:33:10.120to Brian Clow, that had led to my concerns being elevated
00:33:16.640about our ability to restore public safety on Wellington Street
00:33:22.520in the nation's capital, which is the seat of it.
00:33:26.880I would also just add that my concerns were not just about Ottawa,
00:33:29.980that by then there were already reports as well about borders being blockaded.
00:33:35.800And I would just recall for you and for Judge Rouleau that in my job as Minister of Public Safety, I'm not just looking at the nation's capital or the parliamentary precinct, I'm looking at the entire country.
00:33:51.320And so by then, a number of critical infrastructure and borders had become either the target of, or in fact, blockades, which had a significant impact on critical supply chains.
00:34:05.420So there was a lot that was, I think, I'm interpreting and extracting a little bit exactly from the language, but I think that's what Mike Jones was conveying to Brian Clout.
00:34:16.320Okay, so just scroll down a little bit more, Mr. Clerk.
00:34:19.580So the next part of the text says he wants to go out, that would be you want to go out and say that OPS needs to get control over the situation.
00:34:28.300And if they need more from OBP, they should make that clear, but they should get working on removals within the next 24 hours. And if they're not, if they aren't going to do it, then we may need to look at other measures. Let me know if you want to discuss. So this represents where your thinking is, as you say, at the end of the first week.
00:34:47.660Trying to direct police is what it sounds like to me, which is a no-no for politicians.
00:34:53.800Can I ask what you meant by we may need to look at other measures at that point?
00:34:59.800At that point, I think looking at offering additional resources to local police.
00:35:05.400And, you know, there had been informal requests communicated to me and to my office for additional RCMP services, which we provided on a number of different occasions.
00:35:39.620the Ottawa Police Service could not restore public safety.
00:35:45.060And so that's what I believe I was foreshadowing.
00:35:47.440that smirk uh well we're about to get into some of those resourcing discussions because the next
00:35:52.380topic we're going to cover is the tripartite meetings right we've come to know the tripartites
00:35:57.060so um mr clerk if you can pull up while while i'm talking pb.nsc.can402335 this guy is a karen
00:36:10.120i don't like using that expression but he is the overreaction you mentioned minister
00:36:15.740Manichino that a number of requests made from from the Ottawa police from various I think
00:36:22.640provinces at this point even there's been an approach from Alberta but we're not really
00:36:26.920getting into Alberta right now but in any event around the 7th or 8th of February the 7th a
00:36:33.720decision was made that it would be a good idea to convene the federal provincial and municipal
00:36:39.180governments to discuss the situation in Ottawa and the way forward from there including the
00:36:43.840provision of resources, as you mentioned. There are a lot of issues to cover that come out of
00:36:48.900the tripartites. We're going to focus on a few. A few of those issues are the RCMP resources,
00:36:54.400the lack of the OPS plan, and there's what seems to be expressed as a lack of engagement from the
00:37:01.240province of Ontario. So I'm going to take you through a few extracts that focus on some of
00:37:05.580those topics. So the document in front of us now is a readout of the February 7th tripartite,
00:37:13.520and that was the first tripartite meeting is that right yes okay this guy's voted in because
00:37:20.080he's an mp for toronto and toronto votes nothing but liberal all the time that's you
00:37:25.260city of toronto always you know where marco mendigino one of the that's why
00:37:29.440you could run a shoe last week in toronto if it was liberal and the shoe would win period for you
00:37:35.960and chief feels like things have turned around a bit today we have confirmed 250 mounties have
00:37:42.400been deputized, supporting local law enforcement. We have been timely and responsive in putting our
00:37:47.840response together. Minister Jones will want to have a discussion with what they can contribute.
00:37:54.640Letter addressed to, and scroll down, yeah, there we go, both PM and Premier, we are going to be in
00:38:00.360touch. Okay, so from your recollection, Minister, who attended that first tripartite meeting?
00:38:05.980Well, from the federal level of government, myself, Minister Blair, our officials, some of our political staff, Mayor Watson, I believe his chief of staff, and I'm trying to recall whether or not there were any officials from the Ontario government not elected or not.
00:38:30.240But, I mean, the majority of the participants were the political levels from the city of Ottawa, the federal government, and supporting staff and officials.
00:38:40.600Okay, that's fair. This isn't a memory test anyway.
00:38:43.320So, Minister Jones obviously did not attend because you were talking about getting her to attend in this exchange here.
00:38:50.340Okay, can we just scroll down again to page two, please?
00:38:55.880Here's the thing, guys. I don't think he thinks he's lying.
00:38:58.740I think he believes he is absolutely 100% righteous here.
00:39:04.940So the discussion before this pertains to RCMP numbers.
00:39:08.880That's the reality these people live in.
00:39:10.780There's some frustration expressed throughout this by the mayor of Ottawa, Mayor Watson,
00:39:15.800about how many RCMP boots are actually on the ground.
00:47:40.120and then being asked about what the province is doing.
00:47:43.560Now, I appreciate that these are Minister Blair's words, not yours, but do you know, do you recall what he was talking about when he said they were worried about being visible?
00:47:53.240Well, again, as you pointed out, these are my colleague Minister Blair's words that are being captured in a summary of a readout.
00:48:01.940But I believe he was referring to the fact that at the point in time that we were having these trilateral conversations,
00:48:10.960that there was a lot of attention that was being placed on both the city of Ottawa as well as the federal government.
00:48:17.940So who are the lawyers who are going to give him a hard time?
00:48:28.260What we really were driving at here, and as I think the summary communicates, was an effort to bring Ontario to the table.
00:48:35.680And I had reached out to Minister Jones, had not heard back at that point.
00:48:41.620I believe, if memory serves, I was able to get in touch with her shortly after that.
00:48:46.360Because they'll only have 15 or 20 minutes each.
00:48:48.920It was really a full-court press to try and have everybody at the trilateral table because, as we've discussed, there were operational complexities and jurisdictional complexities.
00:49:00.280And to the extent that we could be all aligned, then that would help to restore public safety.
00:49:07.260Okay. And we'll get back to that topic.
00:49:10.440I'm going to scroll down and take you to something else I want to ask you about here.
00:49:14.040Looks like he's sweating pretty good, though.
00:49:15.460So this is, sorry, you can scroll down a little bit, Mr. Clerk, until you see page three.
00:50:57.120And he says that it is exceeding their,
00:51:02.620or he suggests that it is very close to exceeding their current resources,
00:51:06.480which is why they had asked for some additional help, including from the RCMP, which by then we would have responded to.
00:51:13.640There were a couple of installations prior to the invocation of the Act that I think numbered in the hundreds,
00:51:22.140somewhere between 200 at the outset and then eventually getting up to about 500 all told.
00:51:28.700There were questions about exactly how those resources were being deployed by the RCMP in conjunction with Ottawa Police Service,
00:51:35.760But the real important point is he's saying we're outnumbered and we need help. That's what I took from that intervention. The other thing that he mentioned in that intervention is Coventry.
00:51:51.800and through a number of briefings in the lead up to the invocation of the emergencies act there
00:52:00.740was a discussion of two different groups that were at play in the blockades there was a large group
00:52:06.900again of canadians who were exercising their lawful right to protest against certain policies
00:52:12.000by the government but then there was another group that had other more extreme objectives
00:52:19.280that was much more sophisticated and organized.
00:52:23.040And it's my recollection that that latter group
00:52:25.480was interspersed in a number of different locations
00:55:20.740I wouldn't say that there was necessarily that strict sequencing. My job as Minister of Public Safety was to be responsive to the requests that were coming in from the City of Ottawa, vis-a-vis the Ottawa Police Service.
00:55:37.660And so we facilitated those requests. They were not necessarily subject to the Ontario Provincial Police responding at the time. I wanted to be as supportive as I could. I was very much sympathetic to the plight of the residents in Ottawa. I was very concerned for their safety and their security.
00:56:00.860we were beginning to see counter protests manifesting because i think at that time
00:56:06.340residents felt that they had to take matters into their own hands that was extremely concerning to
00:56:10.820me because i thought that it represented a significant risk of more serious violence
00:56:15.540as a result of frustration and fatigue no elizabeth he's not lying that's the thing he
00:56:20.840actually believes everything he's saying on social media so i wanted to be as supportive
00:56:26.360of as I could to the city of Ottawa. It's not a lie if you believe it. I think that rightfully was
00:56:32.180flagging his concerns about resource capacity and potential counter operations that were being run
00:56:38.900by the blockade and the occupation. So getting back to that last concern about the
00:56:44.520counter operations, the action, the reaction, were you concerned then that this could spiral
00:56:53.440into something where resources police resources would actually be overwhelmed and stretched beyond
00:56:59.400capacity across the country was that the nature of your concern or was it in specific areas there
00:57:05.240wouldn't be enough available locally or was it a broader concern than that or was it just the
00:57:10.460specific instances it was a broader concern that was national in scale at the end of the day
00:57:17.940In my opinion, this was an illegal protest that was national in scale, that occurred at critical infrastructure, including a number of borders and ports of entry, including at legislative assemblies, including here at the seat of the federal government.
