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Nov. 15, 2022 - Viva & Barnes

11:20:38

Emergencies Act Inquiry - November 15, 2022 - Live with Chat

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	Bye.
	Order a lot.
	Order.
	The Public Order Emergency Commission is now in session.
	Good morning.
	Bonjour.
	Cool.
	I understand we have a new panel of witnesses for this morning.
	Okay, and who from Commission Council?
	Good morning, Commissioner.
	This morning we have the first of two RCMP panels, Commissioner Lucky and Deputy Commissioner Duem, and I would ask if they could...
	Come to the panel and while they are getting themselves seated, I'll just make a preliminary comment to the parties that...
	Could you just identify yourself for the record please?
	Gordon Cameron, Commission Council.
	Commissioner, yesterday at the close of the proceeding, a matter was raised by Mr. Miller about the...
	State of documents on the party database and in light of those comments Commission Council investigated the matter last night and most of the parties will have received and had a chance to review Commission Council's email to them explaining what we've been able to learn about that situation and so I won't elaborate on that except to say that two things we did recognize that there had been a glitch With respect to
	the uploading of documents and that was corrected over the weekend.
	It was unfortunate, but the matter is in hand and the party database is in good form.
	The other thing we'd like to assure parties, Mr. Commissioner, is that Commission Council did have access to all of the documents and indeed parties will notice that the documents, including those that just went up.
	On the party database over the weekend, some of which are included in our list of documents for the examination of this panel.
	And so we're prepared to proceed, confident that we have had a thorough review of the documents in advance of this panel appearing.
	Okay, thank you for that update.
	It's appreciated.
	And again, I'd simply reiterate, if there are issues, please raise them with Commission Council as soon as they're noted so that we can...
	Address them and resolve them if there's something to be done.
	So with that, we'll proceed with the panel.
	The panel will be sworn.
	Deputy Commissioner Duhem, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
	I swear.
	I can swear on a religious document.
	We have available the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah.
	For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
	For the record, please state your full name and support your full name and support your full name and support your full name and support your full name.
	Thank you.
	...that four of the people who were in that interview aren't here today, so I'll just ask you to confirm that the interview summary is accurate to the best of your knowledge.
	So the way I'll put it is this: that you have reviewed, each of you two have reviewed the summary, and confirm that insofar as it contains your information, you believe it to be true and accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief.
	And that insofar as it contains the information of your colleagues, you understand it to have been reviewed by them for accuracy and confirmed as accurate.
	Is that true?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Now, Deputy Commissioner Duane, we got another chance to talk to you later on, on October 11th, and there is a separate interview summary of that interview.
	For the record, that is WTS.
	And have you reviewed that summary and confirmed that it's accurate?
	Yes, I have, and it's accurate.
	And do you adopt it as part of your evidence?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Now, there is a third summary, and this is the summary of the interview of Ms. Ducharme and Ms. Vinette.
	And for the record, that is WTS 6067.
	And since they're in your division, Deputy Commissioner Durama will ask you to confirm that that summary has been reviewed by Ms. Ducharme and Ms. Vinette for accuracy and that it has been filed with the Commission as part of the RCMP's evidence?
	My understanding is it has been reviewed by the two individuals.
	And it's adopted as part of the RCMP's evidence?
	Correct.
	Thank you.
	Now, finally, The RCMP filed an institutional report that has been on the party database for some time as DOJ.IR.6011.
	And I'm going to ask you to tell us what you can about a recent clarification to the status of that institutional report so that we can make sure the proper version gets adopted as your evidence.
	Can you help us with that?
	Yeah, I can.
	I don't have the exact page because I was given a copy this morning from Council, from DOJ, but it does refer to police agencies and jurisdiction.
	And my understanding is that Council, Commission Council, had requested this information and we did, when we went through the validation process, is what was written in there is a standing operating procedure that was not enforced at that unit at the time.
	So we just wanted to clarify that.
	And so, the institutional report that is about to be, or perhaps already is updated, in any event, will soon be updated to the party database, will have that correction made in it?
	I'm assuming so, yeah.
	Yes.
	And so, if I can put it this way, can you prospectively adopt that corrected institutional report as the evidence of the RCMP?
	Based on the copy I was given, yes.
	Yes, thank you.
	And Mr. Commissioner, for the benefit of parties who may be concerned about a last-minute correction, I can confirm, and I think Deputy Commissioner will ask you to confirm, this is a relatively minor correction to the currency of a version of a document cited in the IR that has in fact been updated and that updated version will be reflected in the as-filed version, correct?
	That's correct.
	Thank you.
	With that administrivia out of the way, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, I'll ask you some overview questions just to get you to introduce yourselves to the Commissioner and to the parties.
	And so I'll begin by asking you, Commissioner Lucky, to just describe your role within the RCMP and just...
	So that you don't need to tell us the whole of that.
	Perhaps you could concentrate in particular on your role as it pertained to the convoy and protest events that are the subject to this inquiry.
	Thank you.
	Generally my role as Commissioner is to oversee the operations and administration of the RCMP.
	In relation to the convoys, obviously we had convoys across the country, so I was getting operational updates in our...
	In our jurisdiction, when it came to the specific convoy or the protests in Ottawa, there was a few roles I had.
	One was I was liaising with Chief Slowly on a couple of occasions, relaying resource asks that we received.
	If I was in receipt of those resource asks, I would...
	Pass that down through our command structure.
	It was also one of the major responsibilities was to get the information from across the country and to brief the deputy minister community, the ministers.
	There were four ministers that I would brief, and then halfway through, the prime minister called.
	Incident Response Group where I would brief situational reports from across the country of anything that was happening related to the convoy.
	Generally speaking, I had to make sure that in our police of jurisdiction that our divisions had the resources, ensuring that they had the resources, the equipment that they needed to deal with those incidents.
	And with respect to your observation that you were briefing ministers, would that have included Minister Mendicino and Blair and also presumably the National Security Intelligence Advisor?
	Yes, and I believe it also included Minister El Gabro, the Minister of Transport, as well as the Minister of Government Affairs, Minister LeBlanc.
	And you also participated in regular briefings with PCO, PMO, and Justice Intergovernmental Affairs briefings where those departments would have been represented?
	Mostly at the Deputy Minister level, we would have discussions.
	I am not sure who all was there, but it was mostly at the Deputy Minister level.
	The representation of the same ministers, the DMs of the same ministers I mentioned before.
	And in particular, you participated to that point, Commissioner Luck, you participated in the Deputy Minister's Committee on Operational Conditions, the DMOC?
	Yes.
	We normally have those meetings and we sort of morphed it into convoy briefings as well.
	And judging from the minutes of the meetings of the SSE and the IRG, you were in attendance at those meetings as well?
	Yes, I was.
	And you mentioned that you liaised with then-chief slowly and presumably later on.
	With Deputy Chief Bell, were you also in regular contact with the Commissioner of the OPP, Mr. Kreek?
	Yes, I was.
	Thanks.
	Deputy Commissioner Duem, could you describe your role in the RCMP generally and as it had particular application to the convoy and similar events?
	Yep, I'm responsible for federal policing.
	The federal policing program within the RSMP has about 5,000 people assigned to the program.
	Our mandate is to investigate national security, such as foreign actor interference, terrorism, ideologically motivated violent extremists.
	We also investigate transnational serious and organized crime.
	We are also responsible at the border between the ports of entry.
	And we also have a protective policing mandate, which ensures protection to certain incoming dignitaries, so the Prime Minister, Chief Justice, the Governor-General, and others that are appointed by the Minister.
	And we also have our intelligence in international policing that reports into federal policing.
	So my role on the convoy from the onset, really, we were looking at it through a lens of protective policing.
	That was our core mandate when it all started.
	As the resources started and as this grew, the Commissioner appointed me to be the point person for the organization to coordinate the assistance that we're providing to OPS throughout.
	I was part of the goal command structure when it was formed.
	My responsibility throughout from the beginning was to ensure that the Commissioner had the right information to brief up at the various briefings at the DM level, at the ministerial level, at the ERGs.
	And the coordination of resources from across the country that needed to be brought in, I had a team looking after that.
	So really the assistance to the OPS and support of resources, regardless of the skill set, was under my responsibility.
	Thank you.
	We're going to come back in a few minutes to the federal policing responsibility of the RCMP.
	But you mentioned an expression in there that might come up.
	Later in our discussion, it has been mentioned before in various contexts.
	I think you might have called it the gold command structure, but I think the expression is the gold, silver, bronze command structure.
	Could you just describe how that works for the RCMP and how in some of the contexts it came to bear on the management of the convoy?
	The gold, silver, bronze structure, and it's well explained in the report, but basically the gold structure is really providing a strategic direction to manage the operation.
	The bronze is really the people who would look at planning the event, and then when you get to silver is actually the people who are actioning the plan that's being done.
	Reverse gold, silver, bronze.
	Gold, silver, sorry, yeah.
	Silver are actually...
	Preparing the strategy that was dictated by the gold command.
	And as it trickles down to the bronze, bronze are really the boots on the ground, the SMEs that actually action the plan.
	Okay.
	And that command structure, as I understand it, there wasn't just one applicable to all of the RCMP.
	That might be implemented in particular jurisdictions or indeed to deal with particular situations or incidents.
	Am I right there?
	That's correct.
	For example, for Coutts or for a province, have a gold, silver, bronze structure implemented to deal with events in those locations?
	Correct.
	The one in Ottawa was specific to dealing with the one in Ottawa.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Now, coming to the RCMP federal policing mandate, this is the first, just to help you answer the question in context, the first of a series of questions I have to try to describe what the RCMP does with all of those 5,000 personnel in Ottawa compared to what it does with the personnel it has.
	In the provinces where it is police of jurisdiction under contract to the provincial governments.
	So with that overall picture in mind, federal policing in Ottawa, you mentioned some of the areas it covers, but with respect to the convoy, your particular concentration was on the RCMP's protective policing mandate.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	And I just want to correct this.
	When I mentioned 5,000 people, it's not 5,000 in Ottawa.
	5,000 federal police employees across the country and posted internationally as well.
	But not just uniquely in Ottawa.
	I see.
	I'll come back to a distinction there, but how many are in Ottawa, roughly speaking?
	National divisions composed about 700 people.
	And then when you add the component national headquarters.
	Probably around, I'm throwing a guess here, 1,200.
	That'll do for these purposes.
	Now, could you expand a bit on the RCMP's protective mandate, as it's sometimes called, the protective services that the RCMP offers in the City of Ottawa or the National Capital Region?
	Yeah, the protective mandate for the RCMP derives from the RCMP regulations.
	We are mandated to protect on a threat risk assessment base the Prime Minister, the Governor-General, the Chief of the Supreme Court, visiting dignitaries, presidents from other countries that would fall under our responsibility, or any other appointed official by the Minister of Public Safety.
	We also have, within that protective, we also have an intel unit that feeds in to better prepare our posture and respond to any incidents.
	Here in Ottawa, we are looking at about 400 people that are assigned full-time.
	And when I say 400, it's all categories of employees assigned to protective policing.
	If you can describe it, we might come to some particulars as it relates to specific incidents, but generally speaking, what was the impact of the arrival in Ottawa of the convoy?
	What was the impact of that on the protective mandate of the RCMP?
	Well, one of the things, and I forgot to mention the people that were protected is also elected officials.
	That fall under responsibility.
	So it was bringing a coordination and ensuring the secure transport of the elected official to Parliament on the Monday, the Monday 31st, I believe.
	To it, coordinating routes to get into the area.
	There was also concerns with demos that would creep up at Rideau Hall or at the Prime Minister's residence, which required us to mobilize additional resources to make sure that we had the right posture to address any incidents that would occur during the arrival of the convoy while they were there.
	Okay, well, that's a helpful example.
	So if you expected to encounter protest activity, As part of escorting and ensuring the safety of the Prime Minister or one of the other people for whom you're responsible, and you encounter this protest activity,
	if I can put it this way, in the way of the path that you expected to take, your protective policing mandate, would that include dealing with those protesters on a public order management basis?
	Or would it deal with Getting your protectees where they need to go safely.
	In this instance, our POUs were not dispatched to clear the roads or to assist in any ways.
	We were working with the Ottawa Police Service to ensure what were the egress and ingress with regards to Parliament Hill.
	Obviously, with the dynamic and the fluidity of what was going on downtown, a lot of the routes could not be guaranteed, so that's something that we had to factor in.
	And I had to shift our plans as we went forward.
	Okay.
	Again, at the risk of belabouring the point, I just want to make sure I understand correctly.
	The impact on your protective policing mandate wasn't that you had a public order mission to clear the routes.
	It was just that your mandate was more complicated because you had to coordinate with the OPS and make sure your routes were safe.
	Coronate, but also with the elevated intelligence that we had, the increased resources that were required to ensure the protection on the different sites that we are responsible for.
	Thank you.
	Now, another part of your police work, I'll put it this way because I'm not sure how it would fall into these mandates.
	Certainly, your federal mandate was to...
	To collect intelligence as the convoy was approaching.
	Now, we're not going to spend a lot of time on that, and Commissioner, this is the point where I would footnote, so to speak, the witness summary that I referenced at the very beginning, because Commission Council did do an interview and filed the interview summary of Ms. Ducharme and Ms. Vignette.
	Specifically on this point of the RCE in relation to the convoy.
	So we'll just ask this panel a few questions about this.
	You did have an intelligence team analyzing the information available as the convoy was approaching, correct?
	Yes, we did.
	Can you just give a quick overview of who those people were?
	Yeah, there's several structures in place when it came to intel within the organization.
	So we had an ideologically motivated criminal intelligence team that were looking at it more from a national scope as to what was going on and providing strategic threat advisory bulletins.
	I think there's eight in total that went out throughout the legal protests.
	And we also had our protective intelligence unit that was really gathering intelligence to help us with our protective posture, but it doesn't neglect the fact that the information gathered under the PIU unit would be shared with other agencies.
	And eventually, early on, I think it was on the 28th or the 29th, we did create what is known as a combined intelligence group that would bring together People from different law enforcement organizations within the Ottawa area, such as you'd have OPS, OPP, that would be present and that's meant to bring the hub together so that everybody can share the information that they have.
	Because it's not just the RCMP working on a block of information.
	Every organization is working on the information and it's coordinated through that combined intelligence group.
	As this grew and there's more and more increased resources being brought in, we stood up at the national headquarters.
	We stood up another combined group really to coordinate the intel from a national perspective so that we could prepare the commissioner with a picture of what's going on across the country.
	I'll factor that in too.
	You've heard the Hendon report several times.
	That was a report from the OPP that was also used to help the SIG, the Combined Intelligence Group, in the analysis of all the intel that's coming in.
	So there's several players involved when you look at a Combined Intelligence unit or group.
	And where was the Combined Intelligence Group working?
	I believe it's out of the NCRCC National Capital Region Command Centre that is located in Orleans.
	Thank you.
	Now, Commissioner Lucky, this is probably something that's best directed to you because what I'd like to do now is ask you to describe quite a...
	Different role that the RCMP performs in the provinces other than Ontario Quebec and perhaps Newfoundland, but the role of police of jurisdiction in the provinces and some of the municipalities of those provinces.
	Can you give us an overview of that?
	Yeah, this falls under our contract in Indigenous policing business line, and it is the policing that we do in...
	All provinces and territories except Ontario and Quebec.
	It represents about 70% of our workforce, and there are contracts with provinces, municipalities, and some Indigenous communities.
	The contracts are held by Public Safety Canada, and we provide the policing service under those contracts in those provinces.
	We don't do policing in the entire province.
	Why I say that is usually in big municipalities, for example, in Alberta, you have your Calgary Municipal Police, you have your Edmonton Municipal Police, and then generally speaking, the RCMP, there's a few smaller ones like Lethbridge, but generally speaking, we police the rest of the province, except for some of the bigger municipalities who have their own independent police agency.
	Let me ask if you can draw a comparison for those of us who are more familiar with the policing situation in Ontario and Quebec, where we have a provincial police force, which is sometimes also the municipal police force, but sometimes the cities have their own police forces.
	Do I understand correctly that in the provinces other than Ontario and Quebec, that would be the RCMP, you would be the provincial police force?
	And in some cases, the police force of the municipalities that don't have their own police force.
	Yes, very similar to what the OPP or Certe de Québec are.
	Right.
	So, functionally speaking, again, this sounds Ontario and Quebec-centric, but the RCMP is the OPP or the Certe de Québec in all of the provinces except Ontario and Quebec.
	Yes.
	And that is arranged by a contract.
	With each of the provinces, correct?
	No, not necessarily.
	We have 194 contracts, 169 contracts.
	Some in the case of BC, for example, the province has the contract and they sort of subcontract.
	But in places like Alberta, they have a provincial contract and then they have municipal contracts.
	Any municipality over a certain population will go into a municipal contract and it changes the funding formula.
	as well as there are certain indigenous communities where there's a different funding formula.
	When you two have left the stand, we're going to have Deputy Commissioner Zablocki here to describe the situation in Alberta in particular.
	But before he gets up to describe that situation, perhaps, Commissioner Lucky, you could describe the way in which the contracts you have with the provinces, either a single contract or multiple, as you just described, allow you to...
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	Thank you.
	...of security of the different units that were there.
	What we saw after a year and a half being there, it was decided to put a plan forward that, realizing that the job that's being performed on Parliament Hill was not a policing function, but more a security function.
	There's a transition that was done with PPS, with the accord of both speakers.
	To reduce the footprint of the RCMP.
	Currently, legislatively, the only position that requires an RCMP member is a position of director.
	So when you talk about shift in resources and footprint, there's a significant one that happened recently.
	Protective policing, when it came to our clients, happened before that.
	So if I may, when you look at the dynamics prior to this change...
	The RCMP, when it was responsible for the Hill, looked after all the planning of the different events that took place on the Hill.
	This is prior to the creation of PPS.
	And we would work jointly with Ottawa Police Service.
	Being a demo that's going through the streets of Ottawa and would land on Parliament Hill, then it becomes, it's shifted over from OPS to us, and we work jointly on that in regards with the plans, the preparation to respond to any of the demos that are going on the Hill.
	When PPS came into effect, I was the first director.
	And what we were looking at is the PPS becomes distinct and basically not separate from the RCMP because the RCMP still had a role to play, but must be distinct.
	So the planning was now done from PPS since 2015.
	Every event that was on the Hill was being done from PPS and not necessarily RCMP.
	We assisted at the beginning.
	But now they're completely autonomous when they're planning for events on the Hill.
	And in your witness summary, some of the questions the Commission Council asked had you explaining that this perception that the RCMP and the OPS should be working jointly to manage large events in Ottawa.
	Hasn't entirely dissipated from the minds of the people at Ottawa and the OPS.
	Can you just give us a description of that situation as you see it now?
	So we still work jointly with the OPS.
	I can give you an example of any event that would occur on Parliament Hill.
	PPS would have the lead for planning the event on the Hill, but you would also have OPS would be responsible for whatever's in the street.
	And we'd be involved from a protective lens as to what's going on.
	Will there be any road closures?
	What's the impact on our mandate?
	But it'd still be a lead role from DPS, but organizations will come together.
	And would that also be true for other events, perhaps elsewhere in Ottawa, where your protective policing mandate would be affected?
	We talked about how in a convoy, you needed to move people around the city, elected officials.
	But would that also be true if there were some other event independent of the convoy today, that your protective services people would liaise with the Ottawa City Police?
	Definitely.
	Any significant event in Ottawa.
	I mentioned earlier the National Capital Region Command Centre.
	That's a coordination hub where we have various partners at the table to understand the dynamics that are going on on a daily basis, so even hourly.
	And then sometimes it allows us, it allows emergency personnel, such as fire departments, paramedics, to adjust their response according to the intelligence that comes into this hub.
	But on a day-to-day basis, yes, there's liaison going on with OPS, with the auto police service, but it's more, there's liaison going on, but less of a reliance to rely on OPS on a daily basis.
	But it's only when events are in the area, that's when we come together and CRCC and make sure that everybody's informed so that we can properly plan, everyone can properly plan.
	Okay, now, moving to the period immediately prior to the convoy.
	What did you expect?
	And I'm saying you, Deputy Commissioner Durham, but perhaps, Commissioner Lucky, you also had a view on this.
	But what did you expect this event to be?
	Well, as I mentioned earlier, I was looking at it purely from the lens of our mandate when it comes to protective policing.
	How is this going to impact the people that were mandated to protect?
	Does PPS need any assistance as this moves forward?
	So it's really through a lens of not a demo, but really how is it going to impact us on our service delivery when it comes to protective.
	Early discussions I had with OPS on the matter.
	There seems to be no concerns whatsoever.
	Good relationships with the organizers.
	And there's no need for us to question the relationship they had with them.
	And we felt comfortable.
	I felt comfortable that the Ottawa Police Service had things well in hand, negotiating with the organizers and having a discussion on how this would unfold in downtown Ottawa.
	uh If I just cast back to the point about intelligence that was being collected by your IMSSIT and other people in conjunction with the convoy, your forces in Ottawa,
	including the intelligence people, would have been aware of the Project Hendon and similar intelligence that was being shared among intelligence agencies with respect to the size and scope and possible intentions Yes.
	Yep.
	Yes.
	And despite your having had access to all that intelligence, you still viewed this as a...
	An event that the Ottawa Police appeared to have under control and didn't cause you any particular concern other than the extra attention you would have to pay to your protective mandate?
	That's correct.
	And there was no additional ask for resources as they were planning when the convoy was going to arrive in Ottawa.
	So I was of the feeling that they had everything under control.
	And as I said...
	If there's no request for resources, I know in situations like this that the organization on the Intel side come together to share that information, but I didn't have any concerns because I was of the opinion that they had everything in hand.
	Thank you.
	clap
	There is a fair bit of material that's come before the Commission already, and a lot of it is set out in your institutional report and your...
	The summary of your interviews, so I won't rehash at all, but I do want to spend some time on the question of the requests by the OPS for assistance and resources to be provided by the RCMP.
	I'll begin by just asking you to describe, this is probably for you, Commissioner Luckey, the logistical challenges and perhaps administrative challenges that the RCMP faces.
	Well, I suppose some of these apply even when you're moving within provinces that you have contracts with.
	But in all events, the logistical challenges that you had when attempting to mobilize resources to assist in Ottawa or otherwise in Ontario?
	Well, first and foremost, in the requests, they weren't requests for plainclothes officers, which is what...
	We primarily do within Quebec and Ontario.
	Obviously, they're police officers, so they have uniforms.
	They don't work in those uniforms each and every day, so when we make requests for the federal resources in a uniform capacity, that's changing their primary role.
	Within the two provinces, it's a lot easier than outside of the provinces, only because we have control of the federal resources, but also because they can drive into Ottawa.
	They don't come in a big chunk.
	So when we need additional resources, we fan that out from Deputy Commissioner Duhem Schaap to the commanding officer of Ontario and Quebec requesting additional resources.
	And then they do what they need to do to get those resources.
	And they will come individually or, you know, driving, however they...
	When we're doing the same thing nationally, of course, we have to request under the PPSA the Article 9. And then we get into way more logistics in the sense of flying them out.
	Are there going to be vehicles available?
	What kind of shifting are they going to do?
	What types of resources do you need?
	Because especially in the contract...
	In the policing environment, we have a multitude of different types of resources within the uniform capacity.
	So we need to know what kind of resources and how long they'll be gone because when we take resources out of the contract side of the house, they have to be backfilled somewhere else because policing goes on.
	So we have to make sure that all of those logistics are done at that level.
	Can I add to that?
	An important factor that we have to remember is that requesting resources, be it from Quebec or Ontario, the RCMP still has a mandate to fulfill in those provinces.
	And mobilizing resources, you have to find the resources.
	We have ongoing investigations that we cannot stop.
	So it's finding that right balance of how many resources can we release to make sure we keep the lights on.
	To ensure that we are still on mandate and what we're doing in the respective provinces.
	So it's not just, it's easy to say we need 50 additional people, but then we have to look at who's releasable in those divisions based on the functions of the responsibilities that they have right now.
	Thanks.
	There is a lot on the record and about how many resources were available when.
	Can either of you give us the...
	Basic facts of how many RCMP resources were available from the beginning to the end of this and approximately when they were made available.
	I'm going to leave it to other parties to drill down on that, but just if we can have a big picture of what resources the RCMP committed to the events in Ottawa.
	In a general sense, any requests that we got from Ottawa Police Service, we had fulfilled.
	And in the beginning, it was between 30 and 50, for example.
	And that was the first weekend.
	And as the time went by, the resources started to increase.
	So we had not only increase of frontline resources, but increasing at the NCRCC when we...
	Got into a unified command.
	There was people behind the scenes.
	Those numbers were increasing.
	And at one point, I think we got up to, what was it?
	The total number at the end, and the total number is we had in excess of 1,100 people.
	1,100 people, employees dedicated to either the Ottawa Police Service assistance.
	For our protective mandate.
	And I can break it down even more in the sense that little over 650 police officers to assist the Ottawa Police Service and close to 210 to assist us in our protective mandate.
	So that's a significant lift.
	I know there's been a lot of numbers circling around from 30. Why didn't we respond to 50?
	There's also that 250 that was raised.
	The 250, I just want to clarify that.
	It wasn't 250.
	Dedicated to OPS, Ottawa Police Service.
	It was actually a mix-up.
	We tallied up everybody that was sworn in, and some of the people that were sworn in was actually in support of the protective mandate, not necessarily supporting OPS, but still available if they were required.
	If you could slow down in your testimony as much as possible for the translators, because you tend to speed up.
	I know you want to get out of here and get back to work, but...
	I will add as well, we had also provided resources to Windsor, so we diverted some resources for the Windsor blockade.
	Thanks.
	We're going to come back to Windsor, though if I don't offer you the chance to say more about that, please volunteer at an appropriate point.
	But with respect to what you said, I sense...
	There's a bit of a glossing over from the initial 50 to the ultimate 650.
	We all know that there ended up being a very substantial commitment by the RCMP and the OPP towards the very end when enforcement action was imminent.
	But can you tell me, roughly speaking, what the curve looked like in the first sort of 14 or 15 days before The implementation of the enforcement plan started to become imminent.
	I would say generally it started at around 30 and then it continued up in the 200s.
	It got up to about 200.
	Throughout that timeline.
	And then, of course, when we were gearing up towards the actual enforcement in that last week, the numbers grew exponentially.
	And that's when we went outside of the, up till then, the resources were drawn from Ontario and Quebec primarily.
	and it was in those last week where we were drawing resources from across Canada.
	That's exactly the information I was looking for.
	Thank you.
	On that point, there was a fair bit of controversy both between RCMP and the City of Ottawa and the OPS about just how many RCMP officers were available.
	You've acknowledged some confusion about whether they were available as boots on the ground to be deployed by the OPS versus people you were bringing in to assist in your protective mandate.
	But can you explain why there was that difficulty of communication between the RCMP and Ottawa or the OPS about just...
	What resources you were allocating to deal with the situation in Ottawa?
	Well, I'll start and then I'll pass it over to Deputy Commissioner Duham.
	But part of the confusion came out of the fact that we were swearing in a bunch of officers that may in fact be used but weren't being used that were in the vicinity.
	So we made sure, like Deputy Commissioner Duham said, we swore in some of the people under protective in case they were brought over to assist in OPA.
	OPS.
	So their numbers, even they were swearing in certain numbers, those numbers might have not all been deployed at that time of the swearing in.
	Also, the fact that there was requests and some of it was, there was confusions over, is it so many per shift or is it a total number?
	But from the tactical or from the, you know, the bronze level of our command that we were talking about, we were advised that any of the requests that they had for...
	When I talk about frontline resources, we fulfilled those requests.
	And I think there was a confusion between what the mayor may have been reporting and what the chief may have been reporting, but we were advised at the tactical level that any time they needed resources, because that's where they get into what kind of resource, where are they going to be placed, what shift are they going to be working, that was all done at their level.
	We didn't.
	We didn't get the intimate details of that, but we were advised that any of the requests that they were getting through the command center, that they were fulfilling.
	No, that's accurate.
	Okay, thank you.
	Mr. Clerk, perhaps I could ask you to pull up on the screen: SSM.CAN.408433.
	And if I've got the number right, that should be the letter of February 7th.
	From Councillor Deans and Mayor Watson to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Public Safety.
	And you're familiar with this letter, Commissioner Luckey?
	Or perhaps not the letter, but the substance?
	Substance, yes.
	Okay.
	And I ask this in particular reference to your comment that all of the requests by the Ottawa...
	The city or the OPS had been responded to positively by the RCMP.
	And yet, one might say, we have this letter, I would say, going from about as official as Ottawa can get to about as official as the city of Ottawa can get to as official as the federal government can get, in which there is a very specific request.
	For certain categories of police officers, a total of 1,800.
	And Mr. Clerk, yes, if you just...
	That's right.
