Quebec authorities were on their toes this winter to prevent supporters of the “Freedom Convoy” from also blocking the Lacolle border crossing in Quebec, as well as the Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau airport in Montreal, show documents.
Officers from the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and other federal departments were closely monitoring planned protests related to the “Freedom Convoy” in January and February 2022. For example, they documented the activities of an event on Facebook for which 6 Internet users had registered as “participants”, and 11 as “interested”, in order to express their dissatisfaction at the border between Quebec and New York State.
“CBSA Intelligence has learned that the protest at [poste frontalier] de Lacolle is scheduled for Saturday, February 19. The Sûreté du Québec has planned to set up a command center before the event and a liaison officer from the CBSA will be present,” reads a detailed 463-page report submitted to the Special Joint Committee on the declaration of crisis situation (DEDC).
The document does not specify whether the handful of Internet users actually went there as indicated on social networks.
While major blockades took place at the Canadian border at Coutts, Alberta, Emerson, Manitoba, and Windsor, Ontario, seven other crossings across the country were targeted by online threats related to the “convoy freedom,” documented the CBSA. Customs officials were especially concerned that protests would create “a general distraction” that could be exploited by criminals or migrants to smuggle the border.
The duty obtained the approximately 1,200 pages of documents submitted this summer by the government to the parliamentary committee responsible for monitoring the use of the special powers conferred on it by emergency measures. These files, partly redacted, must be made public this week, at the request of the parliamentarians who are members of the committee.
We can read in particular the report of a foiled attempt to demonstrate at the Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau international airport, in Montreal, on February 10. “At approximately 1:56 p.m. ET, information was received that a convoy of trucks was heading for Trudeau Airport in Montreal,” it says. The airport has put its emergency operations center on alert.
In the end, only three vehicles were intercepted by the Service de police de la Ville de Montréal (SPVM) and the airport security service within half an hour, which closed the incident without disrupting aerial activities.
Complete information
The documents filed show that federal agents tracked various groups of this movement opposed to sanitary measures, even among the least significant, on the Web. And this since even before the arrival of the trucks in the federal capital, on January 28.
However, the police did not take seriously enough the intentions of the main organizers of the “freedom convoy”, posted on social media, to occupy the federal capital in the long term. The former Ottawa police chief said he didn’t have access to enough information to grasp the scale of the heavyweight protest, which lasted a total of three weeks.
Various experts have attributed the longevity of this winter’s protests to the lack of intelligence sharing between levels of government, in particular. RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki admitted the biggest mistake was letting the trucks get in.
A memo from the Canadian Intelligence and Security Service (CSIS) emphasizes that it cannot investigate “lawful activities of advocacy, protest or expression of dissent, only activities that are to the level of a threat to the national security of Canada”.
Its surveillance was therefore limited to the interference of foreign governments or ideological extremists planning acts of violence. CSIS found neither of them present in the “freedom convoy” in Ottawa.
Weapon and Drone Fears
However, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Parliamentary Protective Service (PPS) and other law enforcement agencies did compile information about the protesters from social media. Screenshot in support, the RCMP was particularly concerned about messages suggesting that a drone and a helicopter would be used to fly over the convoy.
Federal police restricted airspace over downtown Ottawa and Gatineau, starting Jan. 29, then in the skies of other protests, such as in Milk River, Alta., at Queen’s Park , in Toronto, and finally in Quebec, on February 8.
In its daily report on the situation in Ottawa intended for a deputy minister’s committee, the RCMP noted on February 14 that “intelligence gathered also suggests that the demonstrators in the convoy are beginning to arm themselves”. That same evening, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to end the occupation of the capital.
At the time of the major police operation to put down the ‘freedom convoy’, new Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell said multiple investigations were underway to determine if protesters had firearms . He has since refused to say whether the police actually found any in the trucks.