00:57:37.760and the initial responses of law enforcement to get the situation back under control
00:57:45.520were clearly overwhelmed and as a result of that the consequences were devastating to people to the
00:57:53.600economy to our international relations and so at at all times i was assessing um not any one of
00:58:02.380these events in isolation but rather the situation in its totality and when looking at the timing of
00:58:10.620it and the concurrence of all of these events in the same short critical period of time and
00:58:15.900descended on too they use occupation and descended on they descended on like a like a swarm of locusts
00:58:22.480is how he's trying to frame it disruption and undermining public safety and the type of
00:58:27.900tactics that were being used, which was through sheer size and force of people, of vehicles,
00:58:34.240and behavior, that this was a very singular and unprecedented event. So being able to assess all
00:58:41.800of that in its totality was very much part of my job to restore public safety and to maintain it.
00:58:48.140Did you have any actual evidence of what Chief Slowly is referring to here, that interconnectedness,
00:58:54.200or was this this more you saw a correlation or chief slowly is here but you agreed with it
00:58:59.200that one one action then seems to have a counter reaction or provoke a response amongst
00:59:06.660protesters nationwide but did that come from evidence or did that come from essentially
00:59:10.420observation it it came from observation uh what what i was seeing with my own eyes on the ground
00:59:16.820was that when police tried to enforce the law they were overwhelmed they were swarmed there
00:59:23.160were reports about there being threats made to them as they tried to do their job and they were
00:59:28.880clearly identifiable in uniform um you know indicating that it was time to go home okay
00:59:35.260that's a lie he has no proof none to hundreds of criminal charges being laid including assault
00:59:42.740peace officer which is a very serious offense to be charged with this was all a counter reaction
00:59:48.080to the reaction of law enforcement to try and restore public safety on the ground.
00:59:56.120It was at ports of entry at the Pacific Highway, in Surrey, in British Columbia,
01:00:02.780where, again, there were very clear statements by Canada Border Service agents
01:00:07.040as well as local law enforcement there through the RCMP that it was time to go home.
01:00:11.420And in the face of those instructions, not only did members, participants double down, I mean, there's a very notorious incident involving a large vehicle that was painted with military fatigues that tried to crash a barrier.
01:00:28.340to me that poses a serious threat of violence and I think we'll come to Coutts, Alberta which was
01:00:36.400again a very and arguably the most egregious risk that coincided with the blockade but I was at all
01:00:44.160times both using the observations that I was making for myself as well as the advice and the
01:00:50.620intelligence that I was receiving in my capacity as Minister of Public Safety. Okay and we will come
01:00:56.320there so he has no training at all in public safety let's just be clear so he's using his own
01:01:02.620eyes which we're clearly seeing things differently than everybody else would so um can you just pull
01:01:11.340up quickly ssm.can.nsc4027676 my friends this is the definition of incompetence this is and we can't
01:01:19.800have incompetent people in positions of power like this a couple of things i want to highlight here
01:01:24.300Minister, ask you about, which is, here we go. Let's just scroll down a little bit more. Thanks,
01:01:32.840latest from RCMP. Okay. So towards the middle of that paragraph, you say,
01:01:43.520phase has moved beyond inconvenience or disruption. So this is now February 10th.
01:01:48.100They have moved to disrupting the economy. We are having very intentional conversations with
01:01:53.960the province about how confident they are around enforcement, the ability to take appropriate
01:01:59.120action quickly and decisively, whether in Ottawa, Windsor, Sarnia, et cetera, spoke to Minister
01:02:04.520Jones. It was a focused conversation, and I'm looking forward to hearing back from her on what
01:02:09.900OPP can do to assist you. Okay, so I'll take it from that, and we'll get back to the conversation
01:02:15.000with Minister Jones, but Minister Jones was not at the third and last tripartite here. Is that
01:02:21.060correct that's correct okay um so thank you mr clerk so i'm just going to try and put together
01:02:28.040the chronology of what happened here and i'll take you back to february 5th ssm.can407854
01:02:36.300they're trying to they're trying to tie in coots and emerson and the ambassador bridge
01:02:51.040all together with ottawa in one big national movement that's what the intent has been
01:02:56.940between you and minister david lametti um just scroll down a little bit please mr clerk
01:03:03.280i'm not sure what you're referring to you say uh you were perfect today thanks so were you buddy
01:03:09.400then should i so the blue is a little collegial support at a very stressful time slash bromance
01:03:15.380okay um i think he might he might resent that suggestion so were you buddy should i call
01:03:21.920downey you've spoken to sylvia downey there would be a reference to doug downey that's correct okay
01:03:29.180can you tell us who just what are you laughing about that this lawyer should not be laughing
01:03:34.520along with mendocino general of ontario he's minister lametti's provincial counterpart okay
01:03:39.380And so you have spoken to Sylvia, he says, and you say, I have spoken with Sylvia, you should call Downey. We need them in the right space to respond to any RFA for OPP assistance. And then Minister Lamedi replies, spoke to Doug Downey, needs slowly to be quick, quick, quick.
01:03:59.260Can you tell us why would Minister Lamedi be calling Doug Downey about this? So you're speaking to your counterpart, he's speaking to his, and what capacity would that be?
01:04:07.620well again i mean i'm um you're asking me to interpret or infer why minister lametti has
01:04:17.440reached out to doug dunney the best answer that i can offer is i believe he is reaching out to
01:04:23.600a provincial counterpart to understand um what ontario's response is to the situation not only
01:04:30.120in ottawa but elsewhere including in windsor at the ambassador bridge and by then um the blockade
01:04:36.040see again there's that tie-in option to the economy again it wasn't thousands of people
01:04:41.600were temporarily laid off businesses were no they weren't acted in the auto manufacturing sector so
01:04:46.220no it wasn't i think he's trying to get gain some understanding from the attorney general of
01:04:51.340ontario about perhaps what advice he is offering to the ontario government again i'm i'm drawing
01:04:58.040some inferences here but i think it's a combination of that but i think more broadly just to keep
01:05:03.920lines of communication strong between the federal government and the government of Ontario.
01:05:07.940Okay, so you actually asked him to call Downey, so do you have a recollection of why, or is it
01:05:13.720essentially what you just told us? Yeah, no, actually, there it is right there, yes, so I would
01:05:21.000say that was my thinking at the time, was to try and keep lines of communication open, and to be
01:05:27.940sure that uh that we had some understanding about you know what advice may be provided to the
01:05:34.020ontario government okay um thank you mr clerk next document is ont4 interesting i i bet the
01:05:41.660room is filled with his own security and his own people and some of the people who oppose
01:05:46.200have not been allowed in this morning based on the fact that he's an mp you seem to refer to an
01:05:51.860earlier cabinet minister for the fifth i don't know if you do you have any recollection of that
01:05:56.040one um i'm sorry what i'm sorry which document am i looking at here sorry yeah that's my fault
01:06:02.500uh the last document the text exchange with minister lametti you say i have spoken with
01:06:08.000sylvia and that appears to be on the fifth so do you remember a conversation prior to the fifth
01:06:13.180um in the context of the blockades uh i not off the top of my head okay this moment well we know
01:06:21.440that one happened on the 7th and this this document is minister jones's notation of that call
01:06:28.040and she says uh so she's talking to you marco medicino jim watson wants an interlocutor i think
01:06:36.000that may have mean interlocutor but i'm not sure um wellington will be uh fast and jurisdiction
01:06:44.340ftp table to support the city 1500 obp 38 kitchener um can you tell so so the interlocutor that is
01:06:54.680that a reference to an interlocutor was that part of the discussion you were having um you know
01:07:00.680again if if if we could have the document just scroll back up to the top i just want to give
01:07:07.120myself a little more time to come up with a lie i i agree with you i think that the word there
01:07:12.860may be misspelled and is referring to an interlocutor and you know beyond that i
01:07:22.600guys the format is that no but the commission lawyer gets a couple of hours and any other
01:07:30.240lawyer that's cross-examining gets 15 or 20 minutes that's the format of this commission
01:07:35.180so the other lawyers will not get as much time as you get said in that conversation as well but
01:07:41.320Before we get there, I want to just go through a little bit
01:07:43.760the call you subsequently had with Premier Ford.
01:07:49.880Because at this point, so can you take us through that?
01:07:53.020Minister Jones, you have a conversation on the 7th.
01:09:32.540I'm happy to say that both Minister and Jones and I
01:09:35.820still enjoy a very productive and positive rapport.
01:09:40.680But the real thrust of the call was to engage Minister Jones
01:09:48.140to understand exactly where her thinking
01:09:52.020and where the government of Ontario's thinking was at
01:09:54.420in responding to the requests of Ottawa Police Service
01:09:57.860to get additional resources and more broadly speaking to restore public safety on the ground
01:10:04.200and um and you know i i think um certainly by by the end of the call um it was it was quite clear
01:10:13.700that that the inability of law enforcement using existing authorities to restore public safety on
01:10:22.120the ground uh was of increasing concern uh to me he is sweating as the minister of public safety
01:10:29.220have a look at him get a close look a lot of sheen wanted to be sure that ontario was exercising
01:10:35.880all of its capacity to she's not sweating it's not hot not only ottawa uh but other communities
01:10:42.920as well in this province including uh windsor so um it was an important engagement um it was
01:10:49.480it was obviously a very stressful time and uh you know i i think that uh we could all be forgiven
01:10:55.480uh for some uh rather blunt language i'm sure you know we've all heard it in uh in various
01:11:01.120interactions but uh but having those lines of communications open was critically important at
01:11:07.140that time okay um so regardless of the language it's fair to say you were encountering some
01:11:11.740resistance in obviously coming to the tripartite table and it was described as a call that didn't
01:11:16.920go well um and we know that on on the 9th you spoke directly with premier ford so we can take
01:11:23.000that document down please and we'll pull up the readout which is ssm.can.nsc402832 how did that
01:11:35.060call arise did you call premier ford did he call you tell us tell us how that happened uh the premier
01:11:40.240called me and uh i by then uh again i it's important to place that the timing and the
01:11:48.680chronology of this call into the broader context um this would have been february 9th so we're now
01:11:54.580beyond a week into uh the into the occupation here in the nation's capital and with significant
01:12:02.860interruptions at critical infrastructure and borders including at the ambassador bridge
01:12:07.920in Windsor at the Windsor-Detroit border,
01:12:11.120which quite clearly is in the province of Ontario.