	Thank you, right there.
	And yet, this is February 7th, and that's why I asked you the timescale.
	You acknowledged to me that the substantial 600-odd figure of RCMP...
	Boots on the ground, so to speak, did not get to Ottawa until much after this.
	And yet, at this same time, you were assuring Parliament that all of the requests by the OPS had been met.
	And so the question for you is, how do you reconcile your statements with this letter?
	What was the date of the letter?
	The letter is February 7th.
	At that point, when there was a request for 1,800 resources...
	And obviously, I was in consultation with the OPP commissioner, and it tells what kind of officers, but it wasn't, is it 1800 RCMP?
	Is it, you know, because there was still the OPP who were responsible for...
	Securing resources from all the various municipalities.
	We were under the impression that it was 1,800 between all of us.
	And what did that mean?
	Who was going to provide what resource?
	And when we get into these high numbers, that's when we have to ask, okay, what is the plan?
	Where's your plan?
	How are you going to rotate these resources?
	What kind of resources specifically?
	And it sort of talks about that.
	But 100 civilian staff, what does that mean?
	There's all kinds of duties under civilian staff.
	The public order officers, 600, we don't have, you know.
	To have 600 public order officers, the OPP was actually responsible for the prioritizing of public order officers within the province of Ontario during that time.
	Did that mean they were going to provide the public order?
	We were going to provide frontline?
	Until we saw what the plan was, because the minute we draw outside of Ontario and Quebec, we have responsibilities to our contracts.
	We have to know when we draw them out, how long are they going to be gone?
	When are they going to be replaced?
	How are they going to get there?
	What are the logistics?
	Is there equipment that they can't bring with them that they need when they land, like certain vehicles?
	Or command centres in the case of public order.
	If they are going to drive their command post, then they need lead time.
	So there's lots of things to consider.
	A general request like this, it sort of in a way caught us off guard because we didn't have those discussions with Chief Slowly up to that time.
	There was talk about increasing the resources for enforcement, but we didn't get into any specifics until this letter came out.
	Yes.
	The paragraph that begins, "We ask the Government of Canada and the Province of Ontario to work with us to secure this combined officer surge." Is that what you mean when you didn't know which of which force we're being asked for?
	Yes, because even though it was to the federal minister who oversees the RCMP as part of his portfolio, we didn't assume that we were being asked for $1,800.
	So did it mean that three-quarters of those resources would come from Ontario and $300 or $600 would come from RCMP?
	We needed to see a plan.
	So this is from...
	You know, politician to politician, but we needed to translate that into operational plans.
	So we wanted to see what the plan was and what kind of resources specifically they needed with what skill set and with what equipment.
	On a related question, during your interview, Commissioner Luckey, you described what you believed to be the appropriate sequence by which the Ottawa Police Service should seek assistance when it was beyond its own capacity and that in particular it should go to the Ontario Police.
	Provincial Police first, or at least the Ontario government, and ask for assistance, which presumably would be provided by the OPP.
	And you referenced the provisions of the Ontario Police Services Act as indicating the path for this to take place.
	But was it your impression that that provision of the Ontario Police Services Act obliged Ottawa to go to Ontario either first or only?
	To get assistance, policing assistance?
	No, I'll be honest.
	I didn't know the nuances of the Ontario Police Act until this convoy because we don't fall under the Ontario Police Act.
	Like I said at the beginning, we just provided resources directly to Ottawa Police Service.
	They didn't go through the OPP.
	This was, you know, assistance to a neighboring police service, and we provided that.
	And even subsequent requests wasn't going through that.
	But when it got to this number, that's when the OPP Commissioner explained to me the process, which I wasn't aware of.
	Such requests should go through the OPP, and then the OPP would exhaust all avenues within the province of Ontario, and if required, would come to outside.
	You know, they can go to, like, another municipality, like Edmonton City Police or different police services, or they can go to the RCMP.
	And it wasn't until we got that big ask that I was getting more information about the Ontario Police Act.
	And that information came to you from Commissioner Karik?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	I want to talk to you now about the role that the federal government, and I'll put in that category for now, both senior officials and politicians, what role they played in your decisions to allocate resources to Ottawa, or as it might be Windsor, but locations outside.
	Where you are police of jurisdiction.
	And in particular, if I could ask you to go back to the beginning and remind us for a minute who it is you report to and who it is gives you guidance or input on matters such as the events in Ontario.
	Well, first and foremost, any of the Deployment of resources, the government or the minister has nothing to do with that.
	This is operational decisions, and we make those operational decisions based on our availability of resources, our ability to deploy such resources.
	If, in fact, like, obviously this was the last example you gave, this was a letter from the mayor to the minister.
	He would pass the letter on to us and say, here's a request.
	And he would never say, fulfill this request.
	He would say, see what, you know, here's the request, deal with it, what you can do, depending on the numbers, because we may not have the numbers available to be able to do that.
	And that's why we were surprised because it never usually goes to that level.
	It usually just goes, you know, from police service to police service.
	If they require assistance, it would come through our police service.
	We would fulfill it as best as we can.
	Because in this particular convoy, our goal was to assist Ottawa Police Service as much as we could so that they could be successful in putting an end to the protest.
	As far as any of the operational decisions, the government isn't involved with that, and it's just more of an information where we're providing additional resources to Ottawa Police Service.
	Those were included in situational reports to the Minister and the Prime Minister.
	But if you can remind us just for a second, who would you have been interacting with to the extent the federal government was either inquiring about or expressing an interest in the situation in Ottawa?
	Well, obviously, the Deputy Minister of Public Safety, Rob Stewart, would have been sort of the interlocutor between the minister and myself at times.
	But when we were doing three briefings a day, one was at the deputy minister level, one was at the minister level, and after, I think, February 10th or so, was at the prime minister level.
	So there was lots of briefings on the situation, the movement of resources.
	Only if it included RCMP, because that's the ones that I would report on.
	But generally speaking, we didn't talk about numbers of resources, specifically with the ministry.
	Let me ask the clerk to pull up.
	PBNSC CAN 408043.
	And just so that we can understand the timestamps of these, as I understand it, these are about five hours ahead of time because they're in Greenwich Mean Time.
	So this conversation, which begins a timestamp at 5.59, would have been taking place at about 12.59 or about one o 'clock that day.
	Is that right?
	Yeah.
	I don't think anything turns on that for this particular discussion.
	It might later on in the other team's chats that we look at.
	Mr. Clerk, can you scroll down to page three?
	And the line I'm looking for is a statement by Flynn to the effect of when the AG starts talking like this.
	There we are.
	Can you first tell us who?
	Mark Flynn is?
	Mark Flynn is the second in charge of federal policing.
	I don't know his official title.
	Mark Flynn's assistant commissioner response for national security program as well as our protective policing program.
	And can you, either of you, recall what discussion was being, usually these team discussions are a discussion among RCMP personnel at the time some other meeting is going on.
	Is that correct?
	Yes, because often normally we'd be in a room and they'd be in the room with me.
	I'd bring people to assist with the information because there's often questions that I wouldn't know the answer.
	So I'd have my team.
	But when it was like, for instance, on the weekends, often people would be at home.
	So we would just create a team's meeting.
	And this February 5th Teams chat is observing a discussion in which we see a reference to the Attorney General talking.
	So this is an observation about a Cabinet or SSE meeting, isn't it?
	Yeah.
	And did you understand what Mark Flynn meant when he said...
	I say this because you would have been listening to the conversation that he's listening to when he makes this comment.
	When the AG talks like this, we better get our own plan going.
	And your response looks like you were trying to thumb out Lamedi.
	Well, because I think up top it says, who is this speaking?
	And because I'm a slow typer, I probably...
	I see.
	And a bad typer, obviously.
	So what did you understand Mark Flynn to be saying?
	When the AG talks like this, we better get our own plan going.
	Probably at the time, I would know what he was talking about.
	Now, fast forward, I can't connect the dots at all.
	We had, like I said, there were so many meetings going on, three or four, sometimes five a day during this time.
	And if you had asked me at the point in time, I could probably give you a lengthy explanation, but I have no idea.
	Can you join me in the inference that just by what?
	Mark Flynn said that the Attorney General has said something to the effect that the RCMP might have to take some action.
	No, when I look at that, there's a lot of things I think that could be possibilities.
	It could be the fact they could be talking about our protective mandate and making sure that our plan is going.
	I honestly wish I could help you with this.
	I have no idea what the reference was to this.
	Okay, well, it doesn't look like I can take it further than that.
	Let me try another one.
	Mr. Clerk, can you call up OPP 404583?
	And on page three of that...
	And we're going to have to figure out who's who in this text exchange.
	But first of all, Commissioner Lucky, can you confirm that this is a text exchange between you and Commissioner Karik of the OPP?
	I believe so, yes.
	And I don't know whether to ask the Clerk to scroll up or down, but there we are.
	The blue, I believe, is you, Ms. Lucky.
	Is that correct?
	Okay.
	And in the middle there, you say this, between you and I only, GOC, and by that you would have meant the Government of Canada?
	Yes.
	The Government of Canada losing slash lost confidence in OPS.
	We got to get to safe action slash enforcement.
	Can you tell me what you meant when you said that?
	Well, generally speaking, I mentioned it earlier, is our goal, and especially from my point of view, was how can we help Ottawa Police Service succeed in this occupation of downtown?
	And so now we're into the second weekend.
	Of course, there's not much we can do during that weekend because the numbers have grown exponentially.
	So I think, first of all, when they first came on the very first weekend, people assumed that they would...
	Convoy would come into town, they had an agenda, they followed their agenda, and then they would leave.
	And when that didn't happen, and we got into the second weekend, from my point of view, we weren't expecting that for them to stay that long.
	And now they're creating infrastructure, they're disabling vehicles, so now they're there for which...
	Appears to be a longer term.
	So instead of reducing the footprint, which is always our goal in protest, to reduce the footprint so that if you do go into enforcement action, you can do it the safest way possible with the least amount of resources, it was increasing exponentially.
	So, of course, people were losing confidence in the OPS's ability to deal with the situation.
	I'm going to leave to others the more particular comments in the summary of your interview about the leadership of Chief Slowly and the specific operations, the Ottawa Police Service.
	But on this point, you talk about the Government of Canada losing confidence in the Ottawa Police Service.
	What was it in your...
	Interactions with the officials and politicians of the Government of Canada that prompted you to have that view?
	Well, we always got the same question each and every day.
	When is this going to end?
	How is it going to end?
	And we really couldn't answer that.
	And of course, early on, we weren't intimately involved with what was going on.
	So there obviously could have been negotiations with the protesters, the leaders of the protest groups.
	But people from the outside looking in weren't seeing any decrease in the activity.
	They were seeing the opposite.
	They were seeing increase in activity from the protest groups and more people getting involved, especially on the weekends.
	So of course, people were wondering if there was ever going to be an end to this because they hadn't seen any outwardly.
	Okay, I've tried.
	Twice to get you to describe what it was made you believe that the government of Canada had lost confidence.
	And I think twice you've told me why one observing the situation might have lost confidence.
	So if I can bring you back to that and ask you if you had some inputs that made you believe the government of Canada had lost confidence.
	Well, we had deputy ministers meetings.
	Nobody said out loud that...
	I don't recall people saying, you know what, we're losing confidence.
	It was my observation by the various comments about how come this is still going on?
	When is this going to end?
	How come it's getting bigger?
	So I was inferring from those comments, when is Ottawa Police Service going to do some enforcement?
	When are they going to deal with this situation?
	I could hear the impatience.
	I could hear the frustration.
	And from that, I inferred that they were losing confidence.
	In Ottawa Police Service.
	Thank you for that.
	Sorry.
	Now, if I can take you down, sorry, not down, but further on in that text, you say, we got to get safe action slash enforcement.
	Can you decrypt that for us?
	So that's all about, let's help them get a plan together so that we can help them with...
	Safe enforcement.
	So again, having experience in public order, it's all about minimizing the footprints.
	You won't do that on those weekends.
	As we all saw, the numbers grew exponentially.
	So obviously any enforcement action should be between, generally speaking, between the Monday and the Friday where the footprint was minimal.
	And so helping them get to a place, because we knew that the numbers were too big, even with a minimized foot for them to handle it themselves.
	And they've, they already mentioned that they needed assistance from the various police agencies.
	So how can we help them do that is cool.
	Thank you.
	And the last text here, first of all, the reference in there to the Emergency Measures Act, in retrospect, am I correct in guessing you meant the Emergencies Act?
	Yeah, I would imagine.
	Right, okay.
	So, because if they go to the Emergency Measures Act, You or I may be brought into lead, not something I want.
	So a concern you had was that if, and this is February 5th and you're contemplating the possibility of the invocation of emergency legislation, if they go to the Emergency Measures Act, you or I may...
	Or I may be brought in to lead.
	So that was a scenario you thought was a possible outcome of invocation of the Emergencies Act, was that either the OPP or the RCMP would be put in charge, so to speak, of the Ottawa situation?
	Yes, very early on when they talked about Emergencies Act, I had no idea what exactly that meant.
	And there was talk about, well, what happens if Ottawa Police Service cannot enforce?
	Or have the ability to deal with the situation.
	And there was talk about, you know, do you change leadership?
	Do you change police?
	It was all in general conversation, nothing specific.
	And really it was from a place of problem solving.
	Everything was put on the table and it was, so that was one of the things that came up.
	Whether or not that could actually happen, that's when I started learning more about the Ontario Police Act, where if they started to go through the process of the Ontario Police Act, they would in fact be the OPP that would be next in line to assist.
	And so it was just, all it was, was sort of, let's, we need to help Ottawa Police Service as best we can, so that Tom Karik and I had lots of conversations about Helping Peter succeed through this unprecedented event and doing what we can through resourcing, through equipment, through advice, any which way we could to help them get through this situation.
	Thank you.
	And.
	Thank you.
	If I could ask Clerk to bring up PB NSC CAN 408042.
	And scroll down to page two.
	If I've got the right document, there should be a comment by Whelan.
	What is his objective?
	There we go.
	Thank you.
	Now we can see from the extract above that you were a participant in this.
	Teams chat, again, can I take it correctly that you are in a Teams chat monitoring, I think, at an SSE meeting?
	And do you understand what Alison Whelan meant by what is his objective beyond getting us to take over?
	Can you scroll up a bit?
	Mr. Clerk, could you give Commissioner Lucky the context there?
	I'm imagining, again, I'm speculating because there was a lot going on.
	I don't know who he is in this reference, but obviously it's somebody talking, I'm imagining one of the ministers or somebody in that meeting about what are the next steps if in fact...
	OPS needs further assistance.
	I'm not exactly sure what it means, what she means by that.
	But I'm just wondering if there was any, she's asking, is there any other options besides us taking over?
	Well, let me ask you more directly then, rather than what we have to agree are difficult decipherings of long ago, choppy.
	Were you having discussions with senior officials or your minister about the possibility of the RCMP actually taking over policing in Ottawa?
	Yeah, I think there was a misconception because people automatically assume the RCMP being the federal police agency, that that's what our...
	That's what our responsibility was.
	So there was a bit of education on that in us saying, of course, when people were looking at solutions, one of the solutions was, well, why doesn't the RCMP take over?
	We got asked that quite often.
	We'd say, well, we're not the police of jurisdiction.
	We don't have jurisdiction in the province of Ontario.
	There's a lot of other layers before coming to...
	You would never come to the RCMP.
	That's not our role.
	But I think there was an assumption because we're the federal policing or national policing agency in Canada, there was an assumption that that's what that meant.
	And so we were trying to educate deputy ministers and ministers that, you know, our role is not to overtake any police agency.
	We're here to assist in any way we can.
	And were you getting input from senior officials or your minister or other ministers, for that matter, to the effect of...
	What more can you do?
	Can't you do more?
	Couldn't you be in there?
	Statements like that.
	Oh, there was things like, what do you need?
	Do you need any more resources?
	Is there any equipment you need?
	Is there anything we can help you with that would help Ottawa succeed in this event?
	Because I was the touch point for all police agencies.
	So whether it was Windsor, Coots, you know.
	The Lower Mainland.
	It was always, whenever any big event happens, I always get the same questions.
	Do you have everything you need?
	Is there anything you don't have that you need?
	Please come to us.
	And so I get those same questions.
	The question to you, do you have everything you need, is, I think, substantively different than are you doing everything you can or can't you do more?
	You know, we've got a terrible problem in Ottawa.
	Why aren't you in there helping to solve it?
	Were you getting input like that?
	Well, we were, again, when they were talking about us, potentially, and it wasn't very lengthy conversations about us potentially taking over.
	There'd be snippets of that that would come out, and we'd have to correct that, saying that wasn't our role.
	But obviously, it was all hands on deck on the solution, problem solving.
	So people were asking, you know, is there anything else that you could do to assist that you're not doing?
	Is there, how can we, again, when is it going to end?
	How is it going to end?
	Do you need anything else, anything to help make it end?
	Those were questions that were getting asked quite often.
	But did you get a sense that the senior officials or the politicians, understandably concerned about the situation in Ottawa, were asking you what you could do?
	Not what resources you needed, but what you could do.
	To solve the problem in Ottawa.
	Not specifically in those terms, but they've asked us, are you able to give them the resources that they're asking for?
	That was one big question, because between the mayor and the minister, there was lots of talk about resources, and we were explaining that a lot, as you mentioned earlier, the confusion over the numbers, and we told them we were giving them everything they needed, and when they're ready to enforce, if they require additional resources over an enforcement plan, we'll be ready to assist.
	But there was nothing specific like how you mentioned.
	I'll ask this question generally.
	Did you ever get a sense in the input you had either from the senior officials, your deputy minister or others, or the ministers, your minister or others, that pressure was being put on you?
	I think you'll understand.
	If I put it this way, that crossed the line in terms of the propriety of officials and politicians giving you direction about how Ottawa should be policed?
	Absolutely not.
	There was a lot of...
	I didn't feel the pressure from our point of view because we weren't the police of jurisdiction, but I did feel the pressure internally because we wanted to do everything we could to help Ottawa Police Service.
	But as far as from the politicians, Providing direction or pressure.
	There was, in general, wanting to find an end solution to this.
	Of course, within our own organization, especially on the gold, silver, bronze, when they all came together, everybody was rolling up their sleeves trying to figure out, how are we going to end this?
	And how are we going to deal with this?
	So we were putting a lot of pressure on ourselves from an organizational point of view.
	I would say that the politicians felt the same pressure of wanting this to end.
	And of course, they're, you know, like you said, they're asking, you know, are we doing everything we can to help them?
	And our answer would be the same.
	They're leading it.
	It would be, and often I'd say it'd be like Chiefs slowly going to Edmonton City Police and telling them, you know.
	What to do.
	There's jurisdiction, and there's jurisdiction for a reason.
	Despite, even at the final days of enforcement, Ottawa Police Service had the lead in that, and that was very, very important.
	There always has to be somebody who's taking the lead, and it's the police of jurisdiction.
	Coming back to this point about, I think it might have been you, but somebody used the expression, the line between church and state, which...
	Whether that's what you meant in the context we've all assumed means the line between the political side and the policing side and all of the both jurisprudence and analysis that's been done on where that line should stand.
	So my question to you is where does the RCMP look for guidance?
	On where that line is.
	And I'm just going to insert parenthetically, we've had a lot of information about how the Ottawa Police Service has between it and the City Council, the Ottawa Police Services Board, and the same will be true of other police of jurisdiction in various places.
	We don't see the same between you, the RCMP.
	And either the senior officials or the politicians.
	So where do you, where does the RCMP look to help find that line between what we're calling church and state?
	Well, for me, it's pretty clear.
	Anything operational, we're advising what's happening, but we're not taking direction on how to do things.
	We've never been provided direction on what we should do.
	And it was actually interesting, I think, in one of the meetings, because normally when I brief, I brief, generally speaking, the Minister of Public Safety, and sometimes now...
	That they've split the Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
	In this case, there was additional ministers.
	And so I think it was maybe the first IRG or maybe even the first minister meeting where I believe it was Minister Mendoncino advising these ministers.
	That you are not to provide direction to the commissioner.
	They remind themselves.
	My ministers don't need to remind themselves because we deal with them on a daily basis or regular basis.
	But with the new ministers, there was even just a reminder because sometimes what happens is when you're into problem solving, problem solving can sometimes translate into, you know, we should do this and we should do that and could we do this and could we do that?
	And sometimes that people might...
	I don't consider any of that direction.
	Direction to me is something that you specifically would turn to me and say, Commissioner, we need you to do this, or don't do this.
	That's direction, that's interference.
	We don't get any of that.
	It's strictly an exchange of information for the most part.
	Okay, thank you for that.
	Is there some institution or body, though, that stands between you and your minister the way that?
	One might analogize to the Ottawa Police Services Board standing between City Council and the Ottawa Police Service.
	No, we don't have a police commission.
	We've just brought in, in the last couple of years, a management advisory board.
	Sorry, repeat that.
	I missed that.
	In the last couple of years, we just brought in what we call a management advisory board, but they are there to provide advice to the commissioner.
	They do not...
	They're not the filter between us and government.
	And so if your minister or a minister were to cross that line, it's simply a function of you having to say you're over the line, minister, or otherwise defend your...
	Your own jurisdiction, so to speak.
	There's no institution that protects you from that.
	Everybody is just expected to follow the rules or you call them out.
	Yeah, there's no institution in between the two of us, but we definitely have our policies and our procedures and our direction, and under the RCMP Act, I am...
	In charge of the operational command of the RCMP.
	I can get ministerial directives from the minister, but it's in regards to administrative matters.
	But I won't get anything.
	For example, if I was to get a ministerial directive, I'm just hypothetically speaking, that I felt crossed over in the operational.
	I would bring it to my legal advisors and say, is this crossing over?
	You know, so I'm just trying to, as I'm talking, I'm trying to think of somebody that would act as that.
	And the only people I can think of is probably legal advisors that may, in fact, if I felt that happening.
	But I've never had to, in meetings, I've never had to really, you know, tell everybody to stop and you're crossing the line.
	Because they're very cognizant of it, and they're very protective of it, because we have similar countries in the Five Eyes that are struggling with this, and they actually come to us and ask how we do it, but it's basically...
	From previous testimony at the Mass Casualty Commission, because I've been asked this question several times, I think it's time that we put something to writing that outlines what you can and cannot do from both the Commissioner's perspective and the politicians, especially from a rotational point of view.
	There's a lot of different politicians change so that they are understanding because we're not the only operational.
	Entity in the federal government.
	There's corrections.
	There's border services.
	So I think it's time to clarify it because it's been a topic of conversation.
	I'm glad you went there because that was the next question I had because the provincial and municipal police forces have already run into problems with this.
	Those problems have generated commissions of inquiry that have made recommendations.
	Given some guidance, and perhaps this Commission will add to that body of material, but how would you envision this further or better guidance?
	And you might have noticed that Deputy Minister Stewart made the same observation yesterday, that there was room for development on this point, but how would you envision that?
	What would it be contained in?
	Some policy guidance document?
	And is there work on this now?
	Well, actually, I think one of the members of parliament has put in a private member's bill on that.
	Very subject and said it won't be difficult to do because there's many police agencies who have examples of what needs to be put in text to make this happen because it's already out there and the name is escaping me.
	But there is a private member's bill to discuss this very issue.
	Thank you and to be clear, I heard you say that this wasn't an issue with respect to the convoy or the blockade but it is a...
	Topic you believe should be addressed.
	Is that fair?
	Well, absolutely.
	Because in the last six months, I've had to respond to it on several occasions.
	And so my hope is that my replacement won't have to.
	So we need to clear this up.
	Thank you.
	I want to come back on a particular point of interest that has attracted some attention already before the Commission, and that has to do with...
	Well, perhaps I could ask Mr. Kirk for you to call up WTS 6068.
	If you can get to page 10 of that.
	Thank you.
	No, you had it there.
	And I recognize that handwriting.
	Deputy Commissioner, this question is for you because am I correct in identifying that as an extract from your notes?
	That's correct.
	And perhaps you could first read, for those of us who haven't learned to decipher your handwriting, read the two asterisk points that are in your notes there.
	Yeah, the first one is Peter, referring to the Chief Slowly from Ottawa Police Service, said he's going to ask double of what he needs.
	And the second asterisk is planners from our shop, integrated planning cell.
	What resources are required?
	Because we were talking at that point, have an integrated planning cell.
	What type of expertise do we have to bring?
	And these notes stem from on the page before that.
	I believe it was Steve Bell that was briefing us, providing an update, and that was a comment that was shared by Steve Bell.
	Okay.
	I was just going to take you to that.
	If you look in the type text below your written note, Describe roughly what you just said, that the note reflects a call with Deputy Chief Steve Bell of the OPS concerning the OPS's request for resources.
	and the other resources.
	This is your note of what Deputy Chief Bell told you?
	Exactly.
	If I could have the page before that, because I don't have my notes, but I'm quite...
	It reflects a call with Chief Steve Bell.
	It's written down below, yeah.
	I can pull up your notes if you want.
	No, that's okay.
	I can confirm for you that that is what you have indicated earlier.
	No, I'm okay with that.
	Okay.
	If you can help us with this, and you're not the first one to speak to this statement or comment.
	What did you understand Deputy Chief Bell to be meaning when he said, well, first of all, Peter's Peter slowly, is that correct?
	Correct.
	He's going to ask double of what he needs.
	Can you explain at least what you understood Deputy Chief Bell to be saying?
	So the way I interpret it, the numbers that were provided publicly and through the letter that went to the minister, the 1,800 asked.
	Is that really reflective of the needs?
	Because, again, I go back to what the Commissioner said earlier.
	Throughout this process, there was no plan to support or to demonstrate to the organization what skill sets and resources are required to support an operational plan.
	And to support the auto police service.
	So I took it when this was briefed to me the first time.
	The 1,800 police officers, 1,000 police officers, 600 public order teams, 100 support staff.
	I took it that.
	Is that what they're asking?
	Considering that Deputy Chief Steve Bell says he's asking to double what he needs.
	So I wasn't sure if that was an ask.
	And it was starting to sound like a broken record where without a plan, both us and EOPP were kind of struggling as to what...
	what types of resources do you actually need to assist in addressing the issue in Ottawa?
	And I understand that an integrated planning cell, which we've sometimes heard called the IPC, was established by the RCMP and the OPP on about February 8th.
	Is that your recollection?
	Around that date where we brought the SMEs, the subject matter experts, together to start reviewing what they had and start building a plan.
	And as I understand it, the purpose of the IPC was, among other things, to review such planning as had been done to date and to further develop the plan to deal with the situation in Ottawa.
	Is that right?
	That's correct.
	Did that effort, that is the establishment of the integrated planning cell, allow you, and presumably the OPP, but allow the participants in the planning cell to put a finer point on the resources that would be required to deal with the situation in Ottawa?
	That was one of the objectives is to nail down what was required for Ottawa.
	Right.
	I'll ask this question in an open-ended way.
	Do you feel that the February 8 timeframe by which that integrated planning cell was established, do you feel that the situation in Ottawa could have been handled more effectively if that integrated planning cell was established earlier in the process?
	It would merely be speculation on my part how it could have been handled if this was put together sooner.
	Could it have come to an end sooner?
	Perhaps, but I'm not in a position to say that it would, considering everything that was going on.
	Fair enough.
	And the other thing to factor in is it's one thing to look at the plan, but again, I go back to what I mentioned earlier, when it comes time to mobilize resources from across the country.
	It's not only challenging, but sometimes resources don't get in the next day.
	It takes a couple days before you get there.
	If I could also add, not being intimately familiar with what OPS was doing, they could very well have been in negotiations with protesters.
	And we always say in public order, if you're in protests, if you are in negotiations with the leaders or various people.
	In these protests, while you're still having the conversation, you're not going to go into enforcement.
	So not knowing that, we could only speculate that they could go into enforcement when they might in fact be in the midst of negotiating a peaceful resolution.
	So did you view the integrated planning cell as strictly an enforcement?
	A mechanism to organize enforcement?
	No, because part of that, when you're dealing with protests, you have taskings going to your police liaison teams who are dealing with the leaders of the protest group.
	From what I understand, it was a little bit more problematic because, generally speaking, you have one leader.
	In this case, there were several leaders, so obviously it makes the task a little bit more difficult when you're dealing with quite a few different people.
	It's all about having those conversations about how to find a peaceful way to get an illegal blockade back to a peaceful protest.
	Thank you.
	And we'll come back to that very point, but just so I understand correctly, what you're saying is you don't mobilize your public order units right away when there's still a viable option of a liaison solution to the situation.
	Not necessarily.
	It depends on the dynamics because if you are negotiating and there's problems where public safety is at risk, you may be in negotiation and still have your public order teams staged at a location.
	So you still may need them just in case in the event.
	every protest is different.
	I'd like to move on to another topic now.
	And for that purpose, Mr. Clerk, could you call up OPP 50151?
