In retrospect, the police should never have allowed the parking of trucks in anger against sanitary measures in downtown Ottawa, admitted the commissioner of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).
“To prohibit stopping, to block certain places, not to let people park, or to stop, since a demonstration in motion, it is good”, described the commissioner of the RCMP, Brenda Lucki, invited to say what the authorities could have done, in retrospect, to avoid the excesses of the Freedom Convoy this winter.
The big boss of the RCMP appeared Tuesday evening before the parliamentary committee responsible for studying the way in which the government used its powers of exceptions conferred by the Emergency Measures Act. According to her, the authorities learned valuable lessons in the management of such events, which were applied during a return of the convoy by demonstrators on motorcycles, at the end of April.
She previously refused on several occasions to criticize her colleagues at the Ottawa Police Service, calling it a ‘police failure’ the fact that the late January trucker’s protest resulted in a three-week occupation of the capital. federal.
She added that a large number of Freedom Convoy organizers made it difficult to communicate with the police. “Seven or eight” organizers, called “captains”, claimed to speak on behalf of truckers from their region of the country. During an interview with The duty during the long demonstration, the “captain” of Quebec had also assured that the police had never asked him to break camp.
As soon as they arrived at the end of January, the vehicles of the Freedom Convoy were driven by Ottawa police to protest areas, including in front of the federal Parliament. These areas were quickly overrun with parked vehicles, some of them refusing to move until the government abandoned COVID-19 health measures. The event turned into a three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa that grabbed headlines around the world. To dislodge him, Ottawa invoked the Emergency Measures Act on February 14.
Commissioner Lucki failed to convince opposition elected officials and senators that the RCMP did not have the ability to put an end to the protest through due process. She said such an operation would have put the safety of the officers or the police at risk because there was a “considerable number” of demonstrators, and that a complete plan for such an intervention was not given to her. presented before February 12, more than two weeks after the beginning of the occupation. Such a plan was necessary to provide the additional police officers that were requested by the City of Ottawa, she said.
The virtual appearance of RCMP and Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) officials before the parliamentary committee was tense at times on Tuesday evening.
“So ask your boss to come and testify. I might like to have your boss, if you can’t answer,” the Bloc Québécois MNA Rhéal Fortin said, out of patience, to Commissioner Lucki, who seemed to be looking at someone out of the camera’s range in dodging a question.
Other elected officials were impatient when she claimed to be bound by the principle of cabinet secrecy, a rule which usually protects all discussions between ministers.
The Special Joint Crisis Declaration Committee (DEDC) will be receiving witnesses until at least the end of June with the aim of monitoring the application of the emergency measures. At the same time, a public inquiry led by an Ontario judge must examine the circumstances that gave rise to the invocation of this emergency law.