01:12:15.560The Premier called me to, I think, express a few things.
01:12:19.420Yeah, contact is not cooperation necessarily.
01:12:22.860They may have known each other, some of the people from that,
01:12:25.300but that doesn't prove any kind of elaborate scheme.
01:12:30.320His chief public health officer was going to be going out
01:12:33.640in the very short term to communicate the end of vaccine passports and the end of mandates
01:12:40.780but he also was very supportive and said that he was prepared to stand with the prime minister
01:12:47.820which which I took as a again as a very constructive suggestion to show unity across
01:12:54.840different levels of government responding to what was then a very urgent state of crisis and
01:13:00.980emergency. And having that demonstration of solidarity, I thought would reassure Ontarians
01:13:06.900and Canadians. I also did say to him that I would relay what I interpreted to be a bit of a nudge
01:13:16.840by Premier Ford around the federal government's posture around pandemic policy to the Prime
01:13:23.700Minister, more broadly, just the fact that the call had occurred. And I did take the opportunity
01:13:30.440to express two really important things.
01:13:34.140First, I was really concerned about restoring public safety
01:13:40.040at critical infrastructure, including the Ambassador Bridge.
01:13:43.680And I also said that I was concerned that even if there was an announcement
01:13:48.300around a change in pandemic policy, that they may not leave.
01:13:51.860I think in the end, that proved to be true.
01:13:55.500And then finally, I said that we needed Sylvia,
01:13:59.200Again, there I'm referring to Minister Jones at the table, and I'm referring to the tri-part table, and I ask that the premier instructor to be there.
01:14:07.580So I think you've taken us through pretty much all of that.
01:14:11.460On the point of stand with the PM, we'll just pull up another document, which is ssm.nsc.can402952.
01:14:29.540So this is a text while it's being pulled up to Katie Telford, who's the Prime Minister Chief of Staff.
01:14:35.440You send her a text sort of reporting on this call with Premier Ford.
01:14:38.780She will be on the stand at some point tomorrow.
01:14:41.460or the next day katie telford did i get the wrong document you want to see a liar
01:14:46.260a good one though it appears that i did um okay you know what i'll just i'll read it to you
01:14:54.180we can we can look for the document number in a second it it says just got called from ford
01:15:01.460they're pivoting he will announce they're lifting passports possibly more measures
01:15:07.060all political and with the pm said i and then he said said i would relay i said the situation
01:15:15.200at ambassador bridge is serious it's hurting working families killing jobs so by stand with
01:15:21.800the pm you said i didn't quite catch what you said you thought that meant stand beside the pm and
01:15:27.400My interpretation from Premier Ford saying that to me directly was that he wanted to show solidarity with the federal government in responding to this emergency.
01:15:41.720And I thought that that was a constructive suggestion because it would reassure Ontarians and Canadians more broadly that different levels of government were working together to restore public safety to keep people safe, which was my job.
01:15:56.560And then my request to him to have Minister Jones attend the tripartite was an effort to show that alignment at all levels of government, not only from premier to the prime minister, but equally from at the ministerial level in the portfolio of public safety.
01:16:13.420Because by being at the same table at the same time, we could really troubleshoot issues together, including, again, some of the operational challenges that police were having, again, not only.
01:16:24.140Well, Marlene, if Ford had not gone to court to prevent some of the jurisdictional complexities, then he could have defended himself.
01:16:31.380And whether or not there were any other measures or tools that we could offer from the elected side of the government to police if it were necessary.
01:16:37.820Okay. For the record, Mr. Clerk, the document number is ssm.nsc.can402952.
01:16:46.340So what I wanted to ask you, Minister Mendicino, was did you sense that that or was your interpretation that standing with the PM was in any way tied to what you described, I think, as a gentle nudge to ease public health measures?
01:16:59.640No, it wasn't. And again, I think we saw subsequently in the lead up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act that following the first minister's meeting that the Prime Minister and Premier Ford were very much on the same page about the necessity of having to invoke the Emergencies Act.
01:17:18.280And at that point, the government had not yet taken a final decision with regards to pandemic policy and in specific regards to vaccines.
01:17:27.960Okay. The last point I want to ask you, Ben, on all of this is to get your reaction to something we heard from Mr. Mario Di Tommaso when he testified, which was, and I'll paraphrase what he was saying, but essentially part of his thinking or his explanation of why Ontario was reluctant to participate in the tripartites is that, insofar as these were a forum to discuss policing resources,
01:17:56.420Ontario, governmental officials shouldn't be participating in that because that's a law enforcement matter.
01:18:02.240The question of deploying police resources is something for law enforcement, not for governmental officials.
01:18:09.400What's your take on that in the context of what we'd raised earlier about the lines of operational dependence of the police?
01:18:17.980Yeah, here again, this is a very important question.
01:18:20.920First, I can't speak for the Deputy Minister of Public Safety or the Solicitor General in Ontario, but from where I sat, the Premier of Ontario actually showed very important leadership in the early days of the blockade, going out publicly, saying that this no longer was a lawful protest and that people needed to go home.
01:18:48.720And that was a signal, I think, to any fair-minded individual who abides by the law that the situation was no longer safe.
01:18:59.260I would also point out that, you know, in the context of the discussion around operational independence,
01:19:06.660and I've obviously given this a fair bit of reflection since the occupation,
01:19:12.040And I did touch on it a little bit earlier that there are important boundaries that should not be crossed by elected officials. And for good reason. We do want to safeguard against the politicization or making partisan important and independent decisions which are made by law enforcement and the prosecution services around the country.
01:19:42.040uh so that we can preserve the integrity of the administration of justice and at all times
01:19:49.240we adhere to that principle in the federal government that having been said there does
01:19:56.400need to be a dialogue and there is a dialogue between police and the elected uh branch of
01:20:03.660government when it comes to providing additional resources and tools and i can offer a number of
01:20:09.860very concrete examples, not only in the general, but in the specific context of our response to
01:20:17.520the blockade. So if I could, when I received a call at the beginning of February from
01:20:24.420the Premier of Alberta, the then Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, one of the concerns that
01:20:29.780he'd expressed is that he and Alberta did not possess either the resources or the tools to
01:20:36.300clear the blockade at Coutts, which had mobilized pretty much since the end of January or beginning
01:20:41.660of February. As part of the federal government's response to that situation, I authorized under
01:20:50.420Article 9.3 of the existing police services agreement between Canada and Albert the deployment
01:20:56.620of additional police resources. That is a very concrete example of how we have customized through
01:21:04.160convention the relationship between the elected government and the authorities that are exercised
01:21:10.480through this office the minister of public safety in response to the operational decisions that are
01:21:16.720taken by police to restore public safety i would say more broadly there you know are other important
01:21:23.780examples where um elected representatives that occupy this office are responsive to the needs
01:21:30.900of police around tools, you know, be it in, you know, responding to either this situation
01:21:38.780or others, and obviously there are the priorities around the foreign deployment of RCMP in different
01:21:46.220countries, for example, in Ukraine, which are priorities which can be set by the elected branch
01:21:51.800of government where conventional police forces are deployed. So I guess my broader point is that
01:21:58.800both in the specific context of the blockade, but even beyond in the general, there does need to be
01:22:05.920a dialogue. And there was a dialogue between the elected branch of government and the police who
01:22:12.660were exercising operational independence at every time to ensure that we could get them the
01:22:17.780additional resources that they need in the parts of the country where they needed it. And again,
01:22:22.820I emphasize and stress, this was not just an isolated incident, that these events were
01:22:28.140occurring across the country uh so that we could restore public safety when the rcmp officials
01:22:36.080testified last week so um deputy commissioner du haim and commissioner brenda leckey testify
01:22:42.160there's a few things that that came out of their evidence that i i want your reaction on one of
01:22:47.640them is um that i believe commissioner leckey said that there were times or i think it was deputy
01:22:56.180Commissioner Duhaime, said that there were times where it may have felt to him like officials may
01:23:01.880have stepped a little over that line, that line between church and state. Now, I think they did
01:23:07.220say specifically, I remember, I recall Commissioner Luckey saying that she never felt pressured by
01:23:12.160her ministers, you and Minister Blair. She did say that at some point, you sort of had to educate
01:23:21.100or educated and she didn't point to any sort of instance where it was necessary but she said you
01:23:26.860educated and it fell to you essentially to educate the rest of of cabinet i think it was the february
01:23:32.44010th irg right on uh on where that line was and the importance of operational dependence do you
01:23:38.340recall that i do and and i wanted to be sure that as um colleagues around the cabinet table were
01:23:45.640expressing the same concerns that I had, that others had about the ineffectiveness of existing
01:23:51.540authorities and resources to restore public safety up to that point, and we are approaching now two
01:23:57.200weeks into the blockade, that nevertheless, we should not violate the principle of operational
01:24:03.640independence. Because again, just situate yourself in our shoes for just a moment. Our paramount
01:24:11.440concern is restoring public safety and by then there were countless reports of the of the very
01:24:18.420dire consequences that had been visited upon Canadians but that could never be a license
01:24:25.640for assuming the the roles and the responsibilities of police when it came to making the tactical
01:24:32.840and operational decisions around how to restore public safety so it was important to strike a
01:24:39.460balance between respecting that principle, but also fulfilling my role specifically in holding
01:24:48.820the RCMP accountable for their role in restoring public safety, and more broadly, the government's
01:24:57.200role in understanding why it was that despite existing authorities and resources, we could not
01:25:05.040We could not achieve the goal of getting a law and order back on the ground.
