OTTAWA | The Ottawa Police Service was discussing a military intervention just five days after the first trucks of the “freedom convoy” arrived in the federal capital.
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This is according to notes of meetings of the Ottawa Police Service dated 1er February 2022, filed yesterday in evidence before the Commission of Inquiry into the State of Emergency.
The “freedom convoy” had then been installed in the capital since January 28, that is to say for five days.
Following this meeting, on February 2, the Chief of the Ottawa Police Service, Peter Sloly, declared in a press conference that he feared that there was no “police solution” to the crisis and that “d ‘other solutions’ had to be considered.
The next day, February 3, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau declared that sending the army to the streets of Ottawa was “not in the cards”.
“You have to be very, very careful before you deploy the military to domestic situations. This is not something that should be taken lightly,” he explained, specifying that he had not received a formal request to this effect.
At this point, the federal government was losing faith in the Ottawa police, according to a series of text messages filed in evidence before the Commission on Thursday.
Consequently, the government soon after began to consider the use of Emergency Measures Actaccording to those same text messages.
Former Chief Sloly, who resigned on February 15, the day after the invocation of this law of last resort, testified yesterday before the Commission. He said his police department didn’t want emergency measures because he didn’t think he had the wherewithal to use the powers this law would give him.
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Immaturity
Mr. Sloly testified that the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) had failed due to its own internal problems: “Despite the arrival of resources, the OPS and its structural immaturity could not reach the level of excellence demanded,” he said.
He explained that his own confidence in his deputies had been badly shaken during the first week of the occupation when they replaced the commander of field operations, in the midst of a crisis, without telling him.
Blame the media
Despite this, the ex-police chief blamed the media and misinformation which he said undermined public trust in the Ottawa Police Service.
“It’s really unfortunate because public confidence in policing, I think, is critical to public safety,” he said emotionally.
“It was too cold, it was too much, but they did their best and I have a lot of gratitude towards them, they should be congratulated, they should be understood”, he underlined, in tears, then that he was talking about his teams exhausted and under pressure.
Mr. Sloly indicated that it was ultimately the loss of confidence in him, particularly on the part of elected municipal officials, that prompted him to resign.
Information
Like his ex-colleagues from the Ottawa Police Service, Sloly reiterated that nothing in the intelligence reports he received before the first trucks arrived suggested a protest lasting more than a weekend. . He expected that on Monday there would be only a few tents left.
Yet since the start of the Inquiry hearings, testimonies and documents entered into evidence have shown that the Ottawa Police Service had intelligence reports from the Ontario Provincial Police that warned that protesters wouldn’t leave until they got their case.
But the ex-police chief said only a national intelligence service would have informed his decisions and allowed him to guide his officers.
He asked why he had only received intelligence reports from his team and the OPP and not from the federal services, which could have consolidated information on all the convoys and groups that came from different regions. from all over the country.
In his pre-hearing interview with the Commission over the summer, Mr. Sloly was very critical of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, which he said was too focused on Islamist extremism at the expense of other national security threats.