(OTTAWA) The chief of the Ontario Provincial Police had to defend Thursday before the Rouleau commission the remarks he made in March about the “freedom convoy”, which he said constituted a threat to security National of Canada.
Posted at 4:51 p.m.
Thomas Carrique told federal MPs last March that about a week after the arrival of heavy trucks in the federal capital, his intelligence service had identified these demonstrations in Ottawa as a “threat to national security”.
But the OPP’s director of intelligence contradicted his chief this week before the public inquiry into the federal government’s use of Emergency Measures Act. Superintendent Pat Morris instead asserted that there had never been any credible information raising fears of a direct threat to Canada’s national security.
Commissioner Carrique agreed on Thursday that there were no credible threats to national security, but he explained that the word “threats” had been used to indicate that something could potentially happen, and that the situation required a more in-depth analysis.
He also pointed out that OPP intelligence chief Superintendent Pat Morris was, after all, the leading expert in Ontario on this issue.
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service has expressed concern about the OPP’s apprehensions regarding this “threat to national security”. But Commissioner Carrique explained Thursday that a police chief must examine any possible threat very seriously.