01:25:10.760And when I look back now and I ask myself why it was in the perception of the commissioner that she felt that some, not all, were coming up to the line, it is because of the unique and singular nature of this public order emergency.
01:25:30.920It was the fact that the scale of this was national.
01:25:35.100It was the fact that what sparked this movement in the opinion of the government was an expressly stated political objective that at times was expressed in violent terms that led to the entrenchment of a significant number of individuals to ignore the direction of law enforcement at the risk and at the peril of Canadians.
01:25:58.660It was the challenges that we had in government around having the appropriate intelligence tools to understand how those initially stated objectives could pull in people from many different walks of life with different backgrounds and different grievances and coalesce them around something that so significantly and persistently caused significant interruption to public safety,
01:26:25.880to the economy to our international relations and all of that uh was i think part of the reason why
01:26:32.960um people he is talking about his own government the the people from every walk of life reacting
01:26:40.220to his government but yet he refuses to acknowledge that his government may have
01:26:45.460been at fault in their actions despite the fact that we had tow trucks we had many why do you
01:26:51.440think marco that so many historic clear um protest and all of that was leading to why do you think
01:26:59.220so many people from all across this country all got together in one serious violence they don't
01:27:03.320do that in canada normally unless the government is so corrupt uh signaled her concerns but also
01:27:09.460appreciated my intervention that we still had to be respectful of that principle of operational
01:27:14.380independence okay so just to go back on that a little bit i mean what we've heard over the
01:27:20.060the weeks that we've been here here at the commission there's there's what could be described
01:27:25.580as quote-unquote pressure all over the record so there's a real sense of urgency from politicians
01:27:31.260and from officials we need to do something about this now we need to do this quick quick quick we
01:27:35.680need to do this has to end etc etc and how does that not constitute can you explain how that does
01:27:42.900not constitute pressure on law enforcement to do something to clear up this protest in whatever
01:27:48.280the way they can well to be clear there was pressure on all of us i mean this was an extremely
01:27:53.320tense situation uh so i mean i think that is just a natural reaction to all of the events that were
01:28:00.280occurring but the reason why i'm confident and the reason why i believe commissioner lucky
01:28:05.480testified that we didn't violate the principle of operational independence is because at no time
01:28:11.240were we instructing police on how to do their job on the ground so at no time
01:28:16.920Were we saying you must arrest people under the following provisions of the law?
01:28:22.840You must prosecute these people, you know, to the fullest extent.
01:28:29.640You must, you know, to the granularity of detail, deploy five people here and 100 people there.
01:28:38.740And to prioritize all these operations, we at all times steered clear of that zone,
01:28:44.180which would have been a violation of the principle of operational independence.
01:28:49.060And that's why I think I'm, you know, very confident that we didn't cross that boundary.
01:28:56.340Okay, so the line is politicians and the government has a role to play in expressing a desire, let's say,
01:29:04.540to or the need to solve a situation, but not in telling the police how to do it?
01:29:09.120That's right. You don't want me as an elected official putting on a badge or a uniform and going out there and doing the job that police are there to do. That's not my role. That's not my responsibility. However, it is my responsibility as Minister of Public Safety to be accountable to Canadians when it comes to equipping police with the tools and the resources that they need to restore public safety.
01:43:46.400There's some evidence, and I'll ask you if you know about this first.
01:43:51.900So shortly before, we understand there was an IRG meeting the afternoon of the 13th, followed by a meeting of the full cabinet in the evening at 8.30 p.m.
01:44:02.940The commission has seen evidence shortly before that 8.30 meeting.
01:44:07.240uh commissioner bucky sent an email let's get the email up uh it is ssm.nsc.can402280
01:44:19.660so this is an email the time stamp on it is it's just shortly before eight o'clock once you do the
01:44:39.380greenwich mean time adjustment this is your chief of staff mike jones sending this to you
01:46:10.080And while she did not at all address that last point that you raised in the email, she did call me and only me, this was a conversation between just her and I, to be clear, to express her very grave concerns about the situation in Coutts.
01:46:29.660And she underlined for me that the situation in Coutts involved a hardened cell of individuals who were armed to the teeth with lethal firearms who possessed a willingness to go down with the cause.
01:46:51.120And the reason why this was such a sensitive conversation was that we had RCMP undercover personnel deployed in the field.
01:46:59.660and she was justifiably concerned that there not be any leak of this information because lives
01:47:05.700literally hung in the balance and for me this represented far and away the most serious
01:47:12.360and urgent moment in the in the blockade to this point in time and so it also spoke volumes to me
01:47:21.380about the commissioner's state of mind which was that we were potentially seeing an escalation
01:47:27.300of serious violence uh with so now he's telling us what the commissioner of the rcmp was thinking
01:47:34.420i think even after we just saw the email thing in the broader context of that there's more that
01:47:39.380could be done of the advice that we were getting from uh the commissioner at that time as a result
01:47:44.860of conversations not only in the ergs about where there were gaps in authorities in existing
01:47:52.240authorities to return public safety to the ground. Very good spin doctor though. Could not have drawn
01:47:59.660any other inference that she was supportive as she later expressed that she was of the decision to
01:48:06.020invoke the emergencies act. This was a singular moment for me in my mind and it was so urgent
01:48:13.600that I said to her well look I can't just keep this information to myself at a minimum I have
01:48:19.840to be able to share it with the Prime Minister, which I then subsequently took steps to do.
01:48:25.080Shortly thereafter, I reached out to Ms. Telford.
01:48:28.740Sorry, just to be clear, which information are you talking about?
01:48:31.580About COOTS and about the potential for gun violence and for the loss of life and the
01:48:38.060fact that there were RCMP personnel that were in the field and all of this occurring literally
01:48:43.920within hours, not even days, of the invocation to the Emergencies Act.
01:48:48.120I was extremely concerned that this had reached a new height of both urgency and emergency, and so I felt I had a responsibility to let, at a minimum, the Prime Minister know and his staff know, while respecting the operational sensitivity at the most delicate levels to protect the people on the ground.
01:49:09.060And so I did that. I spoke to Ms. Telford afterwards, where I conveyed to her both the best information that I had at the time around COOTS and asked her to keep this, to respect, in effect, the commissioner's request that we treat this information with the utmost sensitivity so that we could ensure that we were keeping people safe.
01:49:34.780but this was this was a threshold moment for me there's no doubt about it and that was on you had
01:49:41.080that conversation on the afternoon of the 13th that was the same day yes okay so just to recap
01:49:46.200a little bit you didn't see this email from commissioner lucky before the cabinet meeting
01:49:51.720again i i i i'm trying very much to reconstruct the the sequence of events things moved very
01:49:59.860very quickly it literally came in inside of a half hour of the commencement so i don't want
01:50:05.060to say definitively i didn't see it i was much more preoccupied with the of course you saw it
01:50:10.980and you ignored it that i had with because your agenda was set that day where she had imparted
01:50:16.280to me perhaps the most um urgent information to date with regards to uh the the occupation
01:50:23.400and the blockades this guy's a thug he's a political thug okay fair enough so if you did
01:50:28.720see it it didn't register as much as what she said about coots put it that way situation at
01:50:33.280coots had nothing to do with the federal government by the way that was a provincial jurisdiction so
01:50:37.260we know that that commissioner lucky wasn't called on to speak um do you recall this being expressed
01:50:42.700to cabinet that evening no okay um and you certainly obviously and i wasn't permitted to
01:50:50.560share or i was asked not to share the information about coots with anyone else except for the
01:50:56.900prime minister, which I did. Okay. If you had known this information, and I appreciate you're
01:51:04.760not entirely sure on whether you saw this information or didn't, would it have changed
01:51:09.100your mind at all? I don't think so at that point. My interactions directly with the commissioner
01:51:15.020were actually going in the opposite direction. That says it all. And certainly the fact that
01:51:20.140that we were on the precipice of engaging in an operation in Coutts
01:51:28.620where people were armed with a significant number of lethal firearms,
01:58:20.660Mr. Alexander Cohen, he's present in this room.
01:58:25.360And Sir, Mr. Cohen, as we have heard throughout this proceeding, has relevant and material evidence to this proceedings mandate.
01:58:38.180He has very relevant evidence with respect to the inquiry as to the circumstances, as to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
01:58:47.880He also has relevant and material information with respect to misinformation of which this commission has been tasked with exploring, beginning with the text messages between himself and Mary Liz Power that are already in evidence in building the narrative with respect to the protesters in Ottawa being extremists and thereafter essentially setting out
01:59:17.880that they are, in fact, proprietors of Nazi symbolism.
01:59:22.880Sir, this commission has been hearing from various...
01:59:29.280Can I just interrupt? What's your application?
01:59:32.000I'd like to call him as a witness, sir.
02:22:30.440I want to take you back to something you touched on before the break, and I'd like to get your reaction on.