	And the topic here is, not everybody monitors these proceedings as closely as some of us do, but what we're calling the engagement proposal.
	I think you're familiar with that.
	At least from our interview with you, Commissioner Luckey.
	So I just want to ask you some questions about your involvement in this and maybe I'll just throw it out to you to describe how you first learned about this possibility, what your involvement was with Deputy Minister Stewart and connecting him to Marcel Baudin, etc.
	So if you can just begin at the beginning and tell us what you can about that.
	So there was conversations about the protest groups wanting to talk to an official, like a politician or an official of some sort.
	Nobody was sure if it was at the provincial, municipal or federal level at that point.
	And so I believe that...
	Deputy Minister Rob Stewart was tasked with looking into the possibility of having an official speak with the protesters.
	And he wanted to know how that works with the liaison teams and what they're doing as far as negotiations with the protesters.
	Because we weren't involved with all of that, I reached out to Tom Creek and...
	Tom Karik advised me that it was in fact the OPP police liaison team that was leading the negotiations with the protesters.
	And so I asked if I could connect the lead, who the lead was of that team, and if I could connect them with Deputy Minister Rob Stewart so he could get more information.
	And really my role was as a facilitator and I introduced the two of them so they could talk.
	Later on, he was coming up with this protest engagement strategy.
	I think he asked what we thought of it.
	I sent it back to my team who deals with the liaising.
	We have a different structure, but same idea, but different structure.
	I gave it to them to say, is there any red flags on these documents or is there any advice we can provide Deputy Minister Stewart?
	I think we provided him a bit of advice on that.
	I think as well, I included asking Inspector Bowden what he thought of what I had said, but then I'd already realized that he had reviewed the document, I think.
	So it was just a matter of connecting Deputy Minister Stewart with Inspector Bowden on this protest engagement strategy as one of his tasks.
	Now, we did hear from Deputy Minister Stewart about the evolution and ultimate demise of this proposal, but in terms of your observation of it from its conception through to the end, did you hear it discussed among...
	Either officials or at the IRG.
	Did you have input on it to the IRG as to whether you thought it was a viable proposal?
	Not me specifically.
	it was deputy minister stewart who was leading that and any any thoughts i had on it i would have provided to him thank you I can switch gears here a bit on...
	Is this a good time for the morning break?
	Actually, Mr. Commissioner, this would be a very good time to break, yes.
	Okay, so we'll take the morning break for 15 minutes.
	The Commission is in recess for 15 minutes.
	The Commission is in recess.
	All right.
	Any other legislation or authorities came through, we'd have to adjust the plan, but it wasn't taken into effect in the planning of it.
	Thank you for drawing, I'll say carving out the Ontario emergency plan, but if I can be more refined then with my question, the plan, as you understand it, and Commissioner Creek understood it, was drafted without any reliance on any of the powers that might...
	Be available to the enforcement forces from federal emergency legislation?
	Yes.
	And did any of your subject matter experts involved in the integrated planning cell, that is, the RCMP experts on that team, express any concern to you that the plan was deficient because of gaps in existing authorities?
	Not at that time, no.
	Now, we're now going to move into a time period that ends up being densely packed with meetings and activities and the development by you and your team of key messages and everything.
	This is the 12th, 13th and 14th, the days leading up to...
	The invocation of the Act.
	And I understand that on February 13th, you attended, you, Commissioner Luckey, attended, I'm going to insert parenthetically there, when we say attended a meeting, sometimes this would be virtual, sometimes it would be physical, or was it always virtual?
	Both, depending on the Deputy Minister.
	The Minister's meetings were generally virtual.
	Many of the IRGs were in person.
	Thank you.
	And on February 13th, if I can refresh your memory, there was a DMOC at around noon and a briefing with Minister Mendicino and Blair at about 1 p.m., an IRG at about 4 and a cabinet meeting at about 8.30.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	And the subject matter of all of these meetings was the convoy and blockade situation across the country.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	We have a number of your key message documents that you developed for presentation or delivery to these meetings.
	And I'll just give you the sort of big question we're trying to get some elucidation on here, and then we'll break it down in as many parts as you think would be helpful in you remembering what went on in those probably very...
	Densely packed days.
	But the question we're trying to get to is how much of your key messages got delivered to the DMOC and the IRG and Cabinet because we've tried to follow the sequence of events and we do this forensically by watching your team's chats and trying to figure out as you folks are watching the meetings going on.
	Whether you ever got a chance to speak at a given meeting or whether your points were ever discussed, etc.
	So rather than me trying to recreate that whole forensic analysis as to what happened on the 13th to your efforts to educate the IRG and Cabinet on your views about these events, maybe I can just put it over to you and say if you remember those days, the development of those key messages and how, if, when.
	You were able to deliver them in those various forums?
	Pretty well.
	I don't want to say 100%, but pretty close.
	At the beginning of each of those meetings, after they brought up the agenda, I would be generally the first person they would go to, and I'd give that situational overview and literally be reading those key messages.
	So most all of the information that were in those key messages were delivered.
	there might have been some exceptions but very minor nature Let's call up the key messages document to see if we can see what it is you were hoping to, and as you just described it, in some cases able to communicate.
	And this would be SSM CAN NSC.
	four zeros 2906.
	Now we've seen several, I don't know if they're drafts or variations of this, do you know if different documents were used in different contexts or if they are just drafts of a single document?
	Sometimes what happened would be A very similar document was delivered at the minister's briefing, and then there might have been slight amendments because the situation changed, but that would be the only reason why it would change.
	But generally speaking, the DMOC ministers meeting and the IRGs were very similar messaging.
	And if we could just scroll down, and as we're looking at this, Commissioner Lucky, is this something that you would read from or jump through?
	How did your presentation go?
	I'd read through it.
	I would read through it.
	Thank you.
	And you would use, was there a PowerPoint or?
	Was this piece of paper distributed among those who were in attendance?
	No.
	So these were just your speaking notes?
	My speaking notes, yes.
	Thank you.
	You mentioned that you would be among the first to speak at these meetings.
	Were you, in effect, Cabinet and the IRG's window into the law enforcement situation for the purposes of those bodies' understandings of the convoy and the blockades?
	Yeah, I was representing, for the most part, all law enforcement.
	So we would gather up the information from the various protests.
	It didn't matter which police was the jurisdiction.
	I would report on behalf of police, which is often what happens when there's a national event.
	Right.
	So to the extent that the OPS or the OPP have information...
	About the status of the protests or blockades in their various mandates, that came to Cabinet or the IRG or the DMOC through you?
	Yes.
	If you look, if we scroll down the page to the heading "Additional Supports," it's I think page six of this document.
	Now, can you explain what this section of your speaking notes is about?
	Well, it's in reference to Discussions on the implications of the Emergency Act.
	And that's where I mentioned earlier about being consulted as to whether any of the authorities that they may provide us we would be able to enforce if there was any challenges to that enforcement and was it doable, so to speak, from a law enforcement perspective.
	We were also consulted on.
	And so we created a little list of what we thought would be potential authorities early on.
	And in here you see there's a few examples of additional tools that would be useful.
	Now, did you consult other police agencies in the course of compiling this list of Possible other authorities?
	At that point, I don't believe so.
	I think we did consult internally within the RCMP, like BC, Alberta and Manitoba especially, because that's where some of the protests were in our area.
	I don't believe we reached out to all of the other agencies, like all other police agencies.
	I don't think because of...
	Possibly we weren't to reach out outside of the RCMP on this because it was part of cabinet.
	So there might have been obligations of confidence that prevented you from consulting outside the RCMP?
	Yeah, I'm guessing.
	I don't know specifically, but I don't believe that we reached out to other police agencies.
	There could have been talk at the planning level, like through the National Capital Region Command Centre or the Integrated Command Centre.
	They may have spoke about it, but you'd have to ask Deputy Commissioner Mike Duhem because I wasn't involved in that command structure.
	Over to you.
	To my knowledge, sir, there was no consultation.
	One, because of the confidence aspect, because they're drafting...
	They're looking at putting measures into the Act.
	And the other thing I'd like to highlight is we had a very short turnaround time to get these recommendations or what we thought would be useful for law enforcement.
	So it was, as I recall, that it was done strictly internally of the RCMP.
	And can we scroll down further Mr. Clerk in this document?
	It's a The paragraph that begins that said the one that's up there and I'll.
	I'll read it and you can read it with me and then I'll ask some questions.
	Your notes and presumably what you said to the IRG and Cabinet on the relevant occasions.
	That said, I am of the view that we have not yet exhausted all available tools that are already available through the existing legislation.
	There are instances where charges could be laid under existing authorities for various criminal code offences occurring right now in the context of the protest, the Ontario Provincial Emergencies Act.
	Just enacted will also help in providing additional deterrent tools to our existing toolbox.
	And then the bullet below that, these existing tools are considered in our existing plans and will be used in due course as necessary.
	As I say, this set of speaking notes had been...
	In various iterations and also ended up in an email that you sent to Mr. Jones, the Minister's Chief of Staff.
	Was this point that you mentioned here in your addresses to the IRG and Cabinet, was that also something you had expressed to, for example, Deputy Minister Stewart or Chief of Staff Jones?
	Before these speaking points were distributed or before your email on the topic?
	I'm not sure of the timing.
	I know that there was an email exchange with the Chief of Staff, so I don't know if it was before or after this meeting.
	If it helps you, it was in between the IRG.
	If you look at the timestamps, it was right in between the IRG and the Cabinet meeting.
	You sent, in effect, these points, including, sorry, your speaking points, including these two bullets here.
	Had you had these discussions about your views on existing authorities with any of the officials before the circulation of these notes?
	Yeah, I think we would have been exchanging verbally.
	Like Deputy Commissioner Duem said, it happened so fast.
	There was...
	Deputy Minister was working on this.
	We weren't in the working group.
	We were just brought in as subject matter experts on various authorities, potential authorities.
	But we weren't in the drafting of any of this.
	That wasn't our role.
	So this would have been provided probably verbally.
	We would have spoken about it.
	And then obviously because I was asked in an email, it was provided in writing.
	Hmm.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	If I can ask the clerk to call up PB NSC CAN 408041.
	one.
	This is another one of the team's chats, and if you look at the time stamp again, allowing that these are stamped five hours ahead of the time zone that we would have been here in Ottawa, you'll see the date is February 13th, and if you just look from the first page to the last, you see it covers a period of time up to...
	Looks like 6:35 p.m. at the very end.
	Are you able to, if I ask the clerk to scroll ahead to the end of the document, just so that Commissioner Luckey can see the range of the discussion there.
	The point I wanted to draw your attention to in this particular Teams chat, Commissioner Luckey, is at page Well, it's page 19 of this document, Mr. Clerk, maybe if you can find that.
	If you go down to the first...
	Yeah, there we are.
	Now, if we look at the timestamp at 10.21 p.m., this would actually be, if I understand correctly, 5.21 p.m.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	And now you're nodding there, Commissioner Lucky, but the transcriber will want to hear yes or no.
	Thank you.
	And again, just so the parties and viewing public can understand what's going on here, this is a discussion that you and your team are having sort of offline.
	These aren't actual comments in the meeting.
	Well, were you present at this IRG meeting?
	I believe this was the IRG meeting of the 13th?
	I believe so, yes.
	So, have you got your phone out and you've got your team watching it on their computers in their offices, perhaps?
	I may have been there in person.
	I'm not sure.
	You think the team was actually there?
	No, the team wouldn't have been there.
	I might have been there in person or it could have been on video.
	There was a couple on video.
	So I don't know which one.
	You might get some insight as we go through your comments here because you're asking somebody in the first entry here whether you are the next up on the agenda.
	Someone suggested you're not.
	And then someone says situational updates, etc.
	The next is you.
	So, and the question we're wondering, it then goes over to, Mr. Clerk, if you can just scroll down the page, a point where there's an entry under Flynn Mark on page 20. That's it.
	Situational update.
	And then it says under number two, Minister Mendicino may turn to Commissioner Brenda Luckey.
	And I guess since these are from your notes, you may also ask to speak, etc.
	Do you figure that that's where you got asked to give the situational update with respect to Ottawa?
	Possibly, yeah.
	There was always usually a spot for a situational update.
	Sometimes on the ERG, there was always usually a spot for me to provide a situational update, depending as they got closer to the...
	There was one that I believe I didn't provide much of an update because there was a discussion mostly on the Emergencies Act.
	So it wasn't about me providing information, it was just them discussing the Emergencies Act.
	Could we have AT41 brought up on the screen?
	Sorry, PBNSC can.
	Four zeros, AT41.
	That's what this is.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	on page 12 of that document I'd like you to look at.
	And there's a section under Mark Flynn.
	I'll just read it for you.
	OPS just confirmed the plan is finally reviewed and approved.
	Their planning group will integrate here with our group.
	And paragraph, sorry, parenthetical comment.
	This came from Carson and figure that's Carson Party.
	Yes.
	Were you able to update the IRG with that development when it came in on your...
	I don't believe so.
	I think though in that the IRG from February 13th I did provide some information on the plan in general but not that with this latest development.
	Now if we could turn up OPS 00014566.
	And I don't know if you recognize these.
	Commissioner Lucky, but if it helps you, they're described to us as the notes from Chief Solely Scribe of a meeting, and we'll get to a point.
	If you scroll down, Mr. Clerk, to the point where there's a meeting with Commissioner Lucky, it's about two pages down.
	There we go.
	So that's, again, if you understand these to be the notes of then Chief Sully, this is a meeting between him and you and Commissioner Karik of the OPP.
	The point that I'm interested in, in light of the conversation we just had, is the second bullet under the redacted section, where Chief Soley, again, this isn't your note, it's his observation of what he understands you to have told him, did not get the Prime Minister briefed on the plan.
	Can you understand why Chief Soley would have had that impression?
	I'm not sure, because this was on the 14th?
	I believe that's right.
	Yeah, because I believe in the IRG notes that I provided, I did speak about the plan.
	So I'm not sure if that, in fact, why that was put on there.
	Commissioner, may I just, if any assistance to my friend, it may be that the interpretation is the opposite.
	These are Commissioner Luckey's statements to the meeting that are recorded by that scribe.
	I'm not certain that those are Chief Slowly's words to her.
	Oh, okay.
	Sorry.
	That's even more helpful then.
	They're not like, I don't know, I've never seen these.
	Like these aren't my notes or anything.
	Okay.
	But the scribe has recorded you as saying that you didn't brief the Prime Minister on the plan and you don't have an explanation for why.
	That would be there?
	Do you think you said something that would have given the scribe the impression that that was what you were saying?
	No idea because I would assume because in the IRG of the 13th I briefed them on the plan so I don't know why on the 14th it says that.
	Is it possible that at the IRG on the 13th you didn't get reached on the agenda or you didn't get a chance to say what you wanted to say about the plan?
	Anything's possible but generally speaking I always was turned to at the beginning of all those meetings and with the speaking notes.
	So I'm not sure about the discrepancy.
	Mr. Commissioner, if I can just have an indulgence here because I would like to see if I need to pursue that point any further.
	Just by seeing if I have a different version of the February 13th IRG minutes.
	Now I will move on.
	I think page 20 of the previous Document 8041 indicated that the commissioner didn't get reached.
	So that may be what you're looking for.
	Thank you.
	Maybe, Mr. Clerk, if you can put 8041 back up.
	Thank you.
	Yes, I see what's happened.
	If you go to page 20, down towards the bottom of the page, you make the comment, Commissioner Luckey, so it doesn't look like I will be reporting on anything.
	And what we were wondering is if that is why you said to Chief Slowly the next day that you didn't report to...
	The Prime Minister on the development of the plan?
	Anything's possible.
	I don't want to refute the notes of the scribe, if that's what the scribe wrote.
	The only thing I would say is I would have to look if there were any notes on the IRG that were shared, then I would be able to compare that if I did, in fact, because usually when I was briefing in the IRG, that would have been shown.
	Well, again, I want to be fair to you here, just to make sure you have the best recollection you can of this February 13th meeting, because you can see you here saying it doesn't look like you'll be reporting on anything.
	Andrea Howard observes that they are on the last item, which I'll infer was the last agenda item.
	And at the top of the next page, Mr. Clerk, if you can scroll a little further, he may not go to you.
	Is this during, is that the time frame, just to be sure, this time frame of 1754 is when the IRG was going on?
	Well, the time frame on the time stamp is 1055, which would be 555 in the afternoon, which would have been when the IRG was sitting.
	Okay.
	And then I'll just, I think you inserted a bit of...
	If you scroll down further, with the hypothesis that you did not get reached, you say, "Please do not invite me to Cabinet." So, with that recollection, and I thank the Commissioner for taking me back to that document, does that help you recollect that maybe you didn't get reached at that IRG meeting?
	It would indicate...
	In all likelihood, I wasn't, but like I said, I'm just going by these notes.
	It appears that that's what it's leaning towards, yes.
	In fairness to your recollection, there was a cabinet meeting the same night.
	Do you know whether you spoke at that?
	I don't think so.
	I think I was invited to support the minister, but I didn't speak at that.
	Okay.
	I'll ask you then to go with the hypothesis for now, acknowledging that your memory is just based on these notes, that you prepared the speaking notes in which you made, roughly speaking, two points.
	We didn't take you through it, but it was a description of the status of the OPS RCMP OPP plan that you had intended to present to the IRG.
	It was your point that...
	You believed that there were enforcement options still to be exhausted and that the plan had been developed without reliance on any special measures.
	And you had those two points.
	You weren't reached on the agenda by hypothesis, if these teams' chats are accurate.
	And that would also explain why you might have said to Chief Slowly the next day, I didn't brief the Prime Minister on the plan.
	If I put all of that together to you, does that help you accept the proposition that you didn't present your key messages to the government on the night of the 13th, and that is why you told Chief Slowly the next morning that the plan hadn't been briefed to the Prime Minister?
	Yes, and if I was to brief on the plan, I wouldn't have briefed them on the plan.
	I would have just...
	Told them of the existence of a plan to go forward, but not the nuances.
	But it would, from what you're saying, and like I said, there's five or six meetings a day.
	It sounds like that's how it might have occurred.
	Okay.
	But I want you to concentrate on that scenario then.
	Cabinet is on the verge of invoking the Emergencies Act.
	You are their window on law enforcement.
	You told us this earlier.
	Your update to Cabinet as it is deciding whether to invoke the Emergencies Act is that the police now have a plan.
	They've pulled it together.
	And that you, as the Commissioner of the RCMP, consider that plan to be workable without the authorities of the Emergencies Act.
	And that doesn't get delivered.
	Your messages don't get delivered to Cabinet when they then deliberate on the invocation of the Act.
	Do you appreciate the significance of that scenario?
	Yes and no, because we had spoken about the fact that we had an integrated planning cell, that we were bringing together a plan, an enforcement plan to go forward, so there was...
	Talk about a plan and that a plan was in progress.
	I reported on that, I believe, in my previous IRG.
	So it wasn't a brand new concept.
	But yes, in fact, the fact that we now had a plan, I'm not sure if it was signed off either as of that point because we were having difficulty getting it signed off.
	We didn't realize it needed to be signed off.
	But I know that on that same day, I think it was the Sunday.
	I'm guessing that was the 13th.
	I had actually, I think, reached out to Chief Soli about signing off the plan.
	I'm not sure of the timing on that.
	But the existence of a plan was known.
	Just the fact that it was official or not official wasn't reported on.
	Okay.
	Let me summarize what you're saying and then put a question to you.
	As I hear what you're saying, though you didn't get a chance to present, Either the plan or your view that the invocation of the Act would be taking place before law enforcement tools had been exhausted.
	Even though you didn't get a chance to deliver those messages at this meeting, you feel that in general those points had been briefed up to the officials that you reported to?
	Is that what you're saying?
	Yeah, because I believe in the second IRG, which was on the 12th, I had spoken about the Integrated Command Centre had been stood up.
	We brought in planners.
	They were in the process of doing the plan.
	I believe I reported on that.
	I'd have to see the notes, though.
	But I didn't officially go into your point that, you know, that could have...
	That wasn't reported that the plan was now officially signed off or officially in place.
	Okay, so acknowledging that there might have been some less precise messaging to the officials and to government before the meeting where you didn't get called.
	Nonetheless, you appreciated the significance of those meetings that were taking place on the 13th, and you appreciated the significance, I assume.
	Of the fact that you hadn't got a chance to give those key messages that we've looked at before.
	Did it occur to you that you should make sure that government was aware of your views on these points before it came to land on the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
	I guess in hindsight, yeah, that might have been something significant.
	Honestly, there was so much information going back and forth.
	I'm not sure where they were at in the invocation as such.
	I know they were talking about it, but it was very, very fluid.
	Obviously, I'm not sure if it would have changed anything in the sense that these were even, like now, I'm going to use my hindsight.
	The plan ended up, those authorities ended up to be useful with the plan, if I use my hindsight, because it wasn't whether or not we would have still been looking at enforcement.
	But we needed ways to reduce the footprint.
	So we were using some of the authorities, obviously, under the Ontario Emergency Act.
	We weren't incorporating anything on the Federal Emergency Act because it wasn't in place.
	But we didn't have when exactly that plan was going to start.
	We knew it had to be starting in the weekdays as opposed to the weekends.
	So now the plan was in place and the implementation would have been The next exact when we were going to implement it.
	That's fair enough.
	And I won't ask you to speculate or hypothesize about what might have happened if you had had an opportunity to deliver these two messages.
	But I think, as I understand what you've said, knowing the gravity of the issues that were facing the IRG and Cabinet on the 13th, you prepared your key messages with those.
	Two points: that the police services had come together with a viable plan and that you considered that there were still law enforcement tools to exhaust before emergency legislation was necessary, correct?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Now, if we move on, there's another constellation of events happening on the 14th, so we're going to go over to the 14th.
	And the And this involves a series of crisscrossing emails, and I'll ask the clerk to first call up PB NSC CAN 408485.
	And I'll ask, first of all...
	Because this is a name that's new to the cast of characters so far.
	We're not going to see it right away, but just so that we can understand when it comes into the picture who Adriana Polos is, and I think this is probably a question for you, Deputy Commissioner.
	Adriana Polos is responsible for our Intel and International Policing Program.
	So the IMSET I referred to earlier on, Ideologically Motivated Criminal Intelligence, it reports into her program.
	Perfect.
	Thank you.
	Now, Clerk, if you could scroll down on this a little bit.
	There's a series of emails by which we can stop there.
	This is sort of...
	Deputy Commissioner and Commissioner, I don't expect you to have seen this email other than you might have in the course of preparing for this hearing.
	That is, I don't expect you to have seen it at the time, perhaps, but just to set up what is going to come at you so you can understand the context.
	This is an email from Jody Thomas, and we all know that she's the National Security Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister.
	And it is February 14th, and I don't know if that's a reliable email timestamp, but assuming it's just a normal email timestamp, it's about midday on the 14th.
	And that's probably going to put us somewhere just after the First Minister's meeting.
	Just before, anyway, right in the context of that event on the 14th.
	And we have Jody Thomas saying, and I'll just read it out so that it's on the record.
	She is writing to Mike McDonald, and we'll learn later on who he is, but he's another person in the PCO intelligence apparatus, and he's copied Rob Stewart, who we saw yesterday.
	As the Deputy Minister of Public Safety and Ms. Thomas says, "This is about a national threat to national interest and institutions by people who do not care about or understand democracy, who are preparing to be violent, who are motivated by anti-government sentiment.
	Can you scroll down a little further, Mr. Clerk, on that?
	And then, again, we're all going to have to be a little bit detectives figuring out what's going on with these emails because this is a sort of orphan email from Jodie Thomas, not obviously to anybody, but is attached to the one that we just looked at where she says, I need an assessment for Janice and I'll just ask you to...
	Speculate with me that that's Janice Charette, the clerk of the Pripy Council, about the threat of these blockades, the characters involved, the weapons, the motivation.
	Clearly, this isn't just COVID and is a threat to democracy and rule of law.
	Could I get an assessment, please?
	David, is this you?
	It is a very short fuse.
	Please call if you have any questions.
	Jay.
	Now, again, you're...
	Perhaps wondering why I'm reading you emails that aren't to you or from you.
	But what we'll see, and this will be the next email, is that the request for an assessment gets directed to Adriana Polas, which is why we talked about her.
	So on that point, could I ask the Clerk to pull up PB NSC CAN 40 3462?
	Okay, and just to get the sequence correct, let's go down to the bottom of this, or at least to there.
	If I'm understanding correctly, and maybe, Mr. Duem, since you ended up getting copied in here, you would be able to help us with this.
	It looks like the request from Jody Thomas...
	Got directed by some means, perhaps by Mr. McDonald, or perhaps by you, if you can help us with that, got somehow directed to Adriana Polis.
	Is that how you interpret that?
	Yeah, the request would have gone from directly, probably from Mike to Adriana on this one.
	Right.
	And that's because it's going, roughly speaking, from the National Security Intelligence Advisor and her directorates down to the RCMP's intelligence people, right?
	Correct.
	And they were probably looking for additional information because the strategic threat advisory reports that were being shared with government were also being shared for PCO.
	So those eight documents I mentioned earlier might have been a follow-up on what was in one of those documents.
	So what you're saying is PCO was used to getting intelligence briefings from Ms. Polo's department, or at least a department that reported to her?
	The document was shared with them, yeah.
	Correct.
	And then...
	Again, Ms. Pola's writing back to Mr. MacDonald gives an assessment, and we're not going to read through the whole thing, but it appears to be, and Mr. Clerk, maybe you could just scroll slowly down so the audience can get a gist of what's in there, as I say.
	We don't have time to read the whole thing.
	The document's available to parties if they want to look at it in more detail, but it's a description.
	We see a reference to Three Percenters, to Diagalon, to Canada First.
	To various movements or individuals that would be implicated in national security matters.
	And then a reference to IMVE groups.
	And then finally, in the penultimate paragraph there, a reference to blockades at the international borders.
	So let me ask the sort of chain of command or institutional flow question here.
	To either of you, Commissioner or Deputy Commissioner, how does it happen that when the NSIA wants a security threat, it doesn't go through one of you, but goes directly to somebody in an intelligence directorate that, frankly, none of us had seen before we saw this email?
	It happens based on some relationships that are built, that they reach directly into the units.
	Preferably, there should be one stop for all requests that come in so we can have at least an idea of what's going on.
	But it happens where they reach in directly to the person.
	And the person will either see me on a message or brief me about what the request is.
	Right.
	The point about briefing you is the one that intrigues me.
	This wasn't just a request for a threat assessment by somebody who happened to know somebody in your department.
	As I think everybody understood at this stage, the NSIA was giving advice to the government on the invocation of the Emergency Act for the first time it had ever been invoked.
	And that threat assessment goes straight past everybody to Adriana Poloz and then straight from her back to the NSIA.
	And is that how you would have expected things to happen if there had been more time or more attention to conventional channels?
	So, honestly, I'd have to go through the document in its entirety because I'm not quite sure if you're referring to a threat assessment.
	When I'm looking at this, Adriana is explaining some of the signs that were seen from IMV groups across the country.
	Flags, posters, stickers.
	But I'd have to go through the entire document.
	And it's possible that Adriana would have briefed me before sending it out.
	But I think one thing that we have to understand is the NSIA, the RCMP is only one organization that's providing criminal intelligence to the NSIA.
	You have the service.
	ITAC also has a role to play.
	So the NSIA is getting information before she forms an opinion, an idea to brief whoever.
	She's getting information from.
	Other departments as well.
	So the RCMP is really in the criminal space when we provide that intel.
	That's fair enough.
	And as I think we saw, this was a very time-pressured situation.
	Ms. Poles was asked to turn it around very, very quickly.
	Ms. Thomas was interested in a very short order, so it might be understandable that corners were cut or...
	Direct contacts were used, as you said.
	I'm just trying to figure out...
	You ended up getting copied on this, Deputy Commissioner.
	Did you appreciate the significance of the fact that...
	People under your command were giving a threat assessment, or at least they'd been asked for a threat assessment.
	Whether that's how you would describe the product they delivered is another question.
	But were you alert to the fact that this was a threat assessment going from your people to the Privy Council office in connection with the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
	Yeah, like I said, I don't recall if Adriana briefed me beforehand.
	And when I'm looking at it, they did produce a product.
	With regards to IMVEs, that I see some of the paragraphs are coming from that product.
	So did she cut and paste the information from a product that was already provided?
	Just to remind, here are the key messages?
	Or was it a completely different one?
	But yeah, no, so I wouldn't be able to confirm if she'd briefed me, other than just being CC'd on a message.
	But I'm led to believe that it's a cut and paste from the document that they had produced in the past.
	Okay.
	Well, I think that's as far as we can take that.
	Unless you have, in retrospect, was there any follow-up by you after seeing this or any further involvement of Ms. Poloz in this process that we should know about?
	No.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	Now, we'll switch gears.
	Just briefly, though quite significantly, to talk about protests outside of Ottawa.
	And I'll just ask us all to remember, which means you can remind me too, that Deputy Commissioner Zablocki is waiting and we don't want to steal all his thunder talking about that work of K Division in Alberta.
	But I just wanted to talk briefly about...
	The work that the RCMP was involved in with respect to the blockades and protests outside of Ottawa.
	And the first of these I wanted to ask you about was Windsor.
	And in the interest of time, we won't go through the whole sequence of events that led up to you getting involved in Windsor, but as I understand it, you received a request.
	For assistance in Windsor.
	And can you begin by telling me where that came from?
	That is from Windsor or from OPP or from Ontario?
	Go ahead.
	I'll cover that, Commissioner.
	So an important note, when that request came in, I was sharing an office with Deputy Commissioner Chris Harkins, who's part of the Goal Command with me.
	And the request went, to my knowledge of requests, went directly in from Windsor Police Service to our folks in Ontario.
	For a public order unit or a tactical support group and with everything that comes with it.
	So the first deployment of members and this was to assist with the blockade in Windsor.
	We sent a total of 64 members initially and another 50 members to help contain the grounds once they started moving with their tactical support group.
	And it was led entirely by, I believe, the OPP?
	OPP.
	Thank you.
	Can you describe some of the differences between the assistance you were able to provide in Windsor, I'll say, at that relatively early date compared to the ultimate deployment of your public order units in Ottawa a week or so later?
	First of all, one obvious thing is you had...
	Units, as I understand, are available in Ottawa who could be redirected to Windsor.
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	Yeah, that's correct.
	So they didn't have to be brought in from the other side of the country.
	That was just logistically easier to do, correct?
	It is.
	And faster because they're already mobilized with all their equipment in one single area.
	Right.
	And.
	Was there any difference in your expectation of the ability to work with and integrate with the Windsor Police Service and the OPP relative to the situation you were facing in Ottawa that allowed you to immediately deploy this unit to Windsor?
	I think what I'll mention, what's important to note is that early on, the OPP commissioner took control of all the public order teams in the province.
	And they would decide what priorities were each public order team would go because there was a lot of things happening in different areas.
	So he had announced, and I think actually Mike might have been on a meeting at that time where he talked to all the chiefs of police, or the majority of them.
	and said that he will be do not deploy your public organization We will decide what the priority is and we will.
	Deploy as and when necessary.
	So that request came from OPP.
	At the time, there was no active enforcement going on in the Ottawa area.
	So we felt, because we had a team that was originally from that area, and they might have even been back in their area in Ontario, that we could redeploy them to Windsor.
	And at the time you made the decision that it was appropriate to deploy these resources to Windsor, did the Windsor Police Service or the OPP have a plan for their deployment of the same type that you were waiting to see in Ottawa?
	We didn't.
	Get into the specifics of the plan.
	The fact that the OPP commissioner was deploying the various public order units and the fact that he was in charge of what was happening in Windsor and they had this enforcement plan.
	We had advised that we could provide that public order team.
	So the absence of a plan before the fact needn't be an obstacle to you deploying or at least sending resources to be deployed by another police force?
	Well, there's always, like even in the early days of the Ottawa convoy, we gave 30 to 50 resources with the idea that there was a plan for those resources.
	But we didn't get into the intimacies of the plan in that instance, nor did we do that with the Windsor.
	The fact that they were going into enforcement, we knew that.
	We knew that they had an enforcement plan, that they were going to go what we call kinetic and actually move the protesters.
	We knew there was a plan.
	So that's why that's a specific type of resource.
	It wasn't a frontline group that they were asking for.
	They were asking for a public order team for enforcement purposes.
	Thank you.
	I'll leave it to others to see if that should be pursued further.
	I'll just ask you, was this a situation in which Windsor was a higher priority than Ottawa?
	No.
	I should add though, like...
	They were going into enforcement action, and on the ground in Ottawa, they were not.
	So I wouldn't ever say that one was a higher priority than the other.
	They were just at different stages.
	Right.
	I want to move us over the hump and talk about the operations, the RCMP post-invocation.
	We are going to circle back on some orphan topics later on, but just keeping in chronological order here.
	If the clerk could call up OPP 50788.
	Now, this is February 15th, so the Emergencies Act has been invoked, but enforcement action, at least in Ottawa, hasn't commenced on the level that resulted in the clearing of the protest.
	But if you can...
	Do you recognize these notes?
	Do you remember the meeting that these are notes up?
	Yeah, vaguely remember the meeting, yes.
	I don't know.
	These aren't any notes I've seen before.
	Sorry?
	I vaguely recall the meeting, yes, but I don't recall the notes.
	I wasn't given these notes.
	If you look at the first statement there, you are attributed with saying, and I'll just ask you, before I ask you any questions, I'll make sure I ask you if you agree that this is what you said.
	We all need to succeed, need to get credibility and maximize the regs.
	We are here to help in any way we can.
	First of all, does that accord with what you, or at least the message you remember giving at that meeting?
	Oh my goodness.
	I don't think people appreciate the amount of meetings we had.
	I could have very well said something to that effect.
	We were now going into enforcement.
	That was the beginning of the enforcement stage.
	So it was, you know what, this is time for us as police to get credibility back for not doing anything for many days.
	And we all need to succeed.
	So let's, you know, use the regs and anything we can do to help.
	It would sort of been just a...
	A little bit of a pep talk, but you know what, to ask me if I recall, if that's exactly what I said, I honestly couldn't tell.
	And then acknowledging that you're at the limits of your recollection here, the expression that I wanted to ask you about was maximize the regs.
	And can you tell us what you, if that...
	Well, it's all about, like I said...
	Reducing the footprint so that when we go into enforcement, there's as few people as possible.
	Because we had the invocation of the Emergency Act, let's not have people come into the protest area.
	Let's make sure there's no kids there.
	Let's make sure there's motivating and incentivizing people to leave so that we can get...
	Down to the minimum amount of people in the footprint.
	So when we enforce, it will be much safer for everybody involved.
	And that was kind of the essence of the plan.
	So if I can paraphrase, we've been given some new tools.
	Let's use them as fully as we can.
	Yeah, obviously, if they're applicable and they're things that we can use, yes, most definitely.
	And Mr. Clerk, if you could call up now SSM NSC CAN 50408.
	We will see when they come up.
	IRG minutes.
	And Mr. Clerk, if you could scroll to page 7. And if I can draw your attention,
	Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, whichever of you might be able to answer this question, the right-hand column, the first row, so the word law enforcement in Ottawa, you see that?
	It says, "Law enforcement in Ottawa, have been able to secure perimeter successfully without a need to employ any designations through the EA.
	Can you explain what that indication there is?
	What date is this?
	This is the February 23rd IRG meeting.
	Okay, so that would refer to on February 18th, the early hours of the morning before activating our operational plan, we were able, we, I say the Gold, Silver, Bronze, able to set up a control access zone, which is a perimeter.
	And Ottawa Police Service had the lead on that and used existing authorities when they put it in.
	So we did not use the act specifically for the control access zone.
	They do it during a candidate.
	They do it during other events in Ottawa.
	So they use existing authorities to put the fence up, to put the perimeter up.
	Thank you.
	That's very helpful.
	You're not going to get...
	Off the stand without talking about tow trucks.
	So if I could just ask you a few questions about that.
	As I understand it, Commissioner Lucky, you were under the regulations passed pursuant to the emergencies.
	Act empowered to instruct tow truck operators to make their services available, but did you ever yourself or did the RC No, we didn't.
	I delegated it to Commissioner Tom Carrick.
	Okay.
	And if you can just help us understand what that means.
	You have the power, but you are able to, at least as you would have understood it, lawfully hand that power over to Commissioner Karik.
	Is that right?
	Yes, I was allowed to delegate it.
	So in the event, let's say we didn't use it in RCMP jurisdiction, but if the commanding officer Curtis Zablocki needed that authority, I could have delegated it to him, which I didn't.
	Things were solved before that happened.
	But because we were going into enforcement action, I delegated that authority to the OPP commissioner.
	Other than delegating that authority to the commissioner of the OPP, were there any other delegations you made of that power?
	No.
	And you didn't exercise it yourself?
	No.
	And so to the extent that power was used, At all, it was used pursuant to the delegation you gave to Commissioner Creek?
	Yes, and this was primarily because I have no knowledge of the tow truck situation in Ontario.
	Each police agency has that, they have that knowledge, so for me to use that authority in a place where I have no jurisdiction wouldn't make any sense.
	So I would have done the same in Quebec if they had needed that, because we're not the police of jurisdiction.
	That makes sense.
	The challenge it poses, not for you, for Commission Council, is that when we try to trace what happened to that power, you've handed it down to Commissioner Karik.
	And so does that mean that you thereafter lose visibility of the use of the power?
	I have no idea.
	It's the first time we've ever had that power, so there wasn't a playbook on what to do with that.
	I delegated it to him so that he could use that authority.
	I would assume that they would take account for that authority, but we didn't have a conversation.
	I know there was an actual delegation document I signed.
	It may have had some instruction there.
	I can't recall.
	I'm just wondering, that delegation authority did not, it seems, include some requirement for the OPP Commissioner to report back to you on the extent to which he'd used those powers?
	Not to my knowledge.
	Well, then I'll ask you to bear with me on the next question and see if you can assist with it.
	Were you aware at the time, there's been a lot of information since, but I'd like to know if you could try to remember at the time.
	Was it your understanding at the time that you delegated the power to Commissioner Creek that the OPP had already been able to secure the assistance of some tow truck operators without the need for the use of that power?
	I wasn't aware of any of the details of the tow trucks.
	Okay.
	So you can't assist us with that issue as it relates to your delegated power?
	No, it was just if in fact they were going to use that authority, I delegated it to them.
	I wasn't sure if they would even use it or not, but it was delegated.
	I was assuming that they would need to use it.
	When you delegated the power, let me see if I can approach it this way.
	When you delegated the power, were you aware that one of the things that came along with the exercise of that power was an obligation on the part of the government to compensate tow truck operators for their work pursuant to orders?
	Yes.
	And has that come back to you?
	Has the bill come back, so to speak?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And can you give us any information about that?
	It was a big bill.
	It was a big bill.
	In the context of processing that bill, for example, and you'll see why I'm trying to tease this out of you, and if you're not the right person to answer it, we'll just have to live with that.
	But were you self-conscious of the fact that you were giving the province a way to hand the costs of the towing back to the federal government?
	Under the Emergency Act?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	You realize that that was one of the implications of giving them this power?
	Yes.
	And you probably realize that one of the implications would be that whether or not the power was needed to compel the use of the tow trucks, it would all be processed that way so that the compensation could come back up to the federal government.
	Well, I assume that if they had to compel tow trucks under the Emergency Act, that we would, in fact, the federal government would pay for that.
	But if they had the ability to get the tow trucks on their own, that it wouldn't be under the Emergency Act and we wouldn't be paying for it.
	And would it surprise you then if some of the tow truck operators decided to go the route where they got paid by the feds and Ontario decided to process it that way, even though they'd been secured before the Emergencies Act was declared?
	I have no idea.
	I guess it's an integrity issue.
	Thank you.
	Mr. Commissioner, I do believe I'll finish by lunch.
	One other issue I wanted to pursue, well, there's a number of issues that are going to have to fall off the agenda, so to speak, here because of the time, but there is one other issue, one other topic I wanted to explore before we break for lunch.
	If I may, I realize I'm a bit over my time, but may I take that?
	Okay, well, yeah, you're a bit over your time, but we'll let you go to lunch.
	what's priority in your remaining.
	I am prioritizing here.
	Mr. Commissioner.
	Is it possible that the Commission's Council could be given more time without taking away time from parties?
	There was other records discovered last night, for example, being 113 pages of the Deputy Commissioner's notes that are extremely important.
	I don't know if my friend is wanting to deal with those.
	I'm guessing he probably does.
	Subject to any of the party's objections.
	As long as I didn't lose the 20 minutes we have, I would be happy for...
	My friend to keep going.
	It's a very important issue and these witnesses are probably two of the most important witnesses the Commission will hear from during this entire proceeding.
	There was never a question of shortening cross-examination time.
	As anyone goes over, I don't take it from anyone else unless there's been a...
	An agreed-upon trade.
	If you're willing to give up your time to the Commission, that would be the only way you would lose it.
	What I'm saying is I think the Commission Council should be given as long as he needs in order to complete what he needs to complete and not remove things from his agenda.
	That's all I'm concerned about.
	I appreciate Mr. Miller's concern.
	And Mr. Commissioner, I'll say to you and through you to Mr. Miller, though those notes did just go up on that particular database, Commission Council did have access to those notes.
	And as a matter of fact, I'd recommend to parties that they review the interview of Deputy Commissioner Du M, the witness summary, as it's called.
	Because that summary was specifically for the purpose of pursuing those notes.
	So, with that in mind, Mr. Miller might be able to focus his conversation on the parts of those notes that he considers important to you.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	If we could pull up the team's chat, which is at
	TB NSC CANS 4-0s 80-40.
	And we're going to have to ask you...
	Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, to try and recreate this in your memory again, acknowledging that a lot was happening at this time.
	It's February 12th, putting the timestamps five hours ahead.
	It's earlier in the morning at the beginning, but when we go down to page two, we'll see a timestamp for...
	Mr. Clerk, can you scroll down to page two, a timestamp for a heading to suggest that there is going to be a meeting with Mr. Slowly.
	Can you just scroll through until we find that?
	Yeah, there we go.
	So you are advised, Commissioner, in the course of this Teams chat that you are going to have a meeting with Chief Slowly at...
	And if we go down to page 5 of this document at 6.37 in the timestamp, so I think 1.37 in real time.
	Now, we're all going to have to contend with this.
	None of us gets to see what's behind the black.
	Well, you did at the time, but you're not going to tell us now.
	I wouldn't remember.
	But you come in at 637 with this statement, disregard, as OPP Commissioner advises, there is a pretty straightforward way in that the Minister goes to the Ontario Police Commission.
	Can you tell us what you were talking about there?
	It would be sheer speculation.
	I honestly don't.
	I would say that it's about talking about if and...
	If they needed to go to the Ontario, I don't even know, Ontario Police Commission.
	In fairness to you, let me take you to some more of this and maybe when you see some more context, you'll be reminded of what that statement about.
	Mr. Kirk, can we take us down to page 16 of this chat?
	And there's the statement, I don't get it.
	I didn't get it.
	And I'll read that out.
	This is you, Commissioner Lucky, speaking.
	I don't get it.
	Are they going to the province or not regarding PS, which you'll probably agree with me as a reference to Peter Sully?
	No, it could be.
	I didn't get it.
	I don't know if they're talking about the mission statement.
	I didn't get it.
	Sorry, I didn't get it correctly.
	In other words, you didn't hear what they were talking about or you didn't understand what they were talking about?
	Or I didn't.
	I'm looking at the mission, the modifications of mission statement.
	Am I saying I didn't get it?
	I didn't get the mission statement?
	I'm not sure.
	Are they going to the province or not resorting?
	I see.
	Can you scroll?
	Yes, please, Mr. Clerk, please scroll up to help Commissioner.
	Just to see if I can jog something in my memory.
	Scroll along so that she can follow the context of the point that I just put to her.
	Integrative planning.
	Okay, so.
	Can you scroll down a little further?
	I'm sorry, down, so she can follow the...
	I don't know what what he means by the modification is simply at the high political element of the plan.
	I didn't get it.
	How are they going to the province or not?
	Can you keep going?
	Honestly, I have no idea what that all means.
	I don't understand what some of the comments mean, but I don't know the context.
	I can't seem to put it into context.
	So you can't recall what the people you're listening to, again, you're, as I understand it here, listening to the IRG meeting in the 12th, and you are, somebody is talking and...
	That prompts you to wonder whether they are going to the province or not regarding, if that P.S. is Peter slowly, regarding Peter slowly.
	That doesn't trigger your memory about what you were hearing that prompted you to say that?
	No, not at all.
	Okay.
	I'm trying to put it together.
	That's fair enough.
	And if we go down to scroll a little bit further, we see the words, maybe I tell him.
	Scroll up.
	Please, Mr. Clerk, so Commissioner Lucky can see the lead-in to this comment.
	A little up further so she can see what they need to land.
	So again, this is a continuation of the discussion you just saw.
	And then scroll down, please, Clerk.
	Something we need to land.
	Then you say, "Maybe I tell him," and scroll down further.
	And yay or nay, perhaps you're asking your team what they think.
	And then Mark Flynn says, maybe a one-on-one, face-to-face with the minister.
	And then, Deputy Commissioner here, you come in and say agree and the PM.
	So I'm guessing that this is something pretty important because what is being proposed here is that you, Commissioner Lucky, meet face-to-face with the minister.
	And perhaps the PM.
	I think this is about something completely different.
	Oh, well.
	No, I think, and I'm not sure, but I think it's about coots, actually.
	It's about coots.
	Coots.
	So that answers that.
	Thank you for clarifying that.
	One last topic, then, in the five minutes that I might have with the Commissioner's indulgence.
	Could we go to OPP 40s 4583?
	This is a long document, and perhaps, Mr. Clerk, if you can find page 52. And these texts have already been canvassed somewhat in the hearing, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner, but this might be the first time you've looked at them in recent memory.
	Can you scroll down to the point where Commissioner Creeks says, with respect to your comments?
	There we go.
	So, again, to orient ourselves, as I read this, the green is Commissioner Karik and the blue is you.
	And this, do you recollect this exchange?
	and I'll ask the clerk to scroll down so that she can read the rest of her input to this.
	Yes, I do.
	And that's you, Commissioner Luckey, saying to you, if you, Commissioner Luckey, have some influence, it would be helpful.
	And then could you scroll down a little further?
	And here you are telling the Commissioner that when you say had DMed Stewart, is that you saying that I, Commissioner Luckey, had Deputy Minister Stewart reach out to?
	Am I reading that correctly?
	Yeah, because this is three hours later or four hours later.
	Before I even saw that, that's how I figured because Deputy Minister Stewart was speaking regularly to the Ottawa City Manager.
	So yes, that's what it refers to.
	I asked Deputy Minister Stewart if he could reach in to Steve and I won't try to pronounce his last name.
	He was the City Manager.
	Yeah, Kenilakis, sorry.
	Steve K. Because obviously we didn't want to lose continuity.
	We were just now ready to implement the plan.
	The Integrated Command Centre was going to take that integrated plan and implement it, so it was important that we didn't, since Peter, Chief, slowly wasn't there, and the Deputy Chief Bell had been involved with the plan and ready and knew about the plan to have somebody new come in, because there was talk, rumors, I guess, that they may bring somebody new in, and that would delay us going into enforcement action.
	So we were hoping that one of the deputies, well, Steve was the obvious choice because he was taking the lead.
	It could have been Deputy Trish McPherson, I think it was.
	Ferguson.
	Ferguson, that could also have taken the place, but we knew that he was going to be the deputy chief.
	He was the senior deputy.
	So the upshot is you and Commissioner Creek are talking here about your hope that the new chief of police will be...
	Someone who's already part of the command structure?
	No, it wasn't about who would be the new chief of police.
	I phrased that wrongly.
	I didn't mean that.
	The new person in charge of the office.
	Interim by interim would be somebody that was already in place.
	By de facto, it was Steve Bell, but it could have been Joe Schmoe.
	It was whoever was already in place.
	Understood.
	You wanted continuity.
	You and Commissioner Creek wanted continuity with the work that had been done.
	I understand that.
	The question I have, though, is so understanding that, The sort of logic of the proposition.
	You mentioned earlier, both in the context of these proceedings here and other proceedings you've been in, the division between church and state.
	Were any red flags going off in your mind when this dialogue took place between you and Commissioner Karik that you would go to Canada's Deputy Minister of Public Safety, who would go to An official in the City of Ottawa to exercise influence about who would be the next interim chief?
	It wasn't about who was...
	Deputy Minister Stewart had...
	I never talked to Steve at all.
	He had...
	They had had communication, regular communication.
	For me, it was about the relationship that they had already established and that because we were on the verge of enforcement, that it was only about...
	Can we continue on with the enforcement plan under existing personnel?
	And that was the goal of that.
	It wasn't about put Deputy Commissioner Steve Bell in that position so he can be the chief.
	It wasn't influencing them on who was going to be the chief, just the continuity of the plan, because that would have set us back if we had to brief somebody new and put somebody new in the position.
	I didn't look at it in the eyes that you're looking at it.
	Now, acknowledging that for the reasons we discussed before and your structure and relationship to the people you report to, you wouldn't have been familiar, perhaps, with the way that the Ottawa Police Service takes its direction.
	But it didn't occur to you when you were putting in place this communication from your Deputy Minister.
	To an official, a senior official at the City of Ottawa, that an option would have been, if such an approach were to be made about the importance of continuity, that it would have been better placed to the Police Services Board?
	Yeah, like I said, I didn't know how their structure worked at all.
	It was just a connection into Ottawa Police or that's the person that was...
	That they were dealing with.
	I didn't understand the board concept.
	If I can summarize, you had an important message to deliver, which was that continuity and command was important, and you used a connection that you knew about to deliver that message.
	Yeah, just that it would be preferable.
	Ultimately, the decision is theirs to do what they wish, but we were on the verge of enforcement, and it would be preferable if we had somebody who was already in the chair knowing what the plan was so that we could...
	Move forward, because it was literally, what was this, the 16th, which is on the Wednesday.
	We were full-blown going into the plan, and to stop that, and knowing that the weekend was coming, we had changed.
	That plan was originally supposed to be a four-day engagement plan into enforcement, but because we had a late start on it, we only had two or three days before the weekend was coming, so time was not on our side.
	Right.
	So the message makes sense.
	And as I say, the path you took, you took simply because it was a connection you knew already existed between Stewart and Canal.
	Yes, exactly.
	Okay.
	Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
	Those are my questions for this panel.
	Okay.
	So thank you.
	So we'll take the lunch break and come back at two o 'clock.
	The Commission is in recess until 2 o'clock.
	The Commission is in recess until 14:00.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	Thank you.
	Hello.
	The Commission has reconvened the Commission.
	Okay, good afternoon.
	Oh, okay.
	We're ready to go then.
	Go ahead.
	For the record, my name is Brendan Miller.
	I'm counsel to Freedom Corp, which is the corporation and entity that represents the protesters that were in Ottawa in January and February of 2022.
	First, both of you, thank you for your service and thank you for testifying here today.
	So, I just want to begin by doing sort of a housekeeping matter from yesterday, but I'm going to use you folks to do that.
	If I can bring up document SSM.CAN.0000283 _REL.0001.
	Thank you.
	Okay.
	And you had said in your evidence in Chief Commissioner Lucky that the RCMP in Ottawa also dealt with the safety, security, etc.
	for international diplomats from foreign countries.
	Is that fair?
	Okay.
	So yesterday we heard evidence from the Assistant Deputy Minister Security and Emergent Management at Global Affairs Canada and she testified that they were concerned about The security and safety of foreign diplomats in Ottawa.
	And this document is a February 4th email.
	If you can scroll down, please.
	From Bill McCrimmon, Deputy Director of Diplomatic Security and Outreach Programs with GAC.
	So Global Affairs Canada.
	Are you familiar with Mr. McCrimmon?
	No.
	Right.
	And if you just want to take a moment, I'll read it to you.
	But in that email, he states on February 4th.
	The Office of Protocol has not been made aware officially of any significant concerns by the diplomatic community in the National Capital Region linked to current ongoing demonstrations downtown Ottawa.
	The RCMP Protective Operation Assessment Unit advised that there is no particular concern at this time for the diplomatic community.
	Some foreign missions have requested that the RCMP conduct security assessments.
	However, no specific concerns have been identified.
	Several missions have informally raised issues and inconveniences with the Chief of Protocol that have been affecting their operations related to limited access to buildings, block streets, noise impeding their work, and the odor of diesel fumes.
	The Office of Protocol, in brackets, Diplomatic Security liaison unit, close brackets, remains in contact with the RCMP and will advise of any significant concerns affecting the diplomatic mission.
	And can you agree that as of February 4th, that was the assessment also of your office?
	I'd have to see our assessment, but if he's saying that the RCMP said that...
	Right, and I take it that though this is February 4th, this situation as described here remained the same throughout the whole protest, did it not?
	I can't speak for sure.
	I don't have any of the documents.
	Okay, and yesterday the Assistant Deputy Minister, she couldn't give us any other information other than...
	A blanket statement with no evidence or information.
	So is it fair to say that if there was actual evidence or information...
	Excuse me.
	I don't think that that's a fair description of the evidence that was provided by the witnesses yesterday.
	All right, I'll rephrase.
	So would you say then that you would have no more further information with respect to specifics than the Assistant Deputy Minister did yesterday?
	I don't know what the Assistant Deputy Minister said yesterday, but what I can say is...
	I would have to look at the RCMP threat assessment documents or any of the requests to know what the threat environment was throughout the convoy, just to be fair.
	Okay.
	Now, Commissioner Luckey, I'm going to ask some pointed questions on the next following set.
	Now, Commissioner Luckey, can you agree that under the RCMP Act, it doesn't provide sufficient independence from political executive and political interference from your office?
	Is that fair?
	Well, I assume it does, but others don't.
	Right.
	And you know that from your appointment as Commissioner under Section 5 of the RCMP Act, that appointment is what's referred to at pleasure.
	You understand that?
	Yes.
	And you understand that that means that the Government Council, on a recommendation from the political executive, the Prime Minister, Cabinet, can remove you at any time at will, without reason, right?
	This is different than what's referred to as an appointment of good behavior.
	You understand what that is?
	Yes, not intimately, but...
	And an appointment of good behavior, you at least understand, requires actual grounds of misconduct to remove you, kind of like a judge, right?
	You get that?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And, for example, I take it you're aware of the former SNC-Lavalin-Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal with respect to the Director of Public Prosecution Services of Canada?
	They, that Public Prosecution Services Director, you're aware that they're appointed at good behavior.
	They're not subject to being removed at will.
	You're aware of that?
	No.
	Okay.
	And you understand, I understand you have an understanding of the SNC-Lavalin-Jody Wilson-Raybould scandal, though, do you not?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And the issue with that was, is that the political executive trying to use Ms. Raybould-Wilson Essentially tried to skirt the act with respect to advising prosecution services on how to conduct themselves.
	Is that fair?
	Yes, I guess.
	Okay.
	I'm not intimately familiar with...
	Right.
	And the problem with that was, is that act, you know that any direction from the political executive via the Minister of Justice, the Attorney General, that seeks to compel the Director of Public Prosecution Services to do something...
	It has to be through the legislative process, and then whatever they direct them has to be published in a gazette within six months.
	Are you aware of that?
	No.
	All right.
	And you agree that your office of commissioner has no such safeguards, does it?
	No.
	And you know the common law in policing is that you as commissioner and other chiefs of police throughout the country and the common law world, really, Are to be 100% independent from the political executive?
	Yes.
	And you agree with me that the political executive...
	I would say, though, we do get direction on the administration side of the policing, but not the operational side.
	Right.
	And you can agree with me that the political executive...
	Should not be placing undue pressure on you or directing you what to do with respect to policing other than the administration part.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And it's true, and I'm not trying to poke, but it's public knowledge that previously the political executive has asked you to do certain things in investigations such as release information that could undermine an investigation.
	You remember that?
	You'll have to be more specific of what you're referring to.
	You agree that happened when you were asked by federal ministers to release the form of firearms the RCMP in Nova Scotia knew were used in the mass shooting while the investigation was ongoing?
	Remember?
	But what are you referring to specifically?
	I'm referring to the issue with respect to releasing the forms of firearms for the purpose of furthering the legislation.
	There was no pressure to do that.
	Right.
	But the minister asked you to do it.
	No.
	The minister asked me if, in fact...
	The information about the firearms would be part of a media release.
	He didn't ask me to put that in there.
	Right.
	And when it wasn't, there's the transcript and the recording with respect to that, that you had said to some of your colleagues, why couldn't this have been done?
	The minister asked for a small ask, why wasn't it done?
	That's not the context in which that was taken.
	Okay.
	Now, I take it that, would you agree that the executive branch of the federal government Both yourself and you, Deputy Commissioner, they tried to tell you what action to take during the protest, didn't they?
	Sorry, they asked us to what?
	They tried to tell you what actions to take in policing during the protest.
	Absolutely not.
	Did they not ask you?
	They wanted you to take it over.
	No.
	Right.
	So the Clerk of the Privy Council and you, Assistant Commissioner, did not have a phone call.
	On February 3rd, 2022, recorded in your notes, where they said that we need to take this over.
	Yeah, but saying it and doing it is two different things.
	Right.
	Can I take you, can we please bring up a document pb.nsc.can.00008073 underscore rel.0001.
	Okay.
	Okay.
	Now, this is a copy of your notes, sir.
	There's been a few, there's two copies of your notes.
	The one that my friends have been referring to in your summary statement, just so you're aware, that's document 8073.
	This is the other set, or that was document 8074.
	There's another set, and there's some highlighting that you've made in these notes, and I'm going to take you to it.
	Beginning first.
	WE'LL GO RIGHT TO THE FEBRUARY 3rd NOTE.
	Which is on.
	my apologies I believe it's 19. If we can go to page 19, please.
	All right, so we'll begin at the top that says February 3rd.
	That's the note for the day.
	If we can scroll down.
	Just keep going.
	I can just have a moment.
	Sure.
	And so just for your understanding, this was the record we found that was deposited over the weekend.
	That's why I'm having a little trouble navigating it.
	Okay.
	Great.
	There's actually a second one.
	It's on page 19, I believe.
	That's the Min's call.
	Well, we'll start with this one.
	And this is the Minister's call at-- I'm going to scroll up.
	Right, so 12:30.
	And that's the Minister's call, and I take it that the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness is on that call with you?
	I would have to check the minutes, but I just have ministers called.
	Normally, it would be Minister Melloncino, sometimes Algebra, and I see Blair a little further down.
	That's correct.
	Right.
	So, and there it states, question, Mendocino's observations and non-policing response, seeing way more, or seeing way, can you tell me what that says?
	Seeing way more traffic.
	Can't make out the last word.
	Way more traffic.
	And does not seem to be a plan.
	Must start with enforcement.
	So he tells you that?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	And then Bill Blair, of course, that's the Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
	He's the former Chief of Police of Toronto.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	And he says the PM is increasingly concerned about how the city will deal with this.
	Is that right?
	According to my notes, not correct.
	Right.
	And so you agree that, you know, as a police officer, you're trained to take notes, right?
	Yeah.
	And you take notes of the conversations and investigations contemporaneously to the investigation?
	Correct.
	And you write down relevant material matters that you want to remember later in time, right?
	Key points that I want to remember or brief up.
	Right.
	So it's fair to say that these things that you wrote down, this is what was said to you by those two ministers, correct?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	And if we can scroll down to the next page, please.
	And this was already put in the other set of notes, but there I see that Minister Mendocino, he says to you that his colleagues feel unsafe going to the Hill.
	They feel, is that harassed?
	Yeah, they feel harassed.
	Shorthand written.
	Yeah.
	And then what is it the second concern of Ottawa?
	Central citizens, essential care.
	Counter-protests.
	Counter-protests.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So if we can keep scrolling down.
	Actually, I think I understand why I had it wrong.
	The date I had with respect to when you had the meeting with the Clerk of the Privy Council is actually the 9th.
	So I'm going to take you down to February 9th.
	Let me just find that there.
	And that's 41, page 41. Yeah, so at the top there you see That's the date, the 9th, and it says call with clerk, 800.
	And that's the clerk of the Privy Council, is that correct?
	I would assume so.
	Right.
	And you were there flushing out financials, financial compensation, employees' business, and P.S., are you referring there as Peter Slally or public safety?
	Let me just read it here.
	I'm not quite sure if that was public safety or Peter Sloughy.
	I'm guessing if it was the clerk is because it's public safety.
	Right, so feels organized.
	What's that word right after the period?
	Ambassador Bridge.
	Ambassador Bridge.
	Want to just read it out for me?
	Feel organized, Ambassador Bridge, stretched OPP, incremental success, OPS, working at incremental, very small things.
	Chief, 4876 hours to gather the troops.
	Right.
	So at the time, at least on February 9th, I take it that you thought the OPS was doing an okay job.
	Is that fair?
	Remind me of that date?
	That's February 9th.
	Not necessarily saying that they were doing a good job.
	Right.
	But they were making incremental...
	Well, that's what we've been shared.
	Right.
	But still, it was difficult to understand what those...
	Incremental gains were very small things that were done.
	And the clerk responded to you that we need to take this over.
	Do they know what this means?
	No, and I'm not quite sure.
	There's probably other people on the line.
	I just said the clerk said we need to take this over.
	I'm not necessarily speaking to me.
	Rarely do I brief the clerk alone.
	We need to take this over.
	Do they know what this means?
	And again, I think there's a lack of understanding of how it works when you look in that jurisdiction when a comment like that is made, just like when...
	Right, right.
	But the Clerk of the Privy Council is the highest ranking civil servant in the entire federal apparatus, right?
	They're the equivalent in provinces as what's called the DM, the Deputy Minister.
	She answers to the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister alone, right?
	My understanding.
	And so on February 9th, she's telling you that the federal government and yourselves, the RCMP, have to take over.
	Correct.
	And then we'll scroll back up to the top if I can.
	I'm just going to go through this in order.
	If we could go to page 11. So if you can scroll down there.
	And this is another briefing to the ministers.
	Is that right?
	I see ministers brief 1,300 hours, three points, yeah.
	Is that not what you're informing them, a police operational plan?
	They are being briefed on discussions that we've been having with OPS or that OPS would share with us.
	One of the concerns the Commissioner said earlier, how is this going to end, when it's going to end, was asked frequently for anything we had on the planning side, we'd brief up to the Ministers to inform them that there is something that we don't always have access to, but there's discussions that there's plans ongoing.
	Right.
	And is it not fair to say that throughout this protest that the political executive and the executive branch of the federal government We're asking you for operational plans and even asking you to give the operational plans of the OPS to them.
	So, I will defer to the Commissioner on this one, but my dealings with the Deputy Ministers and the Ministers, never once did they ask for the operational plan.
	Okay.
	We kept them updated on the work that's being done.
	Commissioner, do you have anything to add?
	We were never asked to give any operational plans.
	We did brief...
	Generally, that there was a plan, but we never went into the...
	I didn't get briefed on the plan until February 10th, I think it was, or February 11th, but we didn't ever give them...
	They never asked for the plan.
	And can I take you down now to page 25?
	And if we can just go to the top, page 25, the first thing.
	What meeting is this?
	Pre-meet SBE?
	What date is that?
	This is from the 5th.
	Okay.
	So it's pre-meet SSE assistance with Alberta.
	Probably key things that we had to look at for the pre-meet with SSE.
	Okay.
	I'm not sure if it was internally or with deputy ministers.
	I'm not sure.
	Right.
	And if we can just scroll down to where it starts with OPP.
	And it states here that OPP offered its legal expert.
	Worked IPRWASH hearing that the OPS is priority for political reasons.
	So, is that the offer from OPP?
	They offered the RCMP legal counsel because of political interference concerns they had?
	No, not at all.
	What that was is trying to muster the people together that had the expertise, that had the knowledge, that have worked on several key incidents, and in this case is the result of what came out of the IPRA-WASH inquiry to help them.
	Right, and that's to help the RCMP?
	No, it was to help the OPS, Ottawa Police Service.
	Okay, so...
	We were in assistance to Ottawa Police Service.
	Right, and so the OPP had relayed to you that they had concerns with political interference.
	I'm not quite sure why I put the pivoting for political reasons.
	I'm not quite sure why I put it there.
	Well, the Ipperwash proceeding was about that, partly.
	And it's like one of the main things, and as I understand it, one of the main reasons that the political executive in Ontario wouldn't get involved in this matter, because it was against the principles set down in Ipperwash and police independence.
	So the OPP is offering legal experts to deal with police independence.
	And so why would they do that if they didn't have a concern with political interference, sir?
	So I'm not aware, fully aware of the IPRWASH.
	I didn't read the report.
	And what I can say is that what was offered there from the OPP was just assistance with third person who worked on the IPRWASH inquiry for lessons learned.
	That's all I can say.
	I can't go in for, because it was political reasons.
	All I know is they were offering up resources to assist.
	You're over your time already.
	Sir, this is 113 pages of notes.
	I would like a little bit of extra time.
	These notes were not dealt with in the statement of the witness because they are a different set than the ones that the Commission had dealt with, which is 8074.
	These were not uploaded or provided to the parties until Remembrance Day, and we found them last night.
	And I understand the Commission wasn't able, in my view, to deal with these issues only because they were using another set of notes.
	And these notes are a contemporaneous outline and timeline of this witness's evidence of what happened.
	They are extraordinarily relevant material, and I would ask leave to be able to finish the examination.
	They are the same notes, I believe, as the other set of notes.
	There's just a bit of highlighting, but it's the same text as I understand it.
	But in any event, there are 16 other people who want to question this panel, and it's a matter of organizing your exam.
	I must say I didn't interrupt when you were examining about the...
	Proceedings in Nova Scotia, but that was not exactly relevant for this hearing.
	Right.
	If I could take, then if I could ask this, I'll finish up.
	If we could go to page 38 of this document.
	And so this is another meeting, if we can scroll down.
	And it says 1235 M3.
	I take it that's Marco Medicino.
	That's the minister.
	You call him M3?
	Yep.
	Okay.
	And there he's discussing about changing the posture when it comes to provincial engagement and what OPP would contribute.
	And then Blair goes on that it doesn't show How the chief will essentially base it on not having a plan.
	In his opinion, the chief of the OPS is not going to get the resources that he requires from the province.
	Is that fair?
	Can you scroll up before that?
	Before Minister Blair?
	Minister Minichino?
	Okay.
	Any other questions?
	Sorry.
	So, is he saying there to you that...
	The plan from OPS, it is such that the Chief will not receive the resources he needs from other Ontario Police Services.
	That's what he tells you?
	Correct.
	All right.
	And if we can scroll down to the next page, please.
	Who is the individual right there with CIMAS that says concentrated effort to make this country look bad start to midterms?
	Who is that?
	Who is CIMAS?
	It would be Minister O 'Regan.
	Minister O 'Regan, okay.
	So he tells you that, I take it, that the convoy and the protesters are a concentrated effort to make the country look bad?
	That's what I wrote down on comments that were made, yeah.
	Okay.
	And I'm almost finished, sir.
	If we could please go down to page 45, please.
	And scroll down.
	And there you highlight that the President will be calling the PM pressure to seek additional resources.
	Who relayed that to you?
	That was in the call of the pressure to release additional resources.
	That's something that I put down in a sense that it was in relation to the Windsor Bridge where there's concerns with the duration of the blockade.
	And I just put down seek additional resources ready to give.
	To give the assistance required for it.
	Right.
	And then just to page 49, please.
	If we can scroll down.
	So, this is the meeting from the 10th of February with the Minister's briefing.
	Again, that's the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
	And I take it that the Minister of Public Safety states to you that the intel they're getting is not sufficiently timely, is not sufficient or timely.
	And to stop the protests and setting this up, view what is the plan and different for convoy.
	Can you read that last sentence there?
	Different phases coming to the realization that we're not responding fast enough.
	And what Minister Mendenciano was alluding to is we had these slow rolls, more specifically in the province of Ontario, that without having the right information, they were able to set up before we even knew that they were going to do so.
	And then Minister Blair canvases you question if exercised some jurisdictional change.
	Is that speaking to the policing?
	You're taking on a role.
	Is that fair?
	I'm not.
	I'm not.
	It doesn't ring a bell.
	Okay.
	And if we can scroll down then just to the next page.
	And this is the Intel overview.
	Is this your words here or is it somebody else's?
	Can you just go up for a second?
	That would be from someone else.
	Okay.
	And is it from, it says OPP on the side.
	Would that, would it be fair to say that's Commissioner Morris?
	That would have been a meeting.
	I wrote down OPP and OACP, a meeting that I believe is a meeting that was chaired by the Commissioner of the OPP with representatives of the Ontario Associate and Chiefs of Police Association.
	All right.
	And was there anyone from the federal government at that meeting?
	Other than the RCMP was present, I'm not aware of anyone else.
	Okay.
	And the intelligence that...
	Commissioner Morse provided you there, similar to what he's testified about before this commission, was that these were normal people and they were essentially resentment to the Trudeau government for COVID measures and multiple groups, etc., right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, and so can I take you down to this is February 11th?
	Okay, you're gonna have to wrap up.
	I've been...
	So, I will go then right to...
	If you can go to page...
	The one with, I believe it's the 13th.
	You actually had notes of the IRG meetings.
	65. We'll go to 65, please.
	Well, 64 first.
	There, Minister Blair discusses throwing Ottawa under the bus.
	That was your note?
	That was my note, correct.
	All right.
	And I take it when you're saying Ottawa, he's talking about the Ottawa Police Service.
	Is that fair?
	It's not the city of Ottawa?
	Correct.
	Right.
	So his plan on that date is he's intending to throw Ottawa...
	Under the bus being the OPS for any failures that have been dealt with with respect to policing.
	Is that fair?
	He could have made a comment during the meeting saying that he was not satisfied with the work that's being done by Ottawa Police Service.
	Okay.
	And then can I just take you to...
	Most of these notes are not word for word what was said.
	Sometimes just a quick recap of...
	And if I can take you up to page 62, please.
	And there you wrote, comment PM.
	I take it that that's the Prime Minister.
	And it says, regarding RCMP, they haven't done anything.
	Yeah, that was in reference to the overall blockades that were taken across, that was going on across the country.
	There was some, they were...
	Not displeased, but did not understand the speed and flow and what it takes when you're dealing with a demo.
	And that came across that they were not happy with how we were handling the different demos.
	Right.
	And this will be the last note.
	So page 67, please.
	And this is from the 14th at 9 o 'clock.
	This is the National Security Intelligence Advisor that you're meeting with, I take it?
	That's correct.
	Right, and that's Jody Thomas?
	At the time, yes, it was Jody Thomas.
	Right, and I take it there that for whatever reason you're recording what she's saying, and there on one of the points, measures put out Draconian, they will turn to us, everyone is using their authority that's been given, RCMP taking advantage of authority.
	What was that about?
	I'm not quite sure what I meant by that, to tell you the truth.
	Measures putting out...
	Right.
	And from the...
	And just for you, Commissioner Lucky, in ending this, it is the fact that in the...
	Excuse me.
	You're not giving the witness a chance to read the notes.
	He said he's not what...
	Sure what it says and he's trying to read it and you're moving on to something else.
	Right.
	If you're going to ask the witness questions, then let him have a chance to read it, please.
	I can wait.
	I can wait.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, no, I don't have any more comments on that.
	I'm reading it and I'm not quite sure what it was meant.
	That's how I understood the evidence as well.
	So Commissioner Lucky, you were present for both the February 13th IRG as well as the February 14th Cabinet Meeting.
	The...
	Yes, I think the cabinet meeting was on the 13th.
	So the IRG meeting, according to the text messages and the messages that we've reviewed, they never even asked you to speak?
	Definitely not at the cabinet meeting.
	What I did do, I don't think I spoke at either.
	I thought I did because I had speaking notes, but I did brief the minister before that meeting.
	Right.
	And the minister never asked you what your opinion was with respect to whether or not there was a Section 2 CSIS Act security threat.
	Is that correct?
	In respect to what?
	Whether or not there was a threat under Section 2 as defined in the CSIS Act if there was a threat to the security of Canada.
	No, he would have to ask CSIS.
	Right.
	And CSIS, you're aware, told him that there wasn't.
	That's what I've been told.
	Thank you.
	Those are my questions.
	Okay, thanks.
	Next is the Ontario Provincial Police.
	Good afternoon, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner.
	My name is Chris Diana.
	I'm counsel for the OPP.
	We've heard some evidence from Commissioner Carrick That Commissioner, he worked very closely with you throughout the convoy time period.
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	And we've seen some of the text exchanges between you and him.
	So is it fair to say that you either spoke with him or texted with him pretty much every day during the course of this event?
	Very often, yes.
	And it's fair to say that you worked together to help support former chief slowly in trying to manage the Ottawa event, correct?
	Yes.
	And in particular, Commissioner Karik had probably more kind of one-on-one dealings with Chief Sully than you did.
	Is that fair?
	Yes.
	And ultimately, your mutual cooperation with Commissioner Karik helped lead to the development of the integrated planning team.
	Is that fair?
	Yes.
	Where both provided subject matter experts to make sure that there was a way to resolve the Ottawa.
	Occupation.
	Is that fair?
	Yeah, that was our goal.
	Now, I believe it's in the institutional report that at no point did you ever ask for the invocation of the Emergencies Act, correct?
	Correct.
	But you were asked, though, what tools would be useful, correct?
	Yes.
	So we've already seen that document, but I want to bring it up again.
	So if we can look at pb.nsc.can403256, please.
	Thank you.
	All right, now we've seen this already today.
	If we can scroll to the bottom and see what the genesis of this was.
	It's an email from Mike Jones, who I understand is the Chief of Staff for Minister Mendicino, is that correct?
	Yes.
	And this is sent to you February 13th at 7.25pm.
	And there's a section that's blacked out there.
	I'm not entirely sure why.
	The reason for the redaction is not entirely made clear.
	But my understanding is that you were asked to speak about two things.
	You were asked to give some information on what tools would be useful, and you were also asked questions about critical infrastructure.
	Is that correct?
	Yes, I believe so.
	And as you can see, obviously there was a...
	Timing was important here because, as it says, quick follow-ups before cabinet.
	Now, what was your understanding of when that cabinet meeting would take place?
	Well, 7.25 p.m., I thought, I'm sure, I think the cabinet meeting was that night, so.
	Sorry, I can't hear you.
	I think that cabinet meeting was that night, so I'm not sure.
	I thought it would have already been.
	In progress, or obviously it wasn't, I'm not sure what time the cabinet meeting was that day.
	Okay, but regardless, your understanding was that this was a very time-sensitive request.
	Is that fair?
	Everything was time-sensitive, yes.
	Sure, so we can scroll to the top.
	We'll see that you responded at, I guess, 1247 a.m., so approximately five hours later.
	Is that correct?
	Yeah.
	I'm not sure how those times work.
	This is one of those cases where you need to subtract 5. Subtract 5, yeah.
	Oh, thank you.
	I was going to say I'm never up past 10 o 'clock, so I'm surprised I would have responded.
	I had figured that issue out for the text messages, but okay, so that applies to this as well then.
	If we scroll to the bottom.
	I just want to make sure I'm clear on the time.
	So that says 7.25 p.m.
	Is that actually 7.25 p.m. or is it mine?
	Yes, it's only where it has the plus 0000.
	Oh, I see.
	So in the same email exchange, you've got two different ways to figure out the time.
	It's usually just the top email you have to do it on.
	All right.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you.
	That's very complicated.
	All right.
	So then let's go to the top.
	So the email was sent from Mike Jones, 7.25, and your response is at 7.47 then.
	Would that be?
	So you responded almost right away?
	Right away, yeah.
	Okay.
	So I take it that in that time period, you clearly wouldn't have had an opportunity to consult with other law enforcement agencies about what tools might be useful.
	Is that correct?
	No, we had already consulted within our organization to the commanding officers.
	I'm not sure if we were able to consult outside of the RCMP because of cabinet confidence.
	Okay, well, I want to get to that in a minute, but let's backtrack a little bit, because I want to ask about the initial request from Mike Jones.
	You were being asked for advice on what tools would be useful.
	Was it your sense when you received that email, either from that email or from conversations you had around the same time, that they were waiting on your advice on these issues, or was it your sense that they'd already made up their mind that they were going to invoke it?
	I'm not sure what they were thinking, but just given the time, it was a very quick turnaround.
	I would not have put that together off the top of my head.
	I would have got that information.
	That information was already established.
	If you look, it's quite detailed.
	I wouldn't have just been typing that off the top of my head.
	I would have got it from somebody, and the fact that it was so quickly afterwards, I think that information was already in the queue somewhere else.
	And I wanted to ask about that because I haven't, there are a lot of documents, thousands of documents, and maybe I've missed it, but do you recall how that information came to you?
	This would have come through my people.
	Probably, I would have tasked that through to Deputy Commissioner Mike Duem.
	They would have gone to the...
	Especially the commanding officers in BC, Alberta, and Manitoba, where three of the big protests in our jurisdiction were, because they were dealing with the protests, and we wanted to know what authorities might be useful if they did invoke the act.
	We've heard from Commissioner Karik, and he was very clear in his evidence, that at no point did anyone from the RCMP reach out to him to ask him for his advice on what tools.
	Would be useful, and you have no reason to dispute that?
	No, I was actually kind of surprised, because in my mind I thought that we had, but obviously if he says that, then we probably didn't.
	Right, and so, and he said it very clearly.
	I can bring up the transcript if you wish, but...
	No, no.
	And certainly there's no documentary evidence to suggest that you ever consulted with him.
	You would agree, I take it, that because the OBP was involved kind of as a lead in Windsor...
	They were very involved in leading the integrated planning team in Ottawa.
	There were issues all throughout Ontario that the OPP had an important interest in what tools to be made available to it, correct?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	And that, in retrospect, would you agree that it would have been a good idea to have consulted with Commissioner Carrick so he could have given you his opinion on what may have been helpful?
	And like I said, I didn't...
	I did not, obviously, according to Commissioner Karik, consult with him.
	But in my mind, I thought there was consultation done with OPP and OPS, not at my level, because I wasn't doing the consultation in my own organization.
	Some other people were doing that.
	But I assumed, wrongly, obviously, that when I asked for a consultation with the various agencies, that they were included in that, unless we weren't.
	Yeah, and the reason I find it odd is because, you know, you would communicate with them by text, by phone call.
	You could have simply just picked up the phone and said, well, Tom, I just got this email, you know, keep it on the down low, but because we don't, because there are confidences involved here, but are there any tools that the OBP would find useful here?
	No, I assume this list was the consultation of police.
	That's honestly, I thought this list.
	Where it came through my, obviously, my chain of command, but I assumed that that was part and parcel of consultation.
	So somewhere there was a breakdown in communication.
	OBP should have been consulted, but they weren't.
	Unless there was reasons why they couldn't.
	I'm not sure.
	Okay, and I know that whether it's you or the deputy, you mentioned there were two possible factors.
	One was timing, but of course, that could have been done very quickly with your relationship with the commissioner, correct?
	Yes.
	And the other issue was a matter of confidence, but we all know in policing that confidential information between police services is shared.
	And I take it that you would have trusted Commissioner Karik enough to have that conversation with him, correct?
	It depends.
	Like, cabinet confidence is quite, like, policing information is one thing, but because it's our information, so I can say that I can share that, but when it's not my information, I'm not it.
	At liberty to share.
	Right, but you could have done it another way.
	You could have said, Commissioner, there's some consideration about the Emergencies Act.
	Yeah, there's probably not.
	And so, because you had mentioned the Emergencies Act several days before, so you could have said that as a hypothetical.
	If Cabinet was to invoke the EA, are there any tools that would be useful?
	You could have done that, right?
	Yeah, I absolutely could have.
	Except I might be breaching Cabinet confidence, so I don't know if I would have.
	Okay, but you referenced Emergencies Act possibility.
	I forget the day.
	Maybe it was February 5th.
	Yeah, and back then I called it the Emergency Measures Act.
	I didn't even know what it was.
	Right.
	Now, I might circle back to this.
	I want to make sure I don't run out of time.
	I have to make sure I get a couple of my points in here.
	I'd like to go to towing very briefly.
	And I've heard your evidence that...
	You weren't directly involved in that aspect.
	But I think, you know, there's been some back and forth and some questions, but there's a document that needs to go into the record that I need to put to you that I think will help clarify the issue.
	Do you know the name Sergeant Kirk Richardson from the OPP?
	No.
	He was one.
	We've heard from Carson Party that he was one of the subject matter experts on the integrated planning team who was responsible for towing.
	If you can...
	Mr. Clerk, put up the document pb.nsc.can.405777.
	All right, so you can see that there's an email exchange here between some folks in the RCMP, Kelly Bradshaw.
	Deputy Commissioner, do you know who Kelly Bradshaw is?
	Yeah.
	Kelly Bradshaw was the RCMP member responsible for Financial Crime Unit.
	And I believe there's already been reference to Mark Flynn.
	If you can scroll down, please, so we can get the context of this email exchange further down.
	All right, so stop there.
	You'll see Kelly Bradshaw.
	This is an email to Kirk Richardson from the OVP.
	Hi, Kirk.
	I'm being asked the following question.
	Did OPP use Emergencies Act on tow companies yesterday in Ottawa?
	So if you can scroll up for the response, and this is from the subject matter expert that was dealing with this, and you can see his response on February 20th.
	He writes, hello, the tow contractors used for the operations to clear the protest areas were approached to see if they would provide service.
	The heavy tow providers, two companies, both are contractors with the MTO.
	The light-duty tows were arranged by Ottawa Police.
	I am not sure what the arrangements were related to cost.
	I do not believe the EO was used to make them tow, but it was referenced in relation to protection and compensation if damage occurred related to the protest.
	Now, I take it you wouldn't have any information to contradict that from the subject matter expert?
	This is the first I've seen this information.
	And you have no reason to doubt the accuracy of that?
	I can't refute it or accept it.
	I have no idea.
	I've never seen this information.
	Okay, that's fine.
	I want to take you to your witness summary, please.
	And the reference for that is, I have it written somewhere.
	If we can go to the RCMP witness summary, which is WTS 69. And go to page 24. And again, this is just another loose end that I want to tie up because it's important to have all the facts before the tribunal.
	You'll note that there's a reference to the theft of about approximately 3,400 firearms from Peterborough area.
	Do you remember that incident?
	Yes.
	Now, your witness summary doesn't make a reference to the fact that...
	Those firearms were recovered about two days later.
	You will recall that, correct?
	Yes.
	And so I think it's just important for the record that we hear acknowledgement that, well, that was a matter of significant concern at the time.
	It was resolved within two days, correct?
	Yes.
	And that, in fact, you told the incident, and I'm not going to bring the minutes up unless you want to see them, but because it was an important issue, you made sure that you told the incident response group the next day, That the guns had been recovered.
	Do you remember that?
	I believe so, yes.
	Because you did not want to leave the mistaken impression that there were 3,000-odd guns out there.
	And so that was important to make sure you cleared that up.
	Correct?
	Yes.
	It wasn't in your witness summary, the conclusion.
	I wanted to make sure that was on the record.
	Now, if I can go to...
	Going back to the consultation piece, if they may have a few more minutes yet.
	One minute is the way I have the count, but...
	Sorry, David.
	If we can go to page 22. Second paragraph, next paragraph down.
	Okay, so it says Commissioner Lucky sought input and other police agencies.
	Here you talk about seeking input from different divisions.
	You've spoken with that already.
	And one of the questions, and a question that I really wanted to ask is that when you consider the extraordinary nature of the emergency Do you agree that that should be kind of clearly set out in writing so we can keep a record?
	There was a thousand things going on that we could have kept record of.
	Absolutely.
	You can never, I guess, you can never over-record, but it wasn't kept.
	No, but I mean, I think that it's, and I ask the question because it's not entirely clear who was consulted, when they were consulted, and what they were said.
	And again, for future reference, it would be helpful, wouldn't it, to have that?
	Because we have a consultation report filed by Government of Canada that talks about consultation with the political leaders.
	But what I'm putting to you is it would also be helpful to have that kind of record on law enforcement consultation.
	Yes, I would agree it would be helpful.
	All right, well, thank you.
	I appreciate your time.
	Okay, next I'd like to call on the Ottawa Police Service, please.
	Good morning, or good afternoon, Commissioner Luckey and Deputy Commissioner Duhame.
	My name is David Mijakovsky and I'm a lawyer for the Ottawa Police Service.
	Commissioner, if I can start with you.
	You are on record as saying that you do not view the invocation of the Emergencies Act as a failure of policing.
	Is that fair?
	Did I say that again?
	That you're on record as saying, I do not view the invocation of the Emergencies Act as a failure of policing.
	No, I agree.
	Right, you agree with that.
	And that's because, as I understand it, this was a very unique and fluid situation, and what happened in Ottawa was very different from what was seen across the country, correct?
	Yeah, it was the first of its kind.
	And I also understand, Commissioner, that you are a trained POU commander.
	Yeah, dated, but yes.
	And although you have a very lengthy history in law enforcement, I think this was the first time you saw a protest such as this one as well.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	In one of your key message updates, and I won't turn it up.
	But I don't think it's contentious.
	But it was your February 3rd key message update.
	You talked about the convoys returning for the weekend, which we know was a phenomena that occurred.
	And there was a discussion of farm equipment.
	And you said at the time, look, there's no bar on farm equipment from coming into the city, and that there have been convoys in the past with farm equipment downtown in Ottawa.
	Yes.
	Deputy Duhame, I understand that the NCRCC was stood up for this event, correct?
	Yes, it was stood up around January 28th, I believe.
	And the RCMP was part of that NCRCC?
	Correct.
	The RCMP and many other partners.
	And it is used as a hub for intelligence that goes on for the event?
	Not just intelligence.
	It's a coordination.
	It's a command center that ensures coordination with different partners throughout the table.
	As I mentioned earlier, you could have Ottawa City Transport that's there, paramedics, fire department, services of the village snow.
	That's what it's Quebec and other partners that are there so that there's a coordinated approach every time there's an action taken on the scene.
	But included within that, I believe, was a hub for intelligence.
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	Commissioner Lucky, my understanding is that the RCMP followed the convoys across the country and in fact provided on-the-ground information to the OPP when the convoy crossed from Manitoba into Ontario.
	Yes.
	And that information then was funneled through a JIG, a Joint Intelligence Group?
	Yeah, or a SIG.
	I don't remember which one.
	And Deputy Duhaime, you indicated, I believe in your witness statement, that the OPS had the same intelligence as the RCMP, correct?
	Through our Combined Intelligence Group.
	That's my understanding.
	And I believe...
	You also indicated, Deputy, in your witness statement, that when it became clear that the convoy was coming to Ottawa, police agencies began to share intelligence, including that through Project Hendon, correct?
	Yes, and I think the sharing started actually before that, but I believe it started before that.
	Commissioner, you were, and both of you, I guess, were part of a panel that was interviewed by the Commission, and I think there were several of your colleagues that joined you, Deputy Commissioner McDonald, Deputy Commissioners of Lockheed, Deputy Commissioner Brennan, and Liam Price, the Director General, correct?
	Yes.
	And there was a discussion with your colleagues, I see in that summary, about the social media messaging of the convoy and the statement to the effect that there was some social media messaging saying that they wouldn't leave.
	Until the mandates were lifted.
	And Deputy Commissioner Brennan stated that the RCMP had concerns about the reliability of that messaging because many protest groups use social media messaging as a diversion.
	And you didn't disagree with that, correct?
	Yeah, it's his opinion on that.
	I had no opinion on that.
	And you didn't disagree when he said that, did you?
	Yeah, I was agnostic.
	In fact, you said in response that there were different groups here as part of the convoy, and they were not all on the same page, correct?
	Yes.
	I believe, Commissioner Luckey and Deputy Commissioner Duhaime, you both expected, you indicated...
	In the witness summary, that some protesters might stay in Ottawa until the Monday, January 31st, which is when Parliament was returning to session, correct?
	Yes.
	Correct.
	And initially, and I can take you to the document if it's necessary, but there was a PCO call on January.
	Actually, it might be helpful if we turn up the document.
	Mr. Clerk, it is ssm.can.nsc402591.
	And if we could please go to the first page.
	And if you'll see the third...
	Bullets under four lanes of work.
	Peaceful event.
	Do you see that?
	Yeah.
	And if you, sorry, actually, if you go down to the third large bullet where it says non-threat, just underneath that, yes, Sergeant at Arms, PPS, OPS, RCMP, all seeing peaceful event, no indications otherwise, but watching the chatter, correct?
	And that reflects what you knew at the time?
	I don't know what date this is referring to.
	Sure, if we can go up to the top, I believe it was January 27th.
	Yeah, the convoy hadn't even arrived yet.
	Yeah, oh, okay, within our events, yeah, as it was crossing, yes.
	Apologies, David, for the government candidate.
	Again, it's the minus five hours thing, so I think we're at the 26th in the evening.
	Okay, thank you.
	Yes, so if we can then just scroll down again.
	And if we can go to the second page, so this would be the evening of the 26th.
	So if we go to page two, the first bullet, you'll see just at the top, blocking of intersections.
	Protesters say they're not going to do that, but it's a lot of cars, which is what you understood at the time as well.
	They were not planning to block intersections.
	Where?
	Is this...
	I'm sorry?
	This is in Ottawa?
	Yes.
	Because they're not even in Ottawa yet.
	I'm sorry?
	Like, from what I understand, is that January 28th, the convoys...
	That's correct.
	But based on what you knew on the 26th in the evening, you understood that they were not planning on blocking intersections.
	In Ottawa?
	Correct.
	Okay.
	That I don't know.
	But if it's...
	Can I just add something here, sir?
	This is the first time I see this document.
	Yeah, I've never seen this document.
	I don't know who participated on the calls.
	I understand reading through the lines of the RCMP, but this is the very first time I see this document.
	Okay.
	Are you disagreeing with it, or you simply don't know?
	I wasn't there, and I don't want to question what's in there, but I wasn't there.
	Some of the things that I see, I can validate it through other intel that I had from my literature, but I don't even know who the representatives of the RCMP was on this call.
	Okay.
	You had no information to suggest at that point in time that the protesters were planning to block intersections.
	Is that fair?
	Not at that time.
	Right.
	Thank you very much.
	And I believe, again, I can turn up the document, Commissioner, but...
	I understand that as of just a couple days before the demonstration, there was some discussion at the RCMP about it was unknown how long they were saying, but there was some social media saying that they might stay until January 31st, which would be the Monday when Parliament was supposed to resume the session, correct?
	Again, I wasn't into the details of the intelligence, and maybe Deputy Commissioner Duhem would be better suited to answer that.
	I can show you the document if you want, Deputy.
	No, I do recall seeing a document saying that they were planning to stay until the 31st.
	And there's another document that I'm not quite sure if it's before they arrived or after they arrived that they didn't want to leave unless they met with the Prime Minister.
	So I'm not quite sure if it's before they arrived or after they arrived.
	Okay, so just for the records, it's pb.nsc.can408069, which I believe...
	It was the 25th, which indicated that some social media were saying that they would stay until January 31st.
	And if I could ask you, Mr. Clerk, to please call up pbnsc.can401225.
	drive And if you will see, if you go to the bottom of this email, you'll have to go to the third page and then just so you can see what it is.
	Yeah, so you'll see it's something that was sent to you.
	Hi, Brenda.
	He just shot me these questions.
	And then if we go above it, we'll see you ask for some bullet points.
	And you'll see anything you can give me would be great.
	And then you get some information in response.
	So this is January 28th.
	Okay.
	And so you'll see question 3A at the bottom was latest on what-if scenarios.
	What if truckers leave vehicles parked on Wellington beyond Saturday?
	And a series of other questions you're asked about, what if it turns violent, etc.
	And so if you go up to the first page, we see the answers to those questions.
	So you'll see, sorry, if you could just go to 3A at the bottom.
	OPS, I'm just on the third line.
	OPS has reached out to the hotel industry in the NCR, who have confirmed that accommodations are fully booked through the weekend, but appear back to normal as of 22-01-31, so as of the Monday, correct?
	Yep.
	And so OPS, it sounds like, was saying that they've checked the hotels.
	Contrary to some other evidence we've heard, they're reporting that, in fact, the hotels are back to normal on Monday, correct?
	Yep, that's the information we received.
	And then if we look at the C, if we go to the next page, in the event that the protests turn violent, then there's a POU.
	Team available.
	The OPS has one.
	OPP has two POU teams.
	I believe Toronto was there and some of the other municipal police services were there that weekend as well with the POU team in case, correct?
	Yes.
	And fortunately those were not needed.
	And then if you go down to just below the redaction, we see that OPS and OPP-PLT are continuing to work closely with the organizers of the event.
	And it says collaboration between all security partners in the NCR remains strong.
	And that would include the RCMP as one of the security partners.
	Correct?
	Yes.
	Deputy Jaheim, I know that on January 30th, if we could please turn to pbnsc.can6033.
	three uh
	You'll see on the January 30th Intel update, this is an RCMP update, OPP-PLT you're now reporting, have it reported chatter that the end date of the event could be February 2nd, correct?
	So that would be the Wednesday?
	That's correct.
	You would agree with me?
	There were obviously very many trucks on the streets, and some of them we know traveled great distances to get to Ottawa, correct?
	That's my understanding of the group that were in the downtown core.
	And one of the things we've heard from various police witnesses and law enforcement officials in this inquiry is a concern about taking actions which can inflame a crowd and cause danger.
	And the need sometimes for police to show some restraint at the time.
	And that, as I understand it, is a standard practice in policing?
	I would say yes.
	Every situation is different.
	But there comes a point that you have to assess and reassess your positioning and plan, I should say.
	Sure.
	And so if I can ask you, I just want to get your reaction to this.
	if we can call up pb.nsc.can401154.
	And it's page seven.
	Commissioner, I wonder if I might have an extra five minutes.
	I'll give you a few minutes.
	And so if we can please go to page 7, the second to last bullet, as I want to get your reaction.
	Open sources are, this is, it did not occur, but open source reports are suggesting police are setting up roadblocks outside Ottawa, and such reports seem to fuel some truckers' agitation.
	And so you see...
	That can cause, you can see how something like that can fuel truckers' aggression if they believe that, correct?
	Yeah.
	Can I know what the document is, the entitlement of the title and the date?
	I'm just asking to just get your reaction to the statement.
	Yeah, it could.
	A police action sometimes could generate a reaction.
	Sure.
	And I also saw there was an email, and it's ONT5099, from the Provincial Security Advisor.
	And one of the things he noted at that time under...
	His assessment, he referred to the possibility of police stopping trucks from entering the city and noted that that could result in increased support or participation for the convoy.
	Does that make sense to you as well, Deputy?
	It could, but it's also speculative.
	Okay.
	You would agree with me that it could be a risk and it could inflame the crowd, correct?
	It could, like it could not inflame the crowd.
	So it's one or the other.
	The RCMP, you told us, was part of Intersect and was also part of the NCRCC, and in that context would have access to the OPS traffic plan, correct?
	Yeah, that's where the coordination takes place.
	And you're aware that the plans, that the traffic plan and the instructions that were sent out to the convoy participants clearly showed that there would be some convoy staging areas?
	On Wellington, correct?
	I did not see the plan as it was rolling in.
	Okay.
	You're not disagreeing, though, that that information was available to the RCMP just as it was to the convoy organizers, and it showed that there would be some staging of vehicles on Wellington, correct?
	What I will say is that when I was initially briefed on the file, I wasn't aware of any stoppage in the downtown core, more of a slow roll.
	And if that's changed over the course of the negotiations with the organizers, I wasn't made aware of it.
	But I will agree that any intel on the situation downtown would be shared under the NCRCC and the Combined Intelligence Group.
	Okay, if I can just ask you now to go to pbnsc.can402476.
	Six.
	Six.
	And just while that's being called up, Deputy Jaheim, in your joint witness statement, On page 10, the second last paragraph, you talked about a call on January 31st where OPS stated that it wanted to launch aggressive enforcement between February 4th and 6th, and you felt that they didn't have the resources or the plans to support that.
	Do you recall that?
	I recall the conversation, and it was reported to me.
	It was briefed to me by I forget who, but they were tending and launching.
	An operation on the weekend of the 4th, and the concern that was brought to my attention is that it doesn't seem to be a plan, no one's aware of what's going on, and there's no maintenance portion after you've cleared the area.
	That's what was reported to me.
	And the concern about enforcement, I'll show you this document, is on February 9th, if we go to the second page, Yeah, there is actually, I guess if you start at the first page, so you'll see, just so that you can see where we are, just if we could go up, please.
	Yeah, so you'll see under background, February 8th, RCMP were advised that the OPP was attending Ottawa to assist.
	Then third bullet, February 9th, OPP and RCMP Superintendent Liu attended to OPS to assist in the development of a plan.
	And then at 1 o 'clock at 1300, there was a concept document that was provided.
	And then if you scroll down and then go to the following page, you'll see...
	Just at the top.
	And so this is, again, the concern about prelimit taking enforcement action when it may not be appropriate.
	And it says, continuing in the meeting with less than 24-hour notice to partners and against the advice from the RCMP and OPP, the OPS chief announced that enforcement action was to take place on February 10th, beginning at 6, and then set out what it was.
	And then current situation, you see that it was then delayed.
	There was no kinetic plan.
	And so under the analysis, we see RCMP expressing concern about it not being a viable plan.
	Do you remember that?
	I do recall being briefed on that, correct?
	And I guess...
	We're well over time now.
	Thank you.
	I'll just finish off.
	I guess that concern about taking action before there's a full plan and the absence of a plan was something that I continue to see Deputy Duhame and Commissioner Luckey in both of your notes where you threw out your key message reference.
	There isn't a viable plan here, up until the very end when the integrated cell becomes involved.
	Is that correct?
	We were not ever shared a plan, so I couldn't say if there was a plan or not.
	Okay, certainly you reported at your key message meetings, and I don't have time to turn it up, but the documents are in the record, that you reported that there was no plan that you were aware of and it was never shared with you.
	Yes.
	And you did as well, Deputy?
	Yes, correct.
	And it's in your notes as well?
	It is.
	Thank you very much.
	I do have more questions, but I am out of time.
	Thank you very much.
	Well, over time.
	I gave you more than five, so you've done well.
	Next, I'm calling on former Chief Sloli's counsel, who generously gave up part of his time.
	That, Commissioner Lucky, Deputy Commissioner, that is this Commissioner's warning that I'm not getting that back.
	So, I'm Tom Curry.
	Let's see what we can do in the 15 minutes that we have together.
	This was a difficult problem.
	Yes.
	Yes, I agree.
	More difficult problem than either of you have faced in your policing careers.
	At least of this kind.
	Do you agree?
	I agree.
	Yes.
	Commissioner?
	Had a lot of difficult problems, but not this kind.
	Yeah.
	This one is...
	Well, you've touched on it when you speak about the Emergencies Act or its predecessor.
	The first time in your careers, either of you, where the Government of Canada has had resort to legislation of this kind, right?
	Obviously.
	Now, I want to speak for a moment about the circumstances that faced the City of Ottawa and the Ottawa Police Service, because you were both involved, among other jurisdictions, in dealing with the problems that were here.
	You knew Chief Slowly before he took this command.
	Is that true?
	Yeah, not very well, but we had occasion to meet.
	And did you know, Deputy?
	No, I didn't cross paths too slowly.
	Did you know, either of you, did you know of his work in the City of Toronto, in the Toronto Police Service or internationally?
	I heard of his work with the Toronto Police Service.
	Okay.
	And like the two of you, he came to this role with a very long experience in policing.
	You knew that?
	Yes.
	And he came also, you knew, presumably, just in watching the...
	The police services.
	He came with a change mandate.
	You knew that?
	I wasn't aware of his mandate when he arrived.
	Commissioner, you knew that.
	Yes.
	And a change mandate that was fixed at least in part on issues that were challenges for the Ottawa Police Service in terms of racialized communities, community policing and the kinds of things about which he was very experienced.
	Yes, I didn't intimately know, but I knew that I touched on some of that.
	And because you've probably had enough of these kinds of challenges in your own command, that makes leading a police service an extra special challenge, correct?
	Yes.
	And in the circumstances in which Chief slowly found himself, I think you've both touched on this.
	There was enormous pressure brought to bear upon him leading this service at the time of the convoy protest, correct?
	You observed that?
	I originally would say I can't imagine the pressure he was under, but I could.
	And he was under a lot of pressure to succeed.
	Yes, and obviously, Deputy, you saw that too.
	because he had the worst possible position, if you think about it.
	Every person in the country had an opinion about what he should be doing, first of all.
	Some of those elected officials.
	elected officeholders.
	You reviewed with my friend Mr. Miller some of the notes that came to you through the federal cabinet.
	Cabinet ministers were themselves frustrated about what they thought was inaction by the Ottawa Police Service in the first few days, correct?
	Correct.
	And the provincial government?
	It felt similarly to your observation?
	Yeah, I think that was the general consensus.
	And obviously, here in Ottawa, the elected officials of the Ottawa City Council, the Police Services Board, the residents, similarly felt enormous frustration that their city had become the site of this particular protest against the federal government's mandates, right?
	Yeah.
	And it was also obvious, wasn't it, at least to you as experts in policing, that there were no solutions.
	That could be had at least within the resources of the Ottawa Police Service, right?
	It was overmatched.
	Within existing resources?
	Yes.
	I would say that's correct.
	Commissioner, obviously?
	Yeah, I'm just thinking it through because I'm thinking from the beginning through the end of the convoy, depending on situations, but generally, yes.
	Yeah.
	I mean, well, you can do the count.
	It took essentially a doubling, more than doubling, of the entire police service to make this work.
	And it would have been obvious if the protesters, particularly because, as you've described, it ebbed and flowed and the protest grew and gathered momentum.
	The Ottawa Police Service simply did not have the human power to deal with a public order operation.
	To remove the protesters.
	Is that obviously true?
	Again, it depends on what part of the protest I look at, because early on, depending on if there was a different plan, I'm just surmising.
	When you're asking me to say that, I don't know the makeup of the Ottawa Police Service.
	Okay, that's fine.
	Deputy, you knew that they didn't have the numbers.
	Based on what was there on the weekends, the numbers of people that were there, I think, to me, it was clear that they needed additional resources based on the numbers we saw on the weekends.
	And Chief slowly identified that issue early on and put up his hand to ask for help, correct?
	Yeah, he requested resources.
	And he requested them from the province, of course, and he requested them from the federal government to the RCMP, obviously.
	Yes.
	And there was, you agree, a period of time where the province and the federal government were seemingly at odds about who should be the first port of call for resources.
	Right?
	You knew that?
	I wasn't privy to that.
	I know at the beginning...
	The requests were coming directly to us, which was no issue, because that's how we operated.
	So it was no issue for those requests.
	But we don't have unlimited resources to keep providing resources unlimitedly.
	Right.
	And so the resources that...
	Am I right, though, that the view that you had, or maybe it was the minister had...
	Was it the first port of call for the Ottawa Police Service should be the Ontario Provincial Police?
	Yeah, I don't think anybody thought that at the beginning.
	It wasn't unusual that we gave resources and it was anything we could do to help.
	It was a big event coming to the city.
	So we weren't thinking in terms of that.
	It wasn't until maybe the second week that I was even privy to the order of affairs under the Ontario Provincial Police Act.
	So when the chief identified and had the support of the community leaders to identify that there were approximately 1,800 additional human resources required, then when that request was made, were steps taken immediately by RCMP to coordinate with the Ontario Provincial Police as to how that number of...
	Human resources could be mobilized to assist here in Ottawa?
	Well, there was definitely discussions and to determine what did that mean.
	What did 1800 mean?
	I know there was a general overview in the letter, but we didn't know if it meant that, you know, 1200 were coming from Ontario, 600, we didn't know what that meant.
	So we had to get more clarity.
	Right.
	And did you seek that clarity from the OPP?
	I'm not sure who sought the clarity.
	For us, to get the clarity was to look at the plan, what the plan showed and what kind of resources they needed.
	And I understand it wouldn't have been your job as a commissioner to look at a plan.
	You never saw the plans that the OPS had, right?
	You yourself.
	No, I did get briefed on the final plan, only because it was integrated at that point.
	Yeah.
	Deputy, you were also not, it's not your role to paw through plans of the OPS.
	No, I did see the last plan that went forward.
	Okay.
	But the goal command structure within the incident command response did see the plan.
	Right.
	So were you aware, were you made aware by your own people that the Ontario, that the Ottawa Police Service, rather?
	Had plans from the beginning to the end, including plans that Superintendent Liu of the RCMP used as part of the integrated planning process.
	Did you know that Superintendent Liu had built on the Ottawa Police Service plan, or no?
	No, I'm not aware of that.
	Okay.
	Commissioner?
	Didn't know that?
	Okay.
	So that the idea that the OPS had plans, I'm not going to show you them in the time I have.
	Would have been left to others within your command who had that responsibility.
	Fair?
	Fair.
	Okay.
	Now, of course, others have heard, the Commissioner has heard evidence about what happened in Windsor, and obviously the Windsor Ambassador Bridge blockade was a significant national security threat.
	Do you agree?
	I wouldn't define it as a national security threat.
	Okay.
	National security event?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And when that occurred, am I right that both the province and the federal government joined hands and mobilized resources immediately to Windsor to help relieve the Windsor Police Service problem?
	You knew that.
	Sorry, say that again?
	Yes, the federal government and the province agreed to mobilize resources to Windsor immediately to relieve that blockade.
	Well, it wasn't really the federal government, it was the RCMP.
	Okay, can I just show you, I'll just show you one thing if I could, Mr. Registrar.
	SSM-CAN-6068, and then the...
	The suffix is R-E-L-0-0-0-1, and it should be page two, just for your benefit, panel.
	And earlier you asked me if it was a national security event.
	It was an event.
	It wasn't an event of national security.
	Okay.
	Others have had their opinions about that.
	I just wondered where you were.
	That's fine.
	So page two.
	And just to orient you, this is a...
	A summary, a transcript of a call between the Prime Minister and the Premier concerning resources.
	And the Prime Minister makes a comment about the...
	Just scroll down.
	Maybe hold on just one second there, please.
	It's further down.
	Thank you.
	Yeah, there it is.
	There it is.
	RCMP, do you see it?
	Second to last paragraph.
	RCMP told me they don't have jurisdiction and said they need to get asked and they need something in there.
	I told them to be prepared to respond to any ask.
	And if they need more resources, we need to be there at whatever cost.
	The Premier says, I agree.
	I'll check with the Solicitor General.
	I understand they passed a regulation to have the RCMP act as local police.
	They did it for Ottawa.
	I'll check to see if it applies to the whole province.
	I'm not sure what that last part is.
	But did you understand from the Prime Minister, or indirectly from the Government of Canada, that the RCMP should do whatever is required to respond to the blockade in Windsor?
	No, they never came out and said that to us.
	And yet, those resources were mobilized via RCMP resources were mobilized even though no plan had been developed by the Windsor Police Service or the OPP at the time you were asked.
	No, we were told there was an enforcement plan by the OPP.
	All right.
	Two things, sir.
	I'm not aware of any political discussion at that level.
	When we got the request to have RCMP's tactical support group to head down to Windsor, we were told that there was a plan, and they were going to initiate the plan the following day, I believe, for two days.
	So the request actually went directly into our folks who are in Toronto, and we mobilized the troop that was up here in Ottawa to get them down there to assist.
	Right.
	But that's the point.
	You were told they were working on a plan.
	Nobody at the RCMP saw a plan, but you mobilized.
	And the suggestion is...
	Surely you could have done so in Ottawa.
	No, it's a completely different situation.
	This was 50 resources that we had within the province under the federal mandate.
	When we go outside the province and gather up 10% from each province, there's a lot of work that is done with that.
	There's a lot of requests that go with that.
	So when we're asked for it, when the number 1800 came up, that was when we said, what kind of resources, how long do they need to be here?
	With the Windsor plan, OPP was in charge of all public order teams, and they asked, Windsor is a priority.
	Can you move a public order team from the RCMP there?
	So it was a different dynamic.
	Understood.
	I'm sure we all understand.
	I'm sure Canadians will understand why it takes more time to get resources from one coast to the other into Ottawa.
	But don't we also understand that...
	They were needed here.
	Yeah, it wasn't a question of how much time it took.
	It's just a question of what day do they need to arrive?
	How long do they need to be here?
	Because we have to backfill those positions where they are.
	We have agreements under a contract with the provincial entities, so we have to make sure we respect those agreements.
	We can only take, like I said, 10%.
	So what kind of resources?
	How long are they going to be gone?
	When is the plan going to start?
	When is the...
	Suspected end date because we have to account for rotation of resources and rotation when you're dealing with planes and trains.
	However, it's a lot of logistics.
	So it's not as easy as us taking one of our public order teams that's based out of Toronto that was temporarily deployed to Ottawa to go to Windsor.
	Two different scenarios.
	Understood.
	Very quickly, can I just go to the issue of Chief Slowly and the plan that was the integrated plan?
	There has been a suggestion in this hearing from time to time that he delayed somehow the approval of the plan.
	Am I right that you understood that he had approved, first things first, he didn't have to approve it, but suffice it to say that...
	There was no question but that the plan had all the approvals that were required by the 12th of February in the afternoon?
	No, I was given information from Ottawa Police, the deputies.
	I didn't create this information.
	When we got briefed on the plan on the Friday night, February 11th, I believe Deputy Commissioner Bell was there, and he said we need to brief.
	The chief on this plan, and he needs to approve it.
	I said, great.
	Off they went.
	The next day, somebody followed up with him and said, okay, is the plan approved?
	No, I don't think they briefed him.
	They might have briefed him later on in the 12th.
	When we asked about it, I was told on the 13th that we were asking, why aren't we starting the plan?
	And he said, because the chief has not signed off on the plan.
	And I said, well, when is that going to happen?
	I actually reached in to Chief slowly and said, are you going to sign off on the plan?
	And he told me, I don't need to sign off on the plan.
	So I was given erroneous information, obviously.
	Got it.
	That's what I was just going to clarify.
	So whoever told you that, by the time you reached the Chief directly, there was no issue about that.
	Is that fair?
	Yeah, and that information was from members of the Ottawa Police Service.
	Can I just show you PB that one of the things that my friend showed you from Commission Council PB NSC CAN 8040 and it should be page 15. This was a document that you saw earlier.
	I just want to clarify because I think at that time you had confirmed you had the approval.
	Just scroll down if I think.
	Just stop there.
	Yeah, perfect.
	So do you see at, and I don't know whether this is the actual time, I think it's minus five hours, integrated planning cell met with Chief Slowly and some of his team for a briefing on the plan.
	He approved the plan.
	However, they are still working on blending their new mission statement and other aspects of their ops plan with the goal of setting it back.
	Just scroll down, please.
	The modification, do you see, Mark Flynn, the modification is simply at the high political element of the plan mission statement.
	Other witnesses have told the Commissioner that was not, that had nothing whatever to do with Chiefs.
	I don't even know what that sentence means.
	And then, Commissioner, I just have one last question.
	You're now three minutes over your time.
	I will be finished.
	Thank you.
	Okay, thank you.
	Thank you.
	CCLA, please.
	Yes, good afternoon, Commissioner Lucky and Deputy Commissioner Jane.
	My name is Eva Krajewska, and I'm counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
	I'd like to start off first with respect to the consultation that the Chief of Staff of the Public Safety, Minister Mendicino, did with you, Commissioner, with respect to your requests under the Emergencies Act.
	pb.nsc.can.403256.
	It was up earlier where he emailed you and asked you what the RCMP may request and you provided a list.
	The document is up for your reference, but I just want to confirm that Many of the requests that you made were restrictions on the right to public assembly, correct?
	Those are the main suggestions that you were asking for a cabinet to consider.
	I think some of it also had to do with tow trucks and making sure that there were no children in the area.
	That's correct.
	You're right.
	You also asked for cell phone disruption.
	And my understanding is that other than the cell phone disruption question, all the others were put into place under the emergency's orders.
	Would that be fair?
	I think so.
	Not maybe in the exact way we said it, but yes.
	And you understood that when you were...
	Making these suggestions or providing this advice that the declaration of a state of emergency does not suspend the operation of the charter, correct?
	Yes, correct.
	And you understood that to the extent that any of these suggestions would limit any charter rights, those limits had to be carefully tailored and not disproportionate to the objective of the measures.
	I would say yes.
	Those are complicated.
	And Commissioner Lucky, you did not provide or the RCMP did not provide any suggestions with respect to the economic measures that were enacted?
	No.
	We may have been consulted.
	Our financial people may have been consulted on process-wise, but not.
	I think we might have been part of the consultation process.
	I'm not 100% certain.
	So you may have been also consulted with respect to the economic measures that were enacted as well?
	I believe we were, but I'm not 100% sure.
	And if I take you to the economic measures that were enacted and their implementation, I understand that Mr. Denis Baudouin was kind of the person at the RCMP that took the lead on that issue?
	That's correct.
	And we have his notes at pb.nsc.can.408065.
	Mr. Registrar, I'm sorry, if I could ask you to put that up on the screen and I can repeat it if necessary.
	His notes, and I'm going to just go a little bit back in time.
	And go to a note on page three of this document.
	This is Mr. Baudouin's notes.
	And this is notes from a call on page three.
	This is before the declaration of the emergency, February 9th, 2022.
	Call with finance.
	First bullet, they want to enact law to be able to seize money from protesters looking at privacy law.
	Second bullet, we explained that Right now, monitoring FAI, NS, MC, POS is looking at specific on-the-ground offenses.
	They ask if law was made to be able to share info of the banks.
	I explained that if I need an order to execute seizing assets, told me RCMP should not be the only law enforcement body with new legislative power.
	Are you familiar with Mr. Beaudoin's consultations with the Ministry of Finance?
	Not exactly all the intricacies of his meetings.
	As I said earlier, I believe they're involved in the consultation process early on.
	This demonstrates that they are, but I'm not aware of all the meetings they had.
	I would have been briefed every second day of some of the progress that's going on.
	But you agree with Mr. Beaudoin's advice to finance at the time that the types of...
	Powers that finance was requesting required court orders or court orders for them to exercise those types of powers as at February 9th, 2022.
	The way I'm reading it is currently we need to execute judicial orders to seize any fundings.
	Currently, the way it stands before the invocation of the Act.
	Correct.
	But the act wasn't seizing, right?
	No.
	The act was freezing.
	I don't know if that changes anything.
	Well, I think that's a legal question.
	Yeah, I'm not sure.
	But at this time, to seize or I think even if I would suggest even to freeze assets, even to freeze assets, the RCMP or the bank would need a court order to do that.
	I don't know.
	I know for sure seizing.
	But I'm not sure about freezing.
	Okay.
	And once the economic measures were implemented after the declaration of the emergency, you'd agree that the RCMP became the central focal point for financial institutions and as a conduit of information to financial institutions with respect to information about designated persons?
	Correct.
	We were the conduit of information from the OPS and OPP to the financial services.
	And it was Mr. Denis Boudouin and Kelly Hughes at the RCMP who were the primary contact persons with financial institutions to provide them with information.
	I think it was Kelly Bradshaw.
	Correct.
	Denis Boudouin was the primary.
	I'm not aware of Kelly Hughes, but I'll take your word for it.
	Okay.
	And the RCMP, as you said, Deputy Commissioner, the RCMP would collect information, including names, license plate numbers, and other information from both OPS and OPP and provide that information to financial institutions.
	Correct.
	There's two processes here.
	The RCMP would obtain information from OPS and OPP on relevant criminal investigation that they have and would submit those names.
	to the financial services.
	And the other one is that the OPS and OPP provided some license plate numbers, some names of company that our team had to validate.
	And the validation process was no different than investigation.
	Go through the databanks so we can ascertain that that vehicle that belongs to whoever is still there and the person is still there.
	And then the information would be sent to the financial services.
	Another step to confirm the identity of the individual is when we were able to call the individuals to let them know that we do have a We did that when we could.
	Some people responded that they didn't want to leave.
	The names went forward.
	Some people responded that they couldn't leave, in which the names did not go forward to the financial services.
	And have you reviewed the Canadian Banking Association's witness statement ahead of this hearing?
	No, I haven't.
	Okay.
	The Canadian banking witness statement provides that it was the RCMP who clarified that the entities contained on the lists were designated persons under the emergency measures order.
	Do you have any reason to disagree with that?
	So, we have the responsibility to identify the individuals and transfer the information to the financial services.
	Financial services, it was up to them to decide if they would freeze any assets in their holdings.
	And the financial institutions also had an obligation to report back to the RCMP what financial instruments they froze, correct?
	I'm not quite sure.
	They did, but I'm not quite sure if it's written in the orders.
	Okay, well, you can take it from me.
	It's written in the order that they either have to report to the RCMP or CSIS, but it ended up being that they reported to the RCMP.
	Sorry, I just want to clarify.
	You are right in the sense that anything they had in their holdings, They were to inform the Commissioner of the RCMP.
	That's in the act.
	I'll take you to an example of a reporting letter from the Toronto Dominion Bank.
	This is pb.nsc.can408748.
	And this reporting letter is to...
	CPL, I guess, is that Corporal or Captain Hughes?
	Dated February 18th, 2022.
	Sorry, we're just waiting for it to come up on the screen.
	Mr. Registrar, do you need me to...
	Oh, no, we got it.
	Okay, so this is...
	That would be Corporal.
	Corporal, thank you very much.
	And if you scroll down, they're reporting pursuant to the order, and they list...
	By name and the type of accounts they froze.
	And if you just look at the types of accounts, they would freeze both checking accounts, savings accounts, if you go to the second page, joint accounts, business accounts, RSP accounts, and HELOC accounts of any person who was found to be a designated person.
	I want to ask you, are you aware that financial institutions expressed concern to the RCMP about the breadth of the orders?
	Were you aware of that?
	No, I'm not aware of it and we do not write the order and the responsibility of freezing any assets is the responsibility of the bank.
	We don't tell them what to freeze or how to go about it.
	Okay, well you understood that Mr. Baudouin and Ms. Hughes held multiple calls with representatives from financial institutions to Explain to them how the orders would operate and to answer any questions they may have?
	Yes, because when the order came into effect, there's no procedure or policy or ways of doing things.
	So it was left up to the RSMP working with the financial services to try and figure out.
	And that's why with the documents that were disclosed, there is an annex there as to the form that we would use to submit to the banks.
	Right.
	Based on the calls and the notes of those calls that have been produced in these proceedings, the financial institutions questioned whether the freezing should apply to joint accounts.
	They asked whether there should be a threshold to act, i.e.
	whether, you know, if someone had a de minimis amount of their account.
	They asked whether this applied to donations.
	And I think, were you aware that...
	They asked about the question of whether it applied to donations, and the RCMP said that they should not be pursuing donations.
	Not aware of the conversation of the exchanges, but I would imagine that the financial services would reach out to their legal team to determine what's in scope, what's not in scope, just as we would do if we're not certain with a certain element of the order.
	We would be reaching out to our legal team to see clarification.
	And you're aware that the order arguably also applied to credit unions and insurance companies?
	It did so, and insurance companies as well, correct.
	And that the RCMP exercised its discretion not to provide information to insurance companies?
	It did, and we have to be mindful that our folks, the team, had less than 24 hours to put everything together.
	And when you look at the timeline for the convoy, the very first packages that were provided to financial services was, I think, on the 17th.
	And on the 21st, we informed the financial services that there's nobody left.
	So it was only stretched out on four days.
	Very little time to get organized and to get a proper process in place.
	So both financial institutions and any SMP did the best they can, came up with something that was suitable for both.
	And the primary purpose of these financial measures was used as a method to disrupt and persuade people to leave Ottawa.
	Is that how the RCMP used these measures?
	That's correct.
	Disrupt and whatnot.
	It was such a short time frame.
	It was primarily used to deter the people and disrupt.
	Pivoting now, Deputy Commissioner Duhame, if I can take you back to the notes, your personal notes from the Freedom Convoy.
	This is pb.nsc.can408073.
	If we can go to page 58 of this document, this is a note from February 12th, so this is before the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
	If you scroll down, there's a note at 10:19 a.m., there's a note...
	Deputy Commissioner, sorry, if you could just read it out so that I don't mistake your handwriting.
	There is enormous frustration, and I might mistake my own handwriting, but there's an enormous frustration with law enforcement.
	Whatever promises were not fulfilled, and then I'm not quite sure, move around, protest, move around.
	I'm not quite sure what I meant by that.
	All right, and the next bill, let's separate?
	State and police, although the lines were crossed several times.
	Are you able to provide any context?
	With respect to this note, who was communicating to you?
	First, let's start with, who is communicating to you that there is enormous frustration with law enforcement?
	Or is this your own observation?
	No, these were notes taken from a meeting, and when I said separate state and police, although the lines were crossed several times, what I meant by that was not by elected official.
	But more having representatives from public safety portfolio, not at the elected level.
	People from PCO reached in directly to the chief of police saying what we could do.
	And I just didn't think that.
	I think it was a law enforcement matter and anything to do with briefing public safety or PCO would be up to the commissioner and keep the departments out of it.
	And so you say PCOEB, the Privy Council Office, reached out to Commissioner Lucky or to Chief Slowly?
	It was one meeting that they reached out to.
	I attended, the Commissioner attended, and it was with Mr. Slowly as well as other people on the phone.
	I just thought it blurred the communication lines, and what you see is you saw the Mayor getting a letter directly to the Minister of Medellin, and the question of resources or assistance should be dealt with at the policing level, and then we bring it up to our respective governments if needed.
	So you were expressing, you were noting concern in your notes that certain members of the federal public service may have been crossing the line between church and state, well, I'm sorry, state and police with respect to these issues?
	I don't say, I use that term, but I...
	It would be more relevant if it was an elected official, which wasn't the case.
	I just thought that not to blur the lines of communication, it would have been best if the commissioner, and this is my opinion, that the commissioner was a point of contact for any federal government department to brief.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	And my last question is to Commissioner Lucky.
	Commissioner, you mentioned in your examination in chief by commission counsel, You were taken to the February 13th IRG meeting and I understand from the minutes of that meeting that you attended the February 13th IRG meeting, correct?
	Yes.
	You had speaking notes for that meeting that included a statement that in your view or the RCMP's view, all available tools and legislation had not been exhausted, including charges that could have been laid under the criminal code, correct?
	Yes.
	And the IRG group is a group of select ministers brought together by the prime minister to help with the coordination of a Of an incident that is occurring, whatever it may be, correct?
	Yes, the ministers that are relative to the incident, I would say.
	Relevant, with relevant expertise to the issue, correct?
	Relevant, yes.
	And Commissioner, would you, like, the IRG has met for other incidents prior to these events, correct?
	Yes.
	And would you have felt...
	Free to speak up at that.
	Do you feel like you would be able to raise issues at those types of meetings?
	Or is it the type of meeting where you feel you could only be called upon to speak?
	No, if I needed to speak, I could raise my hand or I could just simply walk over and talk.
	Usually I was sitting next to the minister, so I could raise it through the minister.
	And that's the Minister of Public Safety, Minister Mendocino.
	Yes.
	Do you feel like it was important at that meeting on February 13th to inform those ministers of the fact that, in your view, existing legislation had not been exhausted?
	It was already brought through to Minister Mendoncino through his Chief of Staff.
	And it was in my speaking notes, obviously, which I don't believe now that I was able to speak to.
	But it was already brought forward, so...
	But do you feel like it would have carried weight?
	You're well over time, so you're going to have to wrap up.
	Commissioner, I really appreciate the indulgence you provided with me, and this is my last question.
	Commissioner Lucky, do you not feel like it would have carried weight for the ministers who are considering their response, including potentially considering invoking the emergency side, to hear it directly from you?
	It may have, but it was only part, even when I gave it to the Chief of Staff, it was only one portion of information amongst many information that they were dealing with in the invocation of the Emergency Act.
	When I brought it forward the first time, it was mostly for them to have all of the information when they made their decision.
	And having already given it to the Minister, I felt that even though I didn't get the opportunity at that meeting, it was already passed on.
	Thank you very much, Commissioner Lucky and Deputy Commissioner Duam, and thank you, Commissioner Rouleau, for the indulgence.
	Okay, next is the City of Ottawa.
	Good afternoon.
	My name is Anne Tardif.
	I'm one of the lawyers representing the City of Ottawa.
	Mr. Clerk, can I ask for us to pull up OPP 50601?
	Commissioner Luckey, this is an email exchange that you had with an officer out of BC.
	And if we could scroll to the bottom of that first page to start off with.
	A little bit lower.
	Yeah, there we go.
	This is an email from John Brewer with the RCMP.
	Why take it?
	It's out of BC to you, dated February 2nd.
	Do you see that there?
	Yes.
	And if we could scroll now to page two, and it's the second to last large paragraph in that email.
	There we go.
	Right there in the middle of the page.
	Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
	Do you see there, and Mr. Brewer is explaining to you that these types of protests leave very limited capacity for police to solve this situation without some movement by government to allow protesters to have a quote-unquote win of sorts.
	He goes on to explain what he means by that.
	In the interest of time, I won't read it all into the record.
	Do you see that?
	Yes.
	And if we can scroll up to the first page.
	Keep going.
	Right there.
	Thank you.
	You respond again on the second and you say, thanks for the great response.
	I already used a few of the items when I was briefing some of the ministers today.
	Thanks a ton.
	Did you brief the ministers?
	I'm assuming these are the ministers at least of public safety and emergency preparedness.
	Is that fair?
	And sometimes the Minister of Transport and the Minister of...
	Okay.
	Did you brief them with respect to that concept, the concept of the fact that the solution might require a potential outreach by government to create a win of sort for protesters?
	I don't know.
	I'd have to read the whole email to see.
	There might have been other things that I briefed them on that might have not been that, because it's quite a lengthy...
	It is, and I'm afraid I just don't have the time to take you through it.
	I can't pinpoint if it was just that.
	Sorry.
	Is it a reasonable proposition?
	Can I put that to you?
	No, because there's a ton of information in there, and when I've already used a few of the items, it could have been any of the many items in there, so I'd have to refresh my memory.
	I appreciate that.
	I'm no longer asking that.
	I'm saying, is the proposition that I read out, not did you brief it, but is the proposition that I read out, is it a reasonable proposition?
	It depends on the circumstances in the protest, but yes, it is.
	Yes, it is, depending on the circumstances.
	Yes.
	Okay, thank you.
	Sorry, I don't have the best hearing.
	No, that's okay.
	That's why.
	You explained, you both explained, but I think primarily you explained, Commissioner Lucky, that in Ottawa, the RCMP went from about 30 to then 50 officers per day, correct?
	Initially.
	Yes.
	And that obviously is over a period of shifts.
	So if it's a two shift, you might have 25 officers in the day shift, 25 in the night shift, correct?
	I don't know how they were deployed.
	Perhaps Deputy Commissioner Duam can assist.
	It varied.
	It varied from shift to shift.
	Okay.
	Some of them might have been all days, and then in the initial instance, we didn't get into that.
	Okay.
	Let me put it this way.
	The Ottawa Police Service has prepared, and we've seen in evidence, a chart of deployment numbers that has a total of RCMP forces per day hovering around 50 to 60 per day and not getting anywhere close to not hitting that 200 number that you were talking about into your evidence until after February 12th.
	Does that sound reasonable?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	I won't bring it up in the interest of time.
	Now, you explained earlier, again, this was Commissioner Luckey, that you did not need or that the RCMP did not need to see an operational plan before sending public order units or POU units to Windsor to assist with the OPP-led operation there.
	You recall that?
	No, partly because it was a specific ask.
	And it was explained to us what they were going to be doing and what type of resource they needed.
	And a public order team is unique because it's the size of the public order team.
	So it's not, we need it.
	Yeah, I understand that.
	I'm just asking if you recall, you recall that evidence, right?
	And did you listen to Deputy Minister Stewart's evidence yesterday by any chance?
	No.
	Well, one of the things he told us...
	And one of the things he reported to the SSE Committee of Cabinet was that the OPS plan was subject to review and verification by the OPP and others.
	And that was the case, right?
	When we became integrated with the integrated planning cell, yes, it was integrated.
	All of them participated.
	And that was really from...
	See, the integrated planning, Sal, that was really from February 8th on.
	That's the evidence we've heard of when they arrived in Ottawa.
	So from that point on, yes, subject to verification by OPP and others.
	Fair?
	Yeah, well, it wasn't verification.
	We had a briefing.
	I wouldn't call it verification.
	From my point of view, maybe others, like Deputy Commissioner Duem.
	But for me, I was just briefed on the plan.
	So if I may add something...
	The question of getting the right people together to review what's been done stems from an ask that came out for 1,800 people.
	And that's when their SMEs came together to say, okay, let's get together, let's have a look at the plan, exactly what we need, how many people we need, what skill sets we need, and that's when the ICC morphed in.
	But one of the reasons was exactly as to what resources they need based on the plan they have.
	So, the February 7th request for approximately 1,800 officers resulted in what you just described, Deputy Commissioner, a process where we got SMEs together from the OPP and the RCMP and, of course, the OPS to see what was really needed, verify the requirements, and that resulted ultimately in setting up the Intimated Command Centre on February 12th, correct?
	Yes, and I'll go to what was said previously, is that...
	There was a number that was thrown out, 1,800.
	No one knew where this number came out, and no one knew what skill sets were required, what type of individuals were looking for.
	And they had 1,000 police officers, some POU units, but what type of police officers did you need?
	That's what prompted a review of that ask in the plan itself.
	Fair enough, and I think you've explained that several times.
	I guess what I'm asking is...
	The RCMP wasn't going to fulfill that request until it had the information that you've just outlined.
	Fair?
	We were already mobilizing some of our folks because we know this was going to be big, but we wanted to wait to what the ask is from that plan.
	From the plan, in other words.
	From the review team.
	And from a verified plan, verified by yours and the OPP's subject matter experts.
	It was a collective effort of SMEs, subject matter experts.
	And I don't think it's, we wouldn't, we couldn't, we didn't know what resources to call up.
	Okay.
	Can we see how much time I have?
	All right, Commissioner Luckey, you described earlier today that the ministers, the federal ministers, were checking in to see what other resources were required and were generally offering to provide whatever assistance was needed to bring the occupation in Ottawa to a resolution, right?
	Yes.
	And during the convoy, you provided regular briefings to ministers.
	Deputy ministers and to cabinet, correct?
	Yes.
	Your role was to provide accurate briefings, right?
	Yes.
	And you couldn't provide them with all the information for a whole host of reasons, but you wanted to make sure they had the key facts, right?
	Yes.
	And Commission Council put to you that you reported on a number of occasions that the RCMP was fulfilling all OPS asks.
	Do you recall that?
	Yes.
	And then he also took you to the February 7th request for 1800 officers, right?
	Yes.
	And you've already explained some length, and I won't take you through it because I definitely do not have time, the process involved before you could send additional resources for enforcement purposes.
	But I think we can agree that the RCMP did not fulfill that February 7th ask or request until the enforcement plan was approved and almost ready to go.
	Is that fair?
	We did start increasing the resources because we knew it was coming, as Deputy Commissioner Duhem referred to.
	We started bringing people in, but we didn't get to that.
	Big number until we had to know which day the enforcement was going to start.
	Because if you recall, on February 7th, I think it was, did you say February 7th was a request?
	Yes.
	There was not even a start date in that plan.
	So we didn't, maybe the start date was February 13th, so maybe we did fulfill that request.
	Because I'm not even sure what the start date was.
	Okay.
	If you're asking for 1,800 resources on February 7th, my first question is, when do you need them?
	And if they said right away, well, I need to know what shifts, like I said.
	Right, and I think you both have explained that several times.
	My question is a bit of a different one.
	You told Cabinet and the ministers that...
	The RCMP had fulfilled all OPS asks.
	And what I'm asking you is whether it perhaps would have been more accurate to say that you had fulfilled all requests for frontline officers and were assessing the latest OPS requests for resources.
	Yeah, that probably would have been more accurate.
	Right.
	I think I have one more minute.
	And with that, I'm just going to conclude on...
	Do I have one more minute?
	I'll give you one minute.
	Oh, I was out?
	Okay.
	You were, and I won't obviously take them up, but you were taken to your team's chat, Commissioner Luckey, Deputy Commissioner, you were taken to your notes several references about, in your case, Commissioner Luckey, whether they were going to the, whether there was a decision to go to the province with respect to Peter Slowly.
	In your case, Deputy Commissioner, a comment by Minister Blair querying jurisdictional change.
	And that didn't trigger any recollection.
	You couldn't recall, neither one of you, the context for that.
	Commissioner Lucky, on February 15th, you had a meeting with OPP representatives in which you said that you had lost confidence in Chief Slowly.
	And you indicated that...
	You didn't want, you know, it might be time to look at a command change at that point.
	You didn't want this and you didn't think he wanted this.
	Is that fair?
	Well, we were at the point.
	It wasn't specific to Chief Slowly.
	It was specific to, we have this plan.
	We're coming up to the weekend.
	We need to work on this plan.
	I was told that it wasn't signed off.
	If we don't get this, we haven't got the plan signed off.
	It's time to move.
	It's time to enforce.
	I can't keep...
	I can't keep bringing resources in.
	I can't keep going across the country to get resources.
	We need to move.
	And literally, as I was speaking about that to OPP Commissioner Tom Karik in another meeting, Chief Slowly had resigned.
	And I take it that it's both your evidence that none of the federal ministers ever discussed, and none of the federal ministers nor Commissioner Karik prior to that ever discussed a transfer in command of the operation for Ottawa?
	No, they...
	When they were first discussing the Emergency Act, at that time I was calling it the Emergencies Measures Act, people were saying, if they can't do this enforcement...
	Can it go to the RCMP?
	Because again, there was this misconception that the RCMP being federal and national, that the next, if they couldn't do, if they didn't have the capacity to do it, would they bring somebody else in?
	And that's when we were explaining to them, that's not how it works.
	We're not here to, we had no interest in taking it over.
	It wasn't in our jurisdiction.
	The whole province, we have no jurisdiction.
	It's not our job to do that.
	We will assist in any way we can to ensure that Chief Slowly and his crew succeed.
	And that was my main priority.
	Thank you very much, and thank you, Commissioner, for the intel.
	Thank you.
	Okay, thank you.
	Next is the province of Saskatchewan.
	Good afternoon, Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner.
	My name is Mike Morris, and I'm counsel for the government of Saskatchewan.
	Commissioner, I think we've established that you did not speak at the February 13th IRG meeting or at the Cabinet meeting on February 13th.
	Is that correct?
	It appears so.
	And I'd like to show you an email that indicates someone else was substituted in for you at Cabinet.
	Registrar, can we pull up PB NSC CAN 403216?
	This should be an email at 7.51pm with the subject line.
	There it is.
	Minor changes to reflect.
	Another is presenting on behalf of you slash RCMP re-TPs, talking points for NSIA or Minister.
	And it's from Alison Whelan.
	I understand this is somebody that works with you, Commissioner?
	Yes.
	Okay, so this email then contemplated Jody Thomas from Minister Minichino delivering remarks instead of you then.
	Is that correct?
	Sorry, Jody Thomas?
	Sorry, as the NSIA?
	Yes, well, you're saying that she was asked to...
	Sorry, just if you can repeat the question.
	Well, I'm just asking if there was a decision that either the NSIA or Minister Mendicino would be delivering remarks that you would have given on behalf of the RCMP at the Cabinet meeting?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And I'd just like us to scroll down a little bit, right above the word Windsor on this first page.
	Keep scrolling.
	And it's the bullet right above Windsor.
	It says all the information I'm sharing below is current as of 5 p.m. this afternoon.
	So that would mean 5 p.m. on February 13th, correct?
	Yes.
	And I'd like us to go to the third page then and just scroll about halfway down.
	And there's a bullet in the middle of the page that says RCMP and OPP assembled the foremost experts to develop a strategic plan.
	Do you see that?
	Yes.
	So this is information that was provided presumably to the NSIA and Minister Mendicino then, is that correct?
	Yeah, these were my original speaking points that I would have passed on to Ms. Thomas.
	I guess my point is these speaking points reference the operational plan, the February 13th operational plan for either the NSIA or the minister.
	But I take it that plan wasn't discussed at Cabinet, was it?
	Like in detail of the plan?
	No.
	What you see is what would have been...
	Excuse me, Don Ray Nagard for the government.
	If you're asking what the ministers were discussing at Cabinet, that's obviously covered by Cabinet confidence and the witness couldn't speak to that.
	Okay, so she's unable to say whether the plan was mentioned by anyone at Cabinet, not deliberations regarding it, but just rather whether it was a subject of discussion.
	Is that the government's position?
	The discussions as between the ministers are covered by Cabinet conference.
	Okay.
	The agreement is that the discussion is not, but...
	Inputs, i.e.
	material that was put to the cabinet, is disclosable.
	And does that include an oral input then, Commissioner?
	I can look to the government, but I believe so.
	It's just the deliberations that are not.
	So, just to guide the witness and you in your questioning.
	I don't want to know about deliberations.
	I just want to know if there was any mention that the RCMP and the OPS and the OPP had a plan in place that was approved at the February 13th cabinet meeting.
	That's all I want to know.
	Yes.
	Okay, thank you.
	Commissioner, you've been referred several times to an email you had with Mike Jones, Minister Mendicino's Chief of Staff, that was shortly before the Cabinet meeting on February 13th.
	Do you recall that?
	Which email?
	Is it the one regarding the exhausting the...
	Right.
	Right.
	That you haven't exhausted all existing legal authorities.
	Okay.
	And then that's the next question I want to ask you.
	Did anybody say at the cabinet meeting that the RCMP and other police had not exhausted all existing legal authorities?
	Can you answer that for me?
	I'm not sure.
	Once again, just the wording of the question is problematic because you're asking if anyone at the cabinet meeting said something.
	And if it was said in a discussion between ministers, that would be covered by the cabinet confidence.
	If it was said by someone providing inputs to Cabinet, then it's not.
	Was it said by somebody providing inputs to Cabinet?
	That's what I want to know.
	I can't say for sure.
	Obviously, I wasn't speaking at that meeting.
	I would have to look at maybe inside these notes that you have up on the screen.
	If it's inside there, it may have been provided because these were given to the NSIA, but I'm trying to scroll.
	Okay, I understand.
	I'm going to move on and I want to pull up another document.
	It's PB NSC CAN 408074 and just these are Deputy Commissioner's notes just for reference.
	And I'd like to go to page 104, please, of the PDF.
	Deputy Commissioner, these are your notes, correct, from February 14, 2022?
	That's correct.
	They reference a meeting with the NSIA at 9 a.m., is that correct?
	That's correct.
	Okay.
	Who called that meeting?
	I would...
	I would say that it was probably called by PCO.
	Rarely do I engage the NSIA unless there's an ongoing matter that has to be briefed up.
	But it was probably called by PCO.
	Can you explain the words inevitable outcome at the first arrow and what that's in reference to?
	I I'm trying to remember what I meant by that because it's going back quite some time ago, but I'm just wondering if it's not with regards to the use of force that would be needed to bring this tent in.
	I think it might be that, but I'm not 100% sure.
	From your recollection, did the NSIA know about the operational plan which had been developed as of 9 a.m.?
	I don't recall ever briefing her on the plan with regards to the intervention plan because even on the 14th, we were briefed on the 13th.
	It was still not officially signed off until we had the final plan as we were moving closer to the weekend of the 18th.
	So I did not brief the NSIA with regards to the operational plan.
	I can add that there was nobody...
	There was a briefing of the existence of a plan, but nobody was briefed on the details of the plan.
	Okay.
	I want to pull up another document.
	It's OPS 3014566.
	These should be notes of Chief Slowly's scribe, and I understand that, Commissioner, you...
	I had a meeting, I don't know if it was virtual or in person, with Chief Slowly at 10 a.m. on February 14th.
	So if we can just scroll down a little bit, please.
	Okay, there we are.
	10 a.m. meeting with Commissioners Karik and Lucky.
	And where I need us to go just a little bit further down, just scroll a tiny bit further.
	Okay, please just stop.
	Now we have a bullet which says Lucky did not get Prime Minister briefed up on the plan.
	Prime Minister will be enacting the Emergency Measures Act.
	Advise for legal to review what the measures are.
	What's the process?
	Now, Commissioner, my question simply for you is it's a fairly straightforward one.
	Did you tell former chief slowly at this 10 a.m. meeting that the Emergency Act was going to be invoked?
	You know what?
	I do not have a recollection of that.
	I think I may have because it was inevitable and that I think I was briefed that it was in fact going to be invoked and so I probably would have mentioned that but I can't say for sure.
	I'm going back to my memory.
	But you have no reason to dispute what's noted here then?
	That's what you're telling me?
	Is that fair?
	No.
	What time is that meeting at?
	10am.
	It's very likely because I was meeting with both Commissioner Karik and Chief Sully.
	It could in fact be true.
	I can't refute it.
	I'm not sure how much time I've got left.
	I've got two areas and if I can only cover one, maybe I'll start with that.
	I just want to touch briefly on the freezing of bank accounts.
	My understanding is that the RCMP provided a list of names to financial institutions, but that it was up to those financial institutions to do with that list.
	Is that fair?
	Correct.
	We were the conduit of information for Ottawa Police Service and the OPP.
	It was a financial services responsibility to decide if they were going to freeze or not based on what we gave them.
	Okay.
	But would you agree with me that if they had a list for a designated person, you know, not freezing a bank account or a credit card on that list could constitute an offense?
	I would have to go through the Measures Act, but I think face value like that, it is.
	But again, it's at their discretion as to how to proceed if they're not comfortable with the information that we provide.
	And here's an example.
	We can provide information that we believe that the person is there, but if this person has a visa card and is somewhere in Canada, all of a sudden we have to go back and double-check and validate what we have.
	So the responsibility rests with the financial services to decide if they freeze or not.
	Right.
	It's an offence to make funds available to somebody participating in a demonstration covered by the Emergencies Act.
	Fair enough.
	Fair.
	And then that's a little bit of a heavy onus then on these financial institutions because they're facing potential charge if they don't freeze accounts.
	Fair?
	I didn't write the legislation or the orders.
	We just applied them.
	You're well out of time.
	You've well exceeded your time, so you're going to have to wrap up.
	I have one last area then.
	Can I have two minutes, Commissioner?
	Or not.
	If not, I understand.
	I don't want to take up all the time.
	No, you're over.
	We'll go on to the next.
	Thank you, sir.
	Thank you for asking my questions.
	Much appreciated.
	Thank you.
	Next is the National Police Federation.
	Good afternoon.
	My name is Nene Jones and I act for the National Police Federation.
	Sorry, I've just had my iPad closed up, of course.
	I'm going to ask you a couple of quick questions just to start off about the swearing-in of RCMP officers under the Ontario Police Services Act.
	So, very quickly, because we have heard a lot of evidence about that over the last number of days, you're both aware, I'm sure, that in order to permit RCMP officers to enforce provincial laws and municipal bylaws...
	They need to be sworn in as special constables under the Police Services Act?
	Yes.
	That's correct.
	And you're aware there's an equivalent sort of provision in Quebec as well?
	I believe there is one, yeah.
	I'm not an expert on that, so I'm not going to try and wade into the specifics.
	But are you aware that in Ontario, prior to the convoy, our members were required to take a short course and write a test before being sworn in?
	Commissioner, I see that you are not aware of that.
	No, same here.
	I'm not aware of the full process other than it had to be sworn in.
	Okay, were you aware?
	So anything about a course or a test is not something you're familiar with?
	Okay.
	So I know that both of you in your witness statements said that the swearing in because it was essentially a paperwork exercise was not a significant deterrence or hurdle.
	Is that right?
	There's nothing that was brought to my attention that it was stalling the process, if you wish.
	My understanding is that things were going smoothly when it came to the swearing-in process.
	And are you aware that there were still some challenges, for example, in Windsor, where our members had to use a buddy system?
	No, I'm not aware of that.
	Being deployed with either an OPP officer or a Windsor officer, along with the RCMP officers?
	No, I'm not aware of that.
	Would you agree?
	Then, broadly speaking with me, that looking at this issue might be something that this commission could do or make a recommendation in respect of?
	Absolutely.
	We were talking about it in respect, especially in the two provinces where we have no jurisdiction, if there'd be a more streamlined process that would allow maybe all regular members to have that in advance.
	If, in fact, they needed it or some form of process that would satisfy both the Police Act and ourselves.
	Thank you, Commissioner.
	At the end of your witness statement, you were both asked about recommendations or thoughts you had emerging from this, and you talked about, Commissioner, you particularly talked about protests like the Freedom Convoy not going away.
	And I think we've heard some evidence over the last few days about this being a...
	Paradigm shift, a new model of protest.
	Is that something you both agree with?
	Yeah, I see the landscape shifting, correct?
	Okay.
	Deputy Commissioner, I want to pick up on some evidence that you gave earlier about, not really that long ago, when the RCMP had a bigger footprint here in Ottawa.
	Correct.
	And you talked specifically about, I think, when the RCMP were the police of jurisdiction in respect of the parliamentary precinct.
	And how planning worked for big events.
	You recall that evidence?
	Specifically, you said that there'd be joint planning.
	The RCMP and the OPS would plan together.
	Correct.
	And so, I'm sure you're familiar with the witness statement of Dennis Miller and Steve Madden.
	I haven't read it.
	Neither of you have had an opportunity to review it.
	Mr. Miller, who I think you may know.
	I know Dennis very well.
	Thank you.
	Talks about how he policed three previous G20 summits and that the RCMP directed protesters to park at a distance from the summit location.
	Yes, usually when there's a summit, you have to identify a location where people can demonstrate and be heard.
	And that they would then arrange buses to transport them to those places.
	In some of the major events, they would, yeah.
	It's different from one major event to another.
	And Commissioner, I see you nodding.
	That's a practice that the RCMP has used frequently in respect of large events?
	Yeah, G20s, G7s.
	And in fact, the RCMP has significant experience with large events, right?
	Yes.
	And so, in circumstances like this one, would you agree with me that it would have been a benefit to revert to those...
	I want to say old ways of doing it, although it's really quite recent, where the RCMP was an active participant in planning around Parliament Hill.
	I would say that since the creation of the Parliamentary Protective Service, who has a mandate of Parliament Hill and the 34 precinct buildings, they've been working hand-in-hand with Ottawa Police Service since the withdrawal of the RCMP.
	On the Hill.
	And it's been going fine.
	And Ottawa Police Service has managed several large-scale events throughout the years where you'd have 100,000 people in the streets on Canada Day.
	You look at the work they did with Rolling Thunder when it came in afterwards.
	They did an excellent job there.
	So I don't necessarily agree it's an organizational issue, law enforcement, law enforcement.
	I think it's been shown throughout the last couple of years that it's been working.
	It's been working.
	And I'm not convinced that if we were there, things would have been different.
	I wish to remind you that our initial participation when this all started, we were involved in the planning process, but looking at it from our protective lens and not necessarily the demo lens.
	Right.
	So sort of that federal policing lens was the lens you brought to bear, not that frontline or community-based policing.
	Not my mandate.
	Okay.
	But you talked earlier about...
	In this prior period, when there were 120 RCMP officers available in the parliamentary precinct, right?
	And everybody here already knows that I'm always asking questions about the parliamentary precinct.
	I know that you were the first director, but you know, so in fact, you know probably better than anyone that the PPS security officers are not, it's not a law enforcement agency.
	Right?
	Correct.
	And that they are not, they can't exercise police powers?
	They do have powers to arrest, but not the same as a police officer.
	Right.
	And in fact, if they do arrest, they have to call the Ottawa police?
	They do.
	Or the RCMP?
	Most of the times it's the police jurisdiction, because Ottawa is a police jurisdiction for any criminal matters in Ottawa.
	But if, for example, if it was a terrorist matter, they would call it?
	It would be different.
	That falls under our mandate.
	Right.
	And in fact, the police of jurisdiction, whether that's the OPS or the RCMP under their mandate, have to ask permission to be invited into the buildings for policing purpose, right?
	Inside the buildings?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	I would say even they would need permission from the Speaker of the House if they have to enter any part of the buildings, I believe.
	I believe.
	And so the full wind-down of the RCMP out of the parliamentary precinct really just concluded in about 2018, right?
	The wind-down of the organization...
	The decommissioning, I think, is the language you used in your...
	I'm not quite sure if it's decommissioning, but to your point is, and you've said that, because it's not a law enforcement role...
	That's why I initiated the review in 2016 and started looking at, okay, I think it's time to reduce our footprint because it's not a law enforcement responsibility.
	It's a security responsibility that PPS is doing very well at.
	And that's what prompted us to reduce.
	And as I mentioned earlier in my statement, under legislation, the director's position is an RCMP member.
	But other than that, we have no one else.
	They report up to the speakers.
	They report up to the speakers.
	Initially, when it was created, because we had 120 people there, the MOU, that I believe is still in effect, had a role of the RCP, would overlook at the integration portion of the securities, of the different security units that are there.
	But I'd say the integration is fully done.
	It's been seven years now.
	So everything is reporting to the speakers right now.
	So just to be clear, During the convoy, this group of a few hundred, maybe a bit more security officers, you probably have a better sense of the numbers than I do.
	I don't know what they had footprint-wise when this was going on.
	I'm not aware of the exact number.
	So they have an institutional report.
	It's PPS, IR, a number of zeros and then one.
	And they say that they played no active role in...
	Let me just make sure I get it.
	They were not an active participant nor a contributor to any tactical policing planning during the convoy.
	And that's at page 8 in the document, but we can pull it up if you need to see it.
	Does that make sense to you?
	I know they were in the NCRCC.
	During the entire event, that was, again, to coordinate anything that needed to be coordinated on the Hill, but I'm not quite sure of their involvement with regards to the planning process.
	I'm hinting more towards no than anything else.
	Yeah, OC Transpo was in that centre as well, right?
	There's a lot of partners that were in there.
	Lots of people are in that, who don't play a policing role.
	Not necessarily.
	Okay, so in terms of these few hundred security officers or security guards, we know that...
	They put in an RFA, a request for federal assistance, seeking rations.
	Were you aware of that?
	Not aware of rations, and that's some of the information that doesn't always make its way up to me.
	Yeah, just in case.
	I think they wanted to make sure they were supplied.
	And they also stood up their own crisis management center.
	Yes, they did.
	Inside, but...
	Actually, the RCMP and the OPP had to deploy public order units to those buildings, right?
	They do not have any, I would say, tactical teams like we have, and we did provide a public order unit to assist.
	And are you aware the OPP did also?
	I think there was two public order teams involved, and I'm not quite sure if the OPP.
	RCMP had one of them, and I think it's OPP or Europe, but I'm not sure.
	So the OPP and the RCMP were responsible for providing that security during the convoy to these physical buildings?
	My understanding is that the RCMP and the OPP had public order units on standby ready to deploy if required.
	Inside Parliament Hill, though?
	Inside, on the grounds or inside.
	Okay.
	And you'll agree...
	You're just about out of time, so you're going to have to wrap up.
	I'm absolutely about to wrap up.
	Thank you.
	You'll agree with me that Parliament Hill is a frequent target for protests?
	It is.
	You'll agree with me that Parliament Hill is a frequent target of threats, including of violent threats?
	The Hill itself?
	I'm not quite sure.
	And or the people in it?
	I'd say the people in it, the people who work there, more than Hill.
	And would you agree with me that having a distinct organization, and I understand as someone who helped build this organization, this may be a bit of a difficult question for you, but that having a distinct organization with its own command center, its own communication processes...
	And its own people can stifle that flow of information that's so crucial in events like the convoy.
	Can, yes.
	But that's the reason why you have an NCRCC or an integrated command center where people from the different organizations come together and the flow of information is shared there and then bounce back to the respective organization.
	Okay.
	And then may I ask one last question?
	No.
	One last question.
	I apologize.
	Thank you.
	Commissioner Leckie, we've had a lot of questions about the availability of bodies and boots on the ground in responding to the convoy in the early days, but frankly all the way through it.
	Would you agree that 120 additional RCMP officers at the parliamentary precinct would have been useful in responding to this event?
	Is that directly to me?
	It's to Commissioner Lucky, but I would certainly...
	I'll lead off.
	You've got to be mindful that even if you have 120 resources, we do have a parliamentary mandate with regards to protective policing and the Hill.
	So it doesn't mean that you would have 120 resources at your availability to deploy elsewhere.
	You still have to maintain that mandate.
	And if it takes 75, maybe you can take 10 or 15 people away from there that are 100 days off.
	But that exact number, I'd have to dig a little deeper.
	Ditto.
	You'd agree 10 to 15 would come in handy though, right?
	Any additional resource always comes in handy.
	Okay, I think it's been pretty long so far.
	It's a little unusual, but I think we can take a break for 15 minutes because we're unfortunately not through the list.
	So I'll take the afternoon break now, 15 minutes, and then we can come back.
	The Commission is in recess for 15 minutes.
	La Commission enlevé pour 15 minutes.
	Merci.
	Thank you.
	Order a lot.
	The Commission has reconvened.
	Okay.
	Ready to go?
	At your disposal, Commissioner.
	Okay.
	Next is the Democracy Fund, JCCF.
	Good afternoon, Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner.
	Good afternoon.
	My name's Alan Honor.
	I'm a lawyer at the Democracy Fund.
	We share a standing with the JCCF and Citizens for Freedom, although we are separate organizations.
	Can we just pull up pbnsc.can.405820?
	0. So, Commissioner, this is a question for you.
	If we can just scroll down to the top of page two.
	What we see here is that there's an email here from Jody Thomas.
	You have to look down to where it says original message.
	And this is dated February 21st, 2022.
	And Jody Thomas, the National Security Intelligence Advisor, says, Good morning.
	Jeff has put pen to paper.
	I don't see that.
	Do you see that?
	No.
	Okay, so, sorry, scroll down just a little bit more.
	My apologies.
	A little bit more.
	Top of page two.
	Scroll down more.
	Page three.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Scroll up.
	a little bit more.
	Maybe the top of page three.
	I'll just check to make sure I have the right document here.
	This is a version of it.
	Okay, well, let's stay with this document here.
	Commissioner, do you recognize this document?
	No.
	Do you know if there would be any reason why Jody Thomas would be asking you and other people for reasons to, for comments on criteria for revoking the Emergencies Act?
	Oh, is that what it is?
	Okay.
	Do you recall being asked about that?
	I know that there was talk about as soon as the second the Emergency Act was invoked, the next question was when they undo that.
	And so they would have no idea.
	Obviously, it would be probably on a law enforcement lead to say that, okay, we don't need it anymore.
	In cooperation with the people who put the act in in the first place.
	Okay, but why would they be consulting you about that?
	Because I was the contact for law enforcement, and so I'm imagining they're looking at what date is this?
	The 21st.
	So the 21st would have been right around the time that that was when...
	Police operations were just finishing up, and they were wondering if we needed any of the authorities to continue.
	So that's probably why they were asking.
	Okay, so can we look at the top of the page, please?
	Counsel, if it's any help, are you still looking for that?
	Jeff has put pen on paper reference.
	Sorry, can you just scroll up?
	On page four, there's that reference, I think.
	No, no, that's okay.
	Just scroll up, please.
	Okay, so there's an email here from Brian Brennan, and he's one of the Deputy Commissioners at the RCMP?
	Yes, of Contract and Indigenous Policing.
	And he makes a comment here about Rob Stewart, and he says, Rob Stewart talks about assessing the threat in terms of violence versus truckers hanging around.
	Not sure this is the best point of view, given that there was no serious violence in Ottawa, the main reason for the Emergencies Act, but there was such a threat in coots.
	What was handled with already existing authorities, even though we could have used the EA and COOTS to support the operation.
	Plus, truckers hanging around is how bridges and points of entry become blockades.
	Do you agree with the remarks of your Deputy Commissioner here?
	Not in the way that he's put it, no.
	There's a lot to unpack there, so I can't say I agree with everything that's being said.
	So let me ask you about something else then.
	We heard earlier today that the integrated planning team presented you and OPP Commissioner Karik with a plan on February the 13th, and you told us that you found that plan to be satisfactory.
	Yes, we were briefed on that plan on the 11th.
	In your witness statement, I put it to you that you described that plan differently.
	You said that it was an amazing plan and you wanted to see it actioned promptly.
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And your evidence today was that you were the window to law enforcement for Cabinet.
	Well, I was the primary contact for the federal government.
	Right.
	And so I'm confused about whether you actually attended the IRB meeting and the Cabinet meeting of February the 13th.
	I thought you said in your evidence that you weren't sure.
	If you attended those meetings?
	Well, no, the question was whether I spoke at those meetings.
	I know I attended.
	Okay, so you attended, but you're not sure if you spoke.
	And my friend from the government of Saskatchewan brought this to you.
	But if we could, brought this up with you, but if we could pull up the cabinet meeting, that's ssm.nsc.can50216.
	Okay, so if we go to page 8, you are not giving the situational report here.
	NSIA advisor Jody Thomas is giving that situational report.
	Why is that?
	Because I thought you usually gave those situational reports.
	Yes, I usually did.
	And for, I think...
	Because she would give an overview on those meetings, and I would give an overview, and I think they just wanted to condense it, so they asked her to do it.
	And so she had normally given a bit of an overview, so I gave her my notes if she wanted to incorporate anything in that.
	Okay, and let's go to the cabinet meeting.
	Sorry, this is the cabinet meeting.
	That's the IRG, I think.
	This is 216.
	So let's go to...
	SSM.can.5095.
	MAYBE SIX ZEROS.
	And what we're looking at here is, I believe it's the incident response group meeting from February.
	The 13th.
	And if we can scroll down to page 5, please.
	Here we see the Minister of Public Safety is outlining great progress that has been made on clearing the Ambassador Bridge.
	He talks about enforcement actions that are occurring at Coutts and Emerson.
	He talks about the establishment of the Integrated Command Centre in Ottawa.
	He describes that as a significant concrete action, but what he's giving here, it seems to me, is an update on law enforcement.
	Do you agree about that?
	Is not what?
	Isn't this an update about law enforcement?
	It's an update of the situation on the ground that is by law enforcement, yes.
	And that's something that you would usually give, but you didn't give it that day?
	No.
	Okay.
	And both of these documents that we just looked at, they're heavily redacted, but I don't see you speaking.
	No.
	On either of those days, although the documents confirmed that you were in attendance.
	Yeah.
	As per previous documents revealed, I think it was in an email.
	It shows that I wasn't going to be speaking and that the NSIA was going to.
	Right.
	No, I saw that.
	And do you think that you were not invited to speak because you had reservations about invoking the Emergencies Act?
	No, not at all, because the primary purpose of that day was all about the Emergencies Act.
	And I think that...
	Normally, I'm just giving a situational report on what's happening from coast to coast.
	I wasn't going to be talking about the Emergencies Act anyways.
	What I'd normally give is a sit-rep, so maybe they were just in the economy of time.
	My friend from Commission Council earlier today brought you to...
	A request for a security assessment, which was directed to Adriano Poles and not to the RCMP.
	And was that perhaps because you had reservations about the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
	Commissioner, I know I'm just about out of time.
	I wasn't aware of that request for a threat assessment, so it wouldn't have been attached to the Emergency Act specifically.
	Excuse me, but in addition, I think you've mischaracterized the evidence.
	Palanzo is with the RCMP.
	Right, okay.
	So she was asked, but you were not asked.
	I don't do threat assessments, so she would have been asked.
	But you were not even notified about it?
	No, nor would I be at my level.
	You learned about that today?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And I just want to show you very quickly the email of February the 14th.
	This is SW...
	ssm.nsc.can50216.
	And it's this email in which you express your reservations to Minister Mendicino about invoking the Emergencies Act because there are other existing tools at law that haven't been exhausted.
	And I just want to show you the time of that email.
	I believe it's sent just after midnight, but if we're doing Greenwich Meridian time, that would be five hours back.
	Yes.
	So I think between 7 and 8 o 'clock.
	Council, I think, was that the SSM 216 that you just mentioned?
	Yes.
	SSM NSC CAN 216 goes back to cabinet minutes.
	Okay, that's fine.
	Do you recall the email was showed to you earlier today and it was dated?
	Sorry, it was time-stamped just after midnight?
	I can't recall the time stamp.
	Okay, well, would you take it from me that it was time-stamped just after midnight?
	Or should I pull it up?
	Okay, sure.
	You know what?
	I have no idea, so I'm...
	Okay, and if we deduct five hours, that brings us between 7 and 8 o 'clock Eastern Standard Time, and you would agree with me that's shortly before the Cabinet meeting happened on February 13th.
	You sound like you've done your research so I'll take your word for you.
	Okay and so when you and so before that cabinet meeting was held Minister Mendicino and others knew about your position on the Emergency Act?
	Yes in fact if it was before the cabinet meeting.
	Yes thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	Okay next is the CCF.
	Thank you.
	So, my name is Jenanisha Mugunathan and I am counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation and my questions are for Commissioner Lucky.
	So, earlier today when Commission Council was asking you questions, he brought up discussions with federal ministers about RCMP taking over the Ottawa Police Service and you responded and said, you know, that was an issue that you were asked about often.
	And that you had to explain that the RCMP was not the police of jurisdiction in Ottawa.
	You recall that?
	Yes, but I think I'd have to correct myself.
	It wasn't often.
	It was brought up a couple of times.
	Sure, and the response was, you know, the RCMP is not the police of jurisdiction in Ottawa.
	And nor do we have any jurisdiction in Ontario for that type of policing.
	Okay, so I want to just...
	Talk a little bit about this notion of jurisdiction, okay?
	So I want to take you to the RCMP Act and Mr. Registrar that's CCF 6-0-29.
	And if I can take, if I can ask...
	To be taken to page 20, please.
	If you could just scroll down and just stop there.
	Great.
	So Section 18 of the RCMP Act, 18A specifically, sets out the duties of peace officers, the duties of police, of RCMP officers.
	And what 18A says is, you know, it is the duty of members who are peace officers Subject to the orders of the Commissioner, A, to perform all duties that are assigned to peace officers in relation to the preservation of the peace, the prevention of crime, and of offences against the laws of Canada.
	And it goes on to say, and the laws enforced in any province in which they may be employed, and the apprehension of criminals and offenders and others who may be lawfully taken into custody.
	So you'll agree that this is the provision that sets out sort of the powers of RCMP officers?
	Yes?
	Yes.
	And, you know, where it says the prevention of crime and of offenses against the laws of Canada, that's part of the federal policing mandate of enforcing federal statutes.
	You'll agree?
	Not necessarily, because anybody can enforce federal statutes.
	It's not just a...
	Federal law enforcement, provincial and municipal police services can also enforce federal statutes, like the CDSA, the Drugs and Substance Act, for example.
	Okay, so you'll agree, though, that RCMP officers have the power to enforce the criminal code, for instance?
	Yes.
	Right, and they always have the power to enforce the criminal code.
	It's just part of what they're allowed to do.
	Yes.
	Right.
	They don't need to be sort of the local police in a jurisdiction.
	This is a power that they always have.
	Yes.
	Right.
	And there's nothing in the criminal code, for example, that says an RCMP officer can't enforce the criminal code in one particular place.
	They can enforce it anywhere in Canada.
	I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I think, in fact, like, for instance, anybody can enforce if you find somebody committing under the criminal code.
	So you don't even have to be a police officer.
	But there is a jurisdiction where, obviously, if police and public safety is involved and you are standing there, you have to act on that.
	Any police officer has to act on that.
	Including RCMP officers?
	Yes, including RCMP officers.
	Okay, so just to use sort of a bit of a silly example, if we have an RCMP officer that's standing on Wellington Street in Ottawa and they see somebody committing an offense under the criminal code, they don't need to call up Ottawa Police Service to arrest the person.
	They can go and arrest the person themselves.
	Yes.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And now we've heard a lot about, you know, the appointment of special constables under Section 53 of the Police Services Act.
	Right.
	And what that does, it, you know, it gives an RCMP officer who's appointed a special constable the powers to enforce provincial and municipal authorities that, you know, Ottawa Police Service would be allowed to do.
	Yes.
	And this would be in addition to The power to enforce their criminal code, which they always have?
	Yes.
	All right.
	And now, you know, it's fair to say that, you know, during these protests, criminal code offenses were being violated.
	You'll agree with that?
	There were some, yes.
	Some.
	And I'm not sure if you're aware of this, but there was an injunction that was granted in Ottawa.
	In relation to several City of Ottawa bylaws which include you know open air bylaws, fireworks bylaws, noise bylaws.
	Are you aware of that?
	Yes.
	All right and you'll agree of course that an injunction is a court order?
	Yes.
	And section 127 of the criminal code makes it a criminal offense to breach a court order.
	You'll agree?
	Well, with injunctions, though, usually there has to be an enforcement order attached to the injunction that we would allow police to enforce the injunction.
	So I don't know if there was any enforcement order attached to that.
	Okay, so if I was to say to you, hypothetically, if there was an enforcement order that's attached, a police officer could arrest somebody for breaching a court order, in this case an injunction?
	I'm not sure.
	I'm not a lawyer.
	I honestly don't know the answer to that question.
	So you don't know whether a police officer is allowed to, under Section 127, to arrest someone if they're violating a court order?
	No, you weren't asking that.
	You were asking the RCMP in Ottawa, and it's not our jurisdiction, so I would have to refer to my legal people to ask that question, and we do that all the time when it comes to enforcement.
	Okay, so if it...
	Fell within the ambit of Section 127, which speaks to breaching a court order.
	An RCMP officer could arrest a person for that, right?
	But I'm not sure how the injunction was obtained if it falls under the criminal code and if it's an actual court order that's breachable.
	I'd have to do a little bit more research, Soria.
	Sure.
	Okay, so...
	Leaving aside the research you say you need to do, if I was to put to you, and I can bring up section 127 if that would assist, Mr. Registrar, that is CCF six zeros 28. And it's page 230.
	30. So, we see over there, 127 says, everyone who, without lawful excuse, disobeys a lawful order made by a court of justice or by a person or body of persons authorized by any act to make or give the order, other than an order for the payment of money, is unless, and talks about the punishment.
	So, you'd agree, though, that an RCMP officer who has the ability to enforce the criminal code and always has this ability, Could arrest somebody under section 127 for violating 127.
	But you were referring to the injunction and I don't know if an injunction falls under the disobeying or an order of the court.
	That's fine, but my question now is whether an officer, an RCMP officer, could arrest someone for contravening section 127 of the code?
	In all likelihood, yes.
	Alright, so my question to you, or I put to you that, you know, there's nothing that legally prevented you from deploying RCMP officers to enforce the criminal code in Ottawa.
	But we aren't the police of jurisdiction in Ottawa.
	And so it is, I don't know if it's a common law or what authority it is.
	It would be like...
	Bringing Ottawa Police Service and then putting them in downtown Toronto and saying, we're just going to start policing.
	Everybody, there's a jurisdiction and there's a police of jurisdiction for a reason.
	And so if I find somebody committing a criminal code offense and I see them committing and it's under the powers of arrest that I can, in fact, arrest, I can arrest.
	But for...
	For the purpose of this exercise, we would not simply walk in and decide that we were the police of jurisdiction.
	Could you imagine the mayhem that that would lead to if every police just arrived and said, we're going to be the police of jurisdiction today?
	So I just want to sort of clarify, you know, there may be a difference between, say, tradition and respecting the authority of local police and not intruding on them or entrenching on them.
	But you'll agree that there is nothing that legally prevented you from sending RCMP officers to enforce the things that they're always allowed to do, which is the criminal code.
	Yes, and we weren't objecting to assisting in that regard.
	So that's why I'm not understanding your questions.
	All right, those are all my questions.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Okay, next is the Union of British Columbia.
	Indian Chiefs.
	Good afternoon.
	My name is Cheyenne Arnold Cunningham.
	I'm counsel for the Union of BC Indian Chiefs and I will be directing all of our questions today to Commissioner Lucky.
	Commissioner Lucky, did the RCMP consult with First Nations governments or Indigenous groups or representatives during the convoy situation?
	I'm not sure.
	Definitely not in the Ottawa area, as we were at the police of jurisdiction.
	They may have done that in BC, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.
	I'm not sure.
	And generally speaking, if there was, in fact, Indigenous involvement or if it was on Indigenous land, they would have, in fact.
	We have special liaison teams for that.
	Okay, thank you.
	Actually, would you mind mentioning what the names of those teams or groups may be who take on the lead of consultation and cooperation with local First Nations and Indigenous groups?
	Each division has a different name, but they are divisional liaison teams, or in BC, I think they're called the CCIG Community Consultative Indigenous Groups or something, CCIG, so Thank you so much.
	That's helpful.
	Are you familiar with Bill C-15, which received royal assent and came into force as federal legislation on June 21, 2021 to adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, also known as UNDRIP?
	Yes.
	Not completely intimately, but yes, I'm familiar with it.
	I take it that you're familiar with Section 5, which mandates the Government of Canada to take all measures necessary to align the laws of Canada with UNDRIP.
	Yes.
	Would you agree that UNDRIP plays a significant role in policing and police policy in public order emergency events?
	My understanding might not be correct, but if it involves Indigenous protests, I believe that's where it connects itself.
	So it might not be all protests, but I could be mistaken.
	I haven't intimately translated it into what it actually meant.
	Okay, thank you.
	Your recent May 2022 mandate letter mandates the acceleration of RCMP reform over the next two years.
	The Union of BC Indian Chiefs is wondering if you could explain what the RCMP is doing to ensure implementation of UNDRIP in the context of assembling demonstrations and public order emergency events.
	That's a good question.
	I know that there's been a lot of work developing liaison teams.
	When, for example, in some of the Indigenous protests that we have gone to, we've included cultural awareness and specific cultural training to the area in which we're policing so that we have a better understanding of the impacts of our actions.
	We have increased, obviously, our training in general in that regard.
	Our liaison teams are specific.
	To protest on Indigenous lands, which can be different than non-Indigenous lands, for example, having a better understanding of the history and the culture.
	Okay, thank you.
	You mentioned actually earlier today of the Management Advisory Board as a recently established body within the RCMP.
	Yes.
	Is there any mandated First Nations civilian representation on this board?
	There was.
	We had John Dahm who was representing us and we actually had Wally Opal at the beginning but he got put on a different...
	And we've had some vacancies, and so we're filling those vacancies.
	I'm not responsible.
	It's Public Safety who's responsible for filling those vacancies.
	But part of that is the diversity and including Indigenous representation.
	Thank you.
	And can you confirm whether or not you're aware of the RCMP updating its strategic plans and policies and protocols to ensure alignment with UNDRIP?
	Or is that kind of work ongoing?
	It's ongoing in our initiatives.
	We have our contract in Indigenous policing.
	We have many projects on the go, many of which are geared towards reconciliation, but there is also making sure policies and procedures align properly with UNDRIP and other recommendations that have come out of other reports.
	Okay, thank you.
	Is policing response in a public order emergency event different depending on who is involved in that assembly or event?
	No, it's not necessarily who.
	It's how.
	I would say more how.
	Like, depending on...
	I think you have to have...
	An understanding of the issues, and that's what we spend a lot of time on, understanding why the protests occurred in the first place, trying to connect with the organizers.
	It's all about, you know, we're all about peaceful protests, which we definitely promote, and we do everything we can through our liaison teams to promote that peaceful protest.
	It's only when it becomes an illegal blockade.
	We can't, unfortunately, we, you know...
	When injunctions are brought to court, we're law enforcement.
	We can't decide when or what we're going to enforce.
	We don't have that discretion, but we do have the discretion on how and when we enforce, but there's still the duty to enforce if there's an injunction in court.
	Okay, thank you.
	If I could ask the clerk to please bring up...
	OPP50601, and I'll just stay on page one of that document.
	Commissioner Lucky, we've looked actually at this email exchange today already, but on February 2nd, 2022, there was an email exchange between yourself, Commissioner Lucky, and your subordinate, Superintendent Brewer of E-Division.
	In the email exchange, Brewer notes at the