State of Emergency Commission | Downtown residents left to fend for themselves

(OTTAWA) Two Ottawa city councilors say they unsuccessfully relayed hundreds of citizen complaints to authorities during the ‘freedom convoy’ during the second day of the Commission’s hearing on the state of emergency . Their testimony was added to that of two citizens and representatives of local businesses who described the anarchy that reigned in their neighborhoods during these three weeks.

Mylene Crete
The Press

“Trucks should never have been allowed to enter the town,” said Somerset Ward Councilor Catherine McKenney⁠^⁠1. Former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly erred in linking the right to protest guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms to that of allowing the entry of a large number of heavy goods vehicles into the city center of the federal capital.

“To this day, I still have not obtained a legal document from the Ottawa Police Services Board or the Ottawa Police Service explaining this decision,” Rideau-Vanier Councilor Mathieu Fleury said. cross-examination with Mr. Sloly’s attorney.

“When truckers can’t get to Queen’s Park or the National Assembly, then you know our police chief’s perception of the Charter was a bit nuanced,” he later added.

He went so far as to describe the trucks as “weapons” used to intimidate the population by making noise, with their carbon dioxide fumes and by blocking access to businesses. He spoke of “microaggressions” that happened every day.

“Arriving in front of someone, then removing their mask, for me it is an example of microaggression”, he replied in French to the unilingual English lawyer from Freedom Corp, the organization which brings together the participants of the “ freedom convoy”, during a tense exchange.

“It was anarchy”

Earlier in the day, two residents of downtown Ottawa described how the many trucks on the streets had disrupted their daily lives. They described the lawlessness in their neighborhood and the lack of response from police and bylaw enforcement officers.

“Wearing a mask made you a target,” said Zexi Li, a young federal civil servant who became the figurehead of exasperated citizens by winning an injunction to stop the honking. She compared the atmosphere in her neighborhood during the three weeks of the truck convoy to the American horror movie The Purge.

She also described how exasperated residents of her apartment building began throwing eggs at protesters below. “The police came to ask questions,” she said. Officers had received a complaint and were investigating the incident as they let protesters blockade downtown, make campfires near gas cans in the middle of the street, use fireworks, urinate and defecate on public roads.

“We felt really abandoned at that time,” she said.

“I still jump when I hear a loud horn and when I smell gasoline,” said Victoria De La Ronde, a retired civil servant who lost part of her hearing to the noise that could sometimes reach a hundred decibels.

Nathalie Carrier, director of the Vanier Neighborhood Business Improvement Area, where another camp had been set up by protesters, emotionally described the comments made by then Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly, during a meeting with traders.

When she left the room, she had difficulty explaining how the size of the convoy had escaped the authorities. “Anyone who read social media and knew there was a 70km train [de long] who was coming in our direction was right to believe that it could be a lot more than 30 trucks, ”she said in a press scrum.

The Rideau Centre, the city’s largest shopping center with 300 businesses and nearly 3,000 employees, had to be closed on the first Saturday of the truck convoy, unable to handle the influx of protesters inside. This closure cost 2 million a day, she recalled.

When he asked why the municipal by-laws were no longer enforced, Councilor Mathieu Fleury was told by officials that everything “was under the command of the police” and that they needed his green light to go in the event area. However, the police had concentrated their forces near Parliament Hill, explained Councilor Catherine McKenney.

The Emergency Measures Act was first seen as a solution to the crisis at a city council meeting on February 7, about a week after the protest began. A motion to ask the federal government to use it was defeated 12 to 12.

The State of Emergency Commission must determine whether the government was right to use this law for the first time in its history to end the “freedom convoy” in Ottawa and the blockades of border crossings elsewhere in the country . Its work will continue on Monday.

1. Catherine McKenney identifies as transgender and non-binary. She uses pronouns they and them in English, which are neither masculine nor feminine. In French, the equivalents could be iel and iels.