02:22:37.140I asked you whether, if you had seen and absorbed, let's put it that way, Commissioner Luckey's statement that they had not yet exhausted all available tools, law enforcement still had tools available.
02:22:50.180I asked you whether that would have changed your mind as to the necessity of the Emergencies Act, and you answered no, and you explained that you're concerned about COOTS.
02:22:57.240How do you reconcile that position with the notion that the Emergencies Act is a measure of last resort?
02:23:04.940Well, first I would say that the absence of having a direct conversation with Commissioner
02:23:14.820Luckey, and I pointed out the call that we had earlier today, but that wasn't the only
02:23:18.940one. There were other meetings at ERGs and daily briefings. Really was an impediment
02:23:26.500at that point to have the kind of back and forth exploration of that advice, which she
02:23:31.940had included in an email to to my chief of staff mike jones i think the other thing the other
02:23:39.860reason why i don't believe it would have substantially changed my views at that point
02:23:45.220are twofold one it didn't really expand at all on how she had come to that point of view so
02:23:55.500when she talked about a plan there was no elaboration on it and I would point out that
02:24:04.880for the better part of the two weeks leading up to the to February 13th that there were times where
02:24:12.400the commissioner and others at those daily calls that we were having were expressing concerns
02:24:17.560about the absence of a plan with existing authorities so at that particular moment in time
02:24:26.260it seemed to me as a as a conclusory statement that was not substantiated with any kind of
02:24:34.200particular detail and the second reason why I don't believe it would have changed you know where
02:24:40.640my thinking was at that particular moment in time was predominantly because of the call earlier that
02:24:45.960day uh which was top of mind and as i explained before the morning break break i beg your pardon
02:24:53.520um it it just um it spoke volumes about what her state of mind was uh which was that this was
02:25:04.600a potentially uh an escalation of violence that could uh result in there being gun violence and
02:25:11.060potentially serious injuries or even fatalities to members of law enforcement and Canadians.
02:25:15.820One thing I didn't mention was that my worry, my real fear, was that had that operation not
02:25:28.260gone down peacefully, that it might have sparked other gun violence across the country.
02:25:35.960And I recall early reports from the Ottawa Police Service that guns had been brought into the National Capital Region and potentially into the parliamentary precinct.
02:25:52.660And there wasn't a lot of detail around that, I want to be clear, but we were operating with the best information that we had available to us.
02:26:01.700So that elevated my concerns. And so that was where my state of mind was, as opposed to the one bullet point that she had sent to my chief of staff shortly before the cabinet meeting on February 13th.
02:26:17.040So you're expressing here a concern that what was going on in Coots might be going on in other places. Not evidence of that, but you were nevertheless concerned about it.
02:26:27.660on the basis of both previous information and reports publicly available from Ottawa Police
02:26:36.620Service that firearms had made their way into the capital and as well again a report
02:26:43.900about an arrest involving someone who was participating in the convoy here that ultimately
02:26:51.420resulted in the seizure of of a firearm so i was i was i was worried about the potential chain
02:27:01.060reaction that if the operation did not go flawlessly that it might actually escalate in
02:27:09.480more violence and that's why i think she communicated that you know very clearly and
02:27:14.800rightfully so i i want to be clear that commissioner lucky was entirely appropriate
02:27:19.760and justified in signaling that this was a potentially much higher level of concern around
02:27:26.600the state of affairs. Okay. So I'll put this to you and you can tell me right or wrong,
02:27:31.500but are you sort of saying your concern was okay, but what if it gets worse?
02:27:38.380My concern was that this information was highly sensitive. It involved a hardened cell
02:27:49.620It involved guns, it involved ideological symbolism potentially, and that if that operation to arrest those individuals did not go efficiently and smoothly and peacefully, that it may have created a chain reaction elsewhere across the country, because there were past reports about the presence of guns.
02:28:14.060Okay, so I should have put my question more clearly, maybe, but with respect to the availability of tools and whether law enforcement had what it needed, are you saying, and you may not be, so I'm asking you, but are you saying that regardless of whether the tool, there may have been tools available, there was a concern that it would actually, that the situation would get worse?
02:28:34.380Yes, and again, the urgency with which we had that conversation, the confidentiality around it, the operational sensitivity about it, the jeopardy of having lives at stake, the potential chain reaction of other gun violence across the country on the basis of reports, and the concurrent advice that we were getting about tools that could only be granted in the Emergencies Act because resources were ineffective at restoring public safety.
02:29:03.020and there were gaps around deploying RCMP efficiently.
02:29:08.520I mean, you'll recall the swearing-in provisions, the no-go zones,
02:29:13.120the procuring of tow trucks, all of that was where my state of mind was.
02:29:30.840So we have heard evidence about gaps that have been identified, that were identified. We also heard from a number of officials, and we saw in documentation, a lot of hesitancy around the idea of using the emergency fact and the possibility that it may inflame tensions, it may make things worse. There was a lot of, if I could put it this way, doubt around that.
02:29:51.640But in light of that, and in light also of a lot of discussion that we've had here in the Commission about whether the threshold itself was met under the Emergencies Act, can you go there at this point and explain to us your understanding of why the threshold was met and why it was necessary in light of the hesitancy that had been expressed about the need to invoke it?
02:30:20.100Well, you've touched on a few important points in your question, so I'm going to try and unpack the questions that you put to me.
02:30:28.340Just first on hesitancy, I would be more inclined to describe it as reluctance.
02:30:34.360And I think that that instinct was the right one, that this was a statute that was created coming out of the aftermath of the October 1970 crisis
02:30:45.860And there being real concerns about using, resorting to the War Measures Act and using the military to restore public order, which is not the mandate or the expertise of the military, a very blunt instrument.
02:31:02.020And the creation of the Emergencies Act, which very consciously and deliberately does not make any reference to military powers, but nevertheless affords the government broad scope to respond to public order emergencies.
02:31:22.140And just by virtue of its title, you know, if you're into an emergency, this is obviously a very serious situation.
02:31:30.920So you don't want to have to use it unless it's necessary.
02:31:34.120So that is the right posture, I think, of every government, that this is not a piece of legislation that we should be using in a way that is anything reserved but for the most serious situations.
02:31:50.220So that's my answer in regards to the reluctance around it.
02:31:54.520You also mentioned in your question that, you know, that this business about there being the concern that if we invoke the Emergencies Act, that it might actually lead to more violence or radicalization, as I believe you heard from Mr. Vigneault and CSIS.
02:32:11.400I was very mindful of that, but I also, and colleagues at the Cabinet table, also had to weigh the risks of not invoking the Emergencies Act because there were the materialization of counter-protests from individuals, specifically in Ottawa, because they were so frustrated at their inability to go to their jobs, take their kids to daycare,
02:32:40.640get access to emergency medical services, their prescriptions and the like, I mean, it was utter
02:32:45.320and total mayhem. I mean, let's call a spade a spade. And so that frustration was boiling over.
02:32:52.100And my concern in my capacity as the Minister for Public Safety is that if we don't equip police
02:32:58.940with the additional tools and the authorities that they need to specifically address the gaps
02:33:04.380that they had been consistently briefing us on, then that might lead to more violence.
02:33:08.960And so we also had to weigh the risks of not taking the decision to invoke. And so we weighed in the potential concerns around radicalization, but ultimately we came down on the side of invoking.
02:33:26.500Okay. On this point then, Mr. Clerk, can you pull up ssm.nsc.can50290?
02:33:36.800So this is a readout of minutes of the guns and gangs.
02:34:03.800Can you situate us, actually, Mr. Mendoncino, and tell us guns and gangs?
02:34:07.940What does that refer to, that meeting?
02:34:11.740Sorry, this is a document published by?
02:34:14.540It's a reading or minutes of a meeting that was held.
02:34:19.140Okay, the date of it isn't clear, actually, but we know that it's post-invocation
02:34:25.640because it refers to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
02:34:30.240It says schedule was changed, guns and gangs instead.
02:37:15.180I think I actually am now out of time.
02:37:16.920So the last question I want to ask you, Minister Medellino, and your legal background shows and how you unpacked my triple-barreled question last time around.
02:37:26.680So this is the last barrel, the third barrel that you didn't get to in your answer, which is the threshold for invoking a public order emergency, as you know, depends on identifying a threat to the security of Canada with reference to the CSIS Act.
02:37:42.220We've heard a lot of discussion at the commission about how that threshold may or may not have been met.
02:37:47.880And we know that there was no specific to the theory of Canada assessed by CSIS.
02:37:55.820Nevertheless, the government concluded that the threshold was met, presumably because the act was invoked.
02:38:02.500How, in your view, was that threshold met?
02:38:05.480Well, first, let me address the piece about CSIS's conclusion.
02:38:09.800And I know you've heard some evidence about that.
02:38:11.580But I do think it is important to emphasize that they are assessing through their mandate,
02:38:17.060which is conventionally confined to espionage and foreign interference
02:38:22.140and potential threats to cybersecurity for the purposes of establishing a legal threshold
02:38:28.820under that statute, which then leads to potentially obtaining warrants judicially authorized
02:38:35.200so that we can mitigate against those potential security threats.
02:43:38.600So we're making the process inefficient with all due respect
02:43:41.300by not allowing the parties to have access to unreacted documents.
02:43:47.120The second reason we're not in a position to proceed with our cross-examination
02:43:51.320at this time with this witness is uh our lead counsel mr brendan miller who had prepared for
02:43:56.920the cross as you know sir has been removed from the room by you when he was raising a motion to
02:44:03.000find a way around the absence of a ruling on the redaction so uh we're just not in a position to
02:44:09.160proceed on cross sir okay well just on your your first question it uh it is uh expected that the
02:44:19.960ruling will come out at the during the lunch hour there have been a fair amount of back and forth
02:44:28.280without going into detail there's there's some let's say
02:44:36.840innovative type of issues that had to be dealt with so that should come out at the lunch time
02:44:42.600which i'm happy to do my utmost it's going to come out unfortunately probably and not on the
02:44:51.320record uh the website because it won't be translated which is one of the issues we have
02:44:56.680to deal with but we will in light of what you say you'll issue it in english uh only for the moment
02:45:03.000and it will become be posted when it's bilingual but i understand that submission um so that that
02:45:11.480should enable you so we can put off the cross-examinations till after the lunchtime.
02:45:17.160In terms of the other problem, that's not something I can deal with. I'm trying to deal
02:45:23.960the best I can with the situation and quite frankly if the issue had been raised the way you
02:45:33.000have now, I would have given the answer I'm giving now. So what I propose then,
02:45:40.200since this witness will be here after lunch we simply delay till after lunch if you could uh
02:45:46.120endeavor because i see you have uh uh you have co-council so you can sort out how that can be
02:45:53.480done that would be appreciated thank you sir okay so the next i'll call on the opp please what
02:46:10.200whoa afternoon afternoon minister chris diana council to the opp good afternoon we received
02:46:21.300some documents last night that we're all frantically trying to review some of them
02:46:25.080are quite interesting and one of the ones that i'd like to start with mr clerk is pb.can.401849
02:46:34.220and this appears to be a text exchange with you and an unidentified person who I'm hoping
02:46:42.420you'll be able to help us identify and if we can go to page 26
02:46:48.300all right so if you could help situate us as to kind of context here this appears to be a text
02:47:07.220with someone i believe you're on the left and somebody else is on the right if you could scroll
02:47:11.580down a little bit so that the witness of the chance to review it do you know who this text
02:47:15.940change was with i believe it's mike jones and he would be your chief of staff correct yes and
02:47:20.380someone who you would have been in touch with obviously every day that your closest contact
02:47:25.460within the uh within your system all right and so we scroll to the top again to set the time context
02:47:31.720here monday february 14th at 12 48 a.m so very early in the morning february 14th so basically
02:47:38.500the night of february 13th we were to look at it that way and the context here is that the
02:47:44.980ambassador bridge had just been opened to traffic i believe about 30 minutes earlier is that correct
02:47:50.900yes that according to your recollection of when this text exchange took place it does there were
02:47:55.220some questions about whether or not it was fully opened and exactly when cbsa would declare that
02:47:59.940it was officially open but on the whole yes there were reports that it was opened in the
02:48:05.220early hours of february the 14th yeah but i think for clarity i think the windsor police service
02:48:09.220institutional report identifies 12 12 a.m on that day so that sounds about right to me all right
02:48:15.020and so you would agree that everything you had heard was that while it was open there was still
02:48:18.640a concern about potential volatility correct that's right all right if we can there were reports
02:48:23.240of flare-ups if i'm not mistaken yeah either on the 13th but certainly after the 14th as well
02:48:28.200all right so i'm interested in the text it says and i'll read it following the declaration
02:48:32.700we should go to ambassador and inspect the bridge reopening and thank law enforcement
02:48:37.660and RCMP assuming things go according to plan so I'd like to follow up on what and this is
02:48:45.260you texting Mike Jones correct yes your term following the declaration I assume you're
02:48:51.000talking about the emergencies act declaration yes and you would agree the emergencies act had
02:48:56.440not yet been invoked at this point correct that's correct and in fact there had not even been
02:49:00.800consultation with the provinces at this point correct that's well to be clear the first minister's
02:49:06.000meeting had not yet occurred, which occurred the next morning. There were conversations with
02:49:12.540provincial and territorial counterparts, but it was before the First Minister's meeting.
02:49:16.520Right, but I think, and I'm not going to go to the document for lack of time, but I think it was
02:49:19.700made very clear by the Prime Minister and others that his mind hadn't been made up yet, that the
02:49:25.500consultation was essentially being done in good faith. Yes. Correct? Yes, and I wasn't communicating
02:49:30.380that the decision had been finally taken, but rather the assumption that it may have been.
02:49:34.420not may have been following the declaration it sounds to me like you're pretty convinced that
02:49:39.120it was going to be made regardless of what happened at the consultation i i won't dispute
02:49:43.120we were definitely trending very much in that direction yes okay assuming things go according
02:49:48.400to plan and so what plan are you referring to here restoring public safety um and ambassador
02:49:56.160bridge was one of the real flash points as as you recall because not only of the impact
02:50:01.960domestically in Windsor, but Ambassador Bridge was one of the reasons why I was engaged by
02:50:07.640my American counterpart, Secretary Mayorkas, who had reached out and was very concerned that it was
02:50:14.240going to have an impact on two-way trade. And you will be familiar with this by now, I assume,
02:50:18.560but at Ambassador Bridge, we do the most significant amount of our day-to-day land trade.
02:50:24.120So there was a lot at stake in restoring public safety at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Detroit.
02:50:29.500Right. So a cynic might suggest, and we're both lawyers and there are a number of us in that category, a cynic might suggest that it appears here, you're talking about setting up a photo op in Windsor, even before the Emergencies Act is invoked.
02:50:44.760i i agree with you a cynic may suggest that but that was not my um my my intent um the the point
02:50:52.700was this was a very stressful uh time and um i wanted to be in a position to reassure
02:51:00.300canadians that we were storing a public safety uh right across the country including in windsor
02:51:06.400detroit and i can't i can't believe this guy's trying to pin an s on his chest my chief of
02:51:12.560staff okay so amazing your chief of staff says okay do you know when that will be presumably
02:51:18.100being the invocation of the act correct yes your response i'm hearing is the latest tomorrow morning
02:51:24.120i think it's a powerful visual otherwise it's just tweets so basically what you're saying is
02:51:29.820i should go there get some pictures get some video because it sends a better image than just tweeting
02:51:35.140about it. Fair? Well, I think what I'm getting at is that people are anxious and are concerned and
02:51:42.680want to be confident that we are restoring public safety. I mean, I would point out that that is not
02:51:49.820the end of the matter. And there's some additional back and forth between my chief of staff and law
02:51:54.780enforcement. Ultimately, I chose not to go on sober reflection. All right. So let's go to that
02:52:00.840done the opp was not impressed with this idea is that fair to say i didn't speak directly with the
02:52:07.100opp but it was expressed to me that law enforcement had concerns about me or any other elected
02:52:12.740official going all right if we can take up the document id opp4582 and i'm going to be taking
02:52:20.220you to text messages between commissioner kareke and deputy commissioner chris harkins on february
02:52:26.80014th and once that's up we can go to page 71 all right so you can see at the top it says
02:52:46.960dana called and that would be a reference to dana earlier as you know and this is from chris
02:52:51.040harkins dana called she is not happy the rcmp called and the federal public safety minister
02:52:56.160that would be you correct yes it's coming tomorrow for a photo op tour the command post etc
02:53:03.040not appropriate optics are terrible can we stop it commissioner kareep responds a little while
02:53:09.280later saying visit is being postponed so you could see here that obviously the opp was not
02:53:14.560happy with the idea and described it as a photo op yeah their advice changed my mind
02:53:18.320part of the reason that they were concerned of course and i think you heard this may rcmp as
02:53:29.660well was the potential that it could further inflame the situation if you actually showed
02:53:34.200up and took pictures okay and i had to balance that against uh what my initial thought or
02:53:39.800objective was which was to um assure to be accessible and to ensure people that we had
02:53:45.060restored public safety. In the end, I took that very much into consideration and was
02:53:50.720actually quite deferential and respectful to the advice that we got back from police
02:54:15.780here it says rcmp and this is i believe uh mike jones saying rcmp commissioner also strongly
02:54:22.020advising against a trip to windsor concern that is still quite volatile and things have been
02:54:26.660inflamed by today's announcement someone drove at an officer again i want the visual as well
02:54:32.660but with two levels of forces asking us not to my two cents is that it's not worth the risk of going
02:54:38.100and something happening in response delane gives us more time to plan etc scroll down okay i hear
02:54:44.820you let's discuss so essentially it was your chief of staff that was saying look we've heard from two
02:54:50.100police services let's not do this yeah solid advice and i took it in retrospect and i raise
02:54:56.660this because you know i think you would agree that sometimes having politicians attend these kinds of
02:55:01.620sites can have perhaps unintended consequences fair absolutely yes and that in retrospect you
02:55:08.340would agree that it probably wasn't a good idea to have gone yes that's why we didn't go yes
02:55:14.820and in my last minute i'm going to ask you about consultation and i've put these questions to other
02:55:24.180witnesses but i'm just simply going to ask you or put to you the proposition about consultation
02:55:28.900with the law enforcement and the suggestion that i'll put to you is that it's a good idea
02:55:33.900that when there is consultation with law enforcement on tools that that be done in
02:55:40.340writing for purposes of accountability so we can go back and check exactly who said what
02:55:44.620to whom would you agree that's a good idea totally and and you would have heard my um my evidence a
02:55:51.280little bit earlier this morning where i talked about navigating the principle of operational
02:55:55.240independence i referred to article 9.3 under police service agreements which we reach with
02:56:00.280provinces which actually do set out a mechanism and a protocol by which additional resources are
02:56:06.760requested from the office of the federal minister of public safety as well as the office of the
02:56:13.960provincial ministers of public safety. One thing I didn't mention, but I do think is really
02:56:19.800relevant, is that in those police service agreements, it is expressly contemplated under
02:56:25.620either 9.1 or 9.2 of those agreements that prior to the deployment of intra-provincial RCMP resources,
02:56:34.520it is the elected provincial minister of public safety who has to form the opinion that there is
02:56:42.300a state of emergency before they can be deployed. And it is only if existing RCMP resources within
02:56:50.940the province are overwhelmed or insufficient to deal with that emergency that you then take the
02:56:57.960next step of requesting for the deployment of RCMP resources outside of the province to deal
02:57:04.620with the situation, which is Article 9.3. And that is a request that comes to this office.
02:57:10.080My point is, I agree with you that there is a protocol there. The Emergencies Act, unfortunately, does not prescribe that process. So what we did instead was we did the best that we could, having various meetings daily, ultimately in the ERG and the Cabinet meetings where we were soliciting inputs, including, as you saw in the email that I received from Commissioner Lucky the day before,
02:57:38.180where she very specifically and thoughtfully prescribes tools that could only be granted
02:57:44.340under the Emergencies Act. But I agree that maybe some additional thought ought to be given to this
02:57:49.140protocol. Right. And I am out of time. So as I'm leaving, I'm just going to say that we've heard
02:57:52.620evidence that some ambiguous evidence about conversations within the RCMP, perhaps with
02:57:57.380others that haven't been written down. And I think you would agree that it'd be helpful to
02:58:00.640have everything clear and ambiguous so there's no room for doubt. Yes. Thank you, Minister.
02:58:42.900I mean, I'd heard something in the low thousands, and then it quickly escalated as we got closer to the weekend, upwards of 7,000 or 8,000. So, yes.
02:58:50.200And so that was a real difficulty from a planning perspective at all levels of government and law enforcement. Is that fair?
03:02:08.680And I would say both Chief Slowly and then Interim Chief Bell both expressed concerns about having sufficient resources in the ground, which is why in my capacity as Minister of Public Safety, I was facilitating additional help with the assistance of the Commissioner of the RCMP by providing those resources.
03:02:27.960And when that didn't work, looking at other tools leading up to the Emergencies Act.
03:02:33.200So specifically with respect to the resources, you would obviously agree that that messaging coming from both OPS and Chief Slowly was from the very beginning, essentially.
03:02:42.460Once it became apparent that these protesters were not leaving, it became equally apparent that there was insufficient resources. Is that fair?
03:02:50.420and would it be fair to say that any concerns in relation to operational plans or the level
03:02:57.160of enforcement should not be taken as some kind of suggestion that OPS should have engaged
03:03:02.500enforcement in enforcement action without the resources they needed well that was certainly
03:03:07.840the subject of discussion that was going on between the RCMP the OPP and the OPS as it
03:03:14.380was reported to me um it was uh about making sure that we understood what the plan was and what was
03:03:22.540needed by the ottawa police service to restore public safety and from where i sat one way in
03:03:28.900which we could support the formulation and the ultimate implementation of a plan would be to
03:03:34.560offer additional rcmp resources and that we did right and so none of the sort of like we could
03:03:40.520call it criticisms about uh the lack of enforcement or the lack of a plan should be perceived as a
03:03:48.400suggestion that there was that ops should have been engaging enforcement notwithstanding the
03:03:52.880fact that they didn't have the resources to do that safely i would agree that um we shouldn't
03:03:58.280be sending out any uh police officer into the field uh if they can't be safe right and and so
03:04:04.580So this particular event was singular and unprecedented, as you pointed out earlier, for it did require sufficient.
03:04:21.020Okay, guys, I just want to pop on here real quick during this, the lying that Mendocino continues to do.
03:04:26.120To let you know that I do have video of Justice Rouleau removing Brendan Miller from the courtroom, which I'll play when these guys decide to take their break for lunch.
03:04:40.980Also, Brendan did hold a media scrum outside of the room that the hearing is or sorry, the commission is taking place in.
03:04:50.240And I'm going to try and find video of that so I can play that for you.
03:04:54.200Also, apparently, there is a witness from Mendocino's office who is willing to testify, and apparently this witness has all kinds of internal knowledge that would blow this witness's testimony out of the water.
03:05:11.940So I am working on that while we're watching this together, and hopefully I'll be able to come up with something for the lunch break.
03:08:52.240It would appear so on the basis of that email exchange. I don't recall being briefed at the time about who those individuals were, or moreover, how those individuals would help to ensure the clearing of the convoy.
03:09:09.280but yes on on what you're showing me it does seem that there is a back and forth between
03:09:14.560deputy minister stewart and the ottawa police service on who the leaders of the organization
03:09:22.160of the organization might be thank you i'm just going to bring up one last document this one's pb
03:10:38.700so the way i i recall this is that the deputy minister stewart is responding to concerns that
03:10:55.280i had raised with him about the engagement proposal right so if you scroll then to the
03:10:59.440back up to the first page of the document, it looks like we have the answers to those questions.
03:11:07.140And if we look at the last or the second bullet, we see the risk to the signatory and government
03:11:14.220rep at a later date meeting is low, assuming the meeting is virtual. So again, would you agree that
03:11:21.100the concern that you've raised has been addressed as a result of a conversation between Deputy
03:11:27.520minister stewart and his opp expert i would say it begun to address the concerns i don't think i
03:11:33.800was wholly satisfied by the answers that that i had gotten at that stage in particular i would
03:11:39.920have explored the assessment that that that the risk to the signatory and to the government rep
03:11:48.520was low because i needed to understand exactly where the setup was going to be how it was going
03:11:53.840to be undertaken and bearing in mind at the time the situation on the ground was volatile uh and a
03:12:00.240time extremely chaotic and certainly with a very compromised ability to enforce the law i really
03:12:06.320wanted to to to be satisfied that that those answers that those questions would be answered
03:12:12.720because if i went back to cabinet and was asked about the engagement proposal that was being
03:12:17.760worked up by my deputy minister i had to be accountable and i had to be in a position to
03:12:22.160to answer them so it begun to answer some of those questions i would say not completely so you you
03:12:27.760said i would have as though it were hypothetical did you ultimately continue that conversation or
03:12:33.760was the decision made at this point to kind of stop the process no there was no decision to stop
03:12:39.780the process um and there were um some ongoing conversations uh about about engagement and
03:12:47.760you know ultimately i mean this is february 12 12 25 um the following day we have an erg and then
03:12:55.600a cabinet meeting and then uh the 14th is the day in which it's about a about a day and a half after
03:13:02.620this email exchange we saw that the efforts of the city of ottawa were not successful in the
03:13:08.000engagement proposal and by then we were into the invocation of the emergencies act so you would say
03:13:12.580sort of events overtook and and and the proposal fell by the wayside i would say there was a lot
03:13:17.300of work that was going on and i know that the deputy minister at the time was working very hard
03:13:21.620to fulfill this task around the engagement proposal but we were also um you know meeting
03:13:27.240with enforcement officials meeting with cabinet um meeting with and engaging with provincial and
03:13:32.400territorial colleagues and then yes the the sequence of events that had to be fulfilled
03:13:38.500prior to taking a decision on the invocation emergencies act um was was pressing okay thank
03:13:44.760you those are my questions thank you thank you uh next uh council for former chief slowly please
03:13:52.040it seems as though they all know each other and they're all in on some big lie doesn't it with
03:14:05.720the nods and smiles that are happening between the lawyers and the witnesses i don't like that
03:14:10.260Just on the point that was last raised, were you briefed on the outcome of the effort to try to engage protesters in Windsor by Minister Jones or by the OPP and the letter from Minister Jones?
03:14:25.020I recall some information coming to me about that engagement and it being similarly unsuccessful.
03:14:34.620I recall there being a report about a letter being circulated to individuals who were part of the blockade in Windsor
03:14:45.620and that my recollection is that it did not gain any traction with them.
03:14:52.700And so likewise, here in Ottawa, a lot of the concerns around the cohesive structure of the blockade
03:14:59.780And the occupation raised legitimate concerns about whether or not, even if a negotiated settlement had been reached, whether or not it would have been successful in disengaging and clearing the blockade and the occupation.
03:15:14.940The issue about whether a negotiated resolution was possible, was that taken eventually to cabinet and discussed?
03:15:28.180It was discussed at definitely one of the Ergs where, as I said earlier today, my deputy at the time had briefed the members of the Erg on the constitution of the individuals that made up the occupation here in Ottawa and the degree to which they were entrenched and dug in and how we might shake or loosen that through engagement.
03:15:56.480And similarly, did you become aware that the mayor of Ottawa had negotiated successfully for the relocation of some of the vehicles away from residential neighbourhoods and that that was thought to represent a possible breakthrough?
03:16:14.340I do recall there being discussions between Mayor Watson and I think there was an appointed mediator that he had managed to secure, but I also remember being very concerned that the vehicles that were clearing out of neighborhoods were actually coming back downtown into the parliamentary precinct,
03:16:38.120And that that created a surge of vehicles that were, again, entrenching at the seat of the federal government.
03:16:48.720And my concern was that it was actually growing the scale of the occupation here, and that would have made it even potentially more difficult and challenging to clear.
03:17:00.740A couple of things, if I could, just about the resources.
03:17:03.860The information that you received about resources came principally from Commissioner Luckey.
03:17:26.600In trilateral meetings with Mayor Watson and in discussions with some of his officials, I think he articulated a concern that perhaps there was a need to look more carefully at the number of, one, the number of RCMP that were actually deployed, and two, what their taskings were.
03:17:47.340And I know that he sort of underlined that latter part on a couple of occasions, that it wasn't just the numbers, it was what were the RCMP going to be dispatched to do?
03:17:56.640And in fairness, those were questions that we did put to Commissioner Lucky at the time, and I think she did her best to answer them.
03:18:03.400Right, understood. And you relied in making, you made various, I won't take you to them in the time I have, but you made various public statements in response to questions from the media about what you were doing, what the federal government was doing to help the Ottawa Police Service, and in reliance on the information you had from Commissioner Luckey, you made those statements, including naming the numbers of officers, I think at one time 250 or 275, something like that.
03:18:29.060Yeah, the reason why we were trying to get the message out was that there were, I think, increasing questions and concerns from the city that they didn't have enough personnel.
03:18:42.480And I wanted to communicate that on behalf of the federal government, that we were acting quickly and decisively to respond to those concerns by dispatching RCMP personnel.
03:18:51.440And the idea that all you can do in your position, I presume, is rely on those, in this case, the commissioner, to provide you with information to the best of her ability, and then you can rely on that and convey it.
03:19:08.180As it turns out, in this case, you learned that the information that you had and conveyed was not accurate.
03:19:16.620One, when the commissioner is briefing me, I take that information, you know, specifically around operations very much into account as we're making decisions about what additional resources we can offer.
03:19:31.800I was nevertheless interested to know whether or not we needed to do more to coordinate because the mayor and certain officials were saying it wasn't just about numbers, it was about tasking.
03:19:45.640So there was a free-flowing dialogue there. The issue of whether or not to be public about the numbers was also a concern because the commissioner said that she was concerned that if we posted numbers or we published numbers, that that might actually lead to a surge.
03:20:06.980And so we had to try to find a balance.
03:20:09.080Right. And just for the, I'm not going to take it up, but in one of the statements that you made, it's captured at OPS 8365 at page five.
03:20:21.500That's just for the record. I don't need it, Mr. Registrar.
03:20:24.760You described, again, based on information that you had from the commissioner, that the RCMP had added 275 Mounties in the Ottawa deployment.
03:20:32.940And as you pointed out, we learned later, and the commissioner and the deputy commissioner, I think, described it essentially as a mix-up about the numbers, that it wasn't actually that many Mounties.
03:20:44.980It was a way of accounting for them that added up shifts and the like.
03:20:49.780Did you subsequently become aware that that's how the numbers became, as they said, mixed up?
03:20:54.460I was aware that there was an ongoing conversation between the RCMP and the OPS about exactly how many RCMP had been deployed to respond to the occupation and the blockade.
03:21:08.500I will say, you know, ultimately, in the lead up to the invocation, my recollection is we did dispatch about a thousand RCMP officers.
03:21:16.200Yeah, in the end, it was a massive deployment, which gets to the point you've already touched on.
03:21:21.440chief slowly has described this as unprecedented and representing a paradigm shift in in the way
03:21:27.200we think about policing public protest do you agree with that yes and the in terms of the
03:21:32.960circumstances in which every one of you found yourselves in all of the participants and i
03:21:37.660include the convoy organizers who seem seem not also to have appreciated how many people were
03:21:42.900going to going to attend and maybe the nature of their sense of protest this this resulted in great
03:21:49.520frustration at all levels as you've expressed you were you were frustrated about the pace at which
03:21:55.460this was being resolved fair i i was concerned about the fact that for two weeks we could not
03:22:01.360enforce the law and maintain public safety in the capital and at border communities across the
03:22:07.320country yes in your communications in the communications of some of your ministerial
03:22:12.920colleagues um do you agree that in hindsight some of the language that was used even internally
03:22:20.160was unhelpful to the to the cause because it added uh concerns and doubt about the if the
03:22:27.820effectiveness of for example the ottawa police service or the chief in being able to deal with
03:22:32.780the problem that had overwhelmed their service i think with the benefit of reflection um you know
03:22:38.660you always look back and, you know, ask yourself,
03:22:41.920could you have expressed a sentiment with more diplomacy?
03:22:46.000I mean, we've heard earlier today that there were some rather, you know,
03:32:47.920Okay, thank you. Just the second issue I wanted to speak to you about, thank you for that.
03:32:55.420That's what we have right now. The people who are working and who are actually elected to political office are nothing but a bunch of thin-skinned power teams.
03:33:03.800Minister, you are receiving a range of information about the risks and threats from those agencies that were being posed by the Ottawa occupation.
03:34:12.060And were you also hearing information that current members of law enforcement or military might be participating in the protests?
03:34:19.960Well, there were reports about leaks of information during operations and, you know, involved or entailed some what appeared to be snapshots of texts.
03:34:34.100And so I do recall there being some concerns about active members being potentially sympathetic.
03:34:41.300And do you know, are you aware, Minister, are there any investigations of those issues internally within RCMP or any of the other agencies?
03:34:47.660I know that the RCMP certainly wanted to be sure that they were getting to the bottom of any potential security lapses and that those investigations were conducted.
03:41:00.220But Miller is obviously the primary counsel for the Freedom Convoy.
03:41:05.220He is the one who is most prepped and most schooled in everything that's going on.
03:41:09.840So by Rouleau suggesting that Miller cannot be allowed to attend the proceedings this afternoon and possibly longer, he is giving the government a very unfair advantage here.
03:41:23.120Aside from the documents, the redacted documents still not being ruled on, now he's taken the primary counsel for the other side out of the game.
03:41:36.580And in the meantime, Mendocino this morning skates through the testimony quite easily because to me it seemed that the commission council and Mendocino had actually practiced what was going to be said.
03:41:49.900So, and I'm not saying that did happen, what I am saying is that it seemed like it happened.
03:41:56.000So once Miller was ejected, he held a media scrum and here's what he had to say.
03:42:00.200When decisions are not made on procedural issues of this importance, without undue delay, procedural fairness, not just my clients, but everyone's, is violated.
03:42:12.640Canadians are entitled to the truth, and you can't hide behind unlawful redactions in a public inquiry claiming baseless redactions on staff or correspondence because it may hurt you.
03:42:26.560and that in my view is what the government of canada is doing and it needs to stop and had
03:42:34.100we had a timely ruling on these redactions this application made orally today would have been
03:42:42.160entirely unnecessary okay so here what miller is saying there is that if if rulo would have ruled
03:42:49.120in a timely manner he never would have had to have had the outburst he had this morning
03:42:53.840not to say that he did have to do it it was obviously a tactic we know that miller is
03:42:59.960very well schooled in litigation clearly from watching him uh and and the strategies and the
03:43:08.120tactics he's employed in these last four or five weeks we can see that he understands how far he
03:43:13.700can push the limit or the boundaries this morning i think he pushed them probably a little bit too
03:43:19.160far, but that's okay. That's okay, because he believes he made his point. However, it was a
03:43:25.760big risk to take, because now he's not going to be available for the cross-examinations of two
03:43:32.020very important witnesses. I mean, Marco Mendocino, we know that the man is a proven liar, and for
03:43:39.280him to be in the room cross-examining him would be absolutely the best option for our side of
03:43:47.160things. Keith Miller is no slouch, but first of all, he admitted this morning that he's not
03:43:52.640feeling well, which is not great. And secondly, he's not up on all of the stuff that Miller is
03:44:00.160up on. I don't know the situation with Dominique LeBlanc this afternoon. I'm considering not
03:44:06.080live streaming that one because I do have to prepare a show tonight and I'm looking at getting
03:44:11.020a guest on that i will not be able to to research at all if i'm doing the live stream this afternoon
03:44:18.420so if i decide to not do it and i'm not talking about coming back after the break and not covering
03:44:24.720the rest of mendicino i will do that but when it comes to dominic leblanc's testimony i don't know
03:44:30.900how that's going to be credible or at least essential to what uh is going on he's been kind
03:44:36.540of a quiet guy behind the guy behind the guy, a member of government during this whole thing.
03:44:42.160But Mendocino has been out there and in front of things. And that's why I feel it's important
03:44:45.640to make sure we cover him. But if I decide to not do it, and I'm leaning that way,
03:44:51.540you can go to the real Rob Primo. He will be broadcasting or simulcasting all of the events
03:45:00.200of the courtroom today on his youtube channel and on facebook as well so that's the real rob
03:45:06.880primo and primo spelled p-r-i-m-o um one more thing there is a person in the room
03:45:17.400and i'm trying to understand why this is happening there is a person in the room called alexander
03:45:23.500Cohen. And I'm trying to find out if Alexander Cohen is still employed as the Director of
03:45:32.260Communications for the Ministry of Public Safety. Because from what I'm getting here,
03:45:39.980from the people who are there right now, he is in the room, this Alexander Cohen, willing to testify.
03:45:48.320he's willing to testify now if he was still employed by mendicino's office he would think
03:45:57.500that he would not right oh no i'm not i'm not going to testify but he is willing to testify
03:46:04.860as to what the content of the redacted documents actually say and so that motion has been put
03:46:13.960before Justice Rouleau to allow him to testify.
03:46:17.520The motion has also been put to Rouleau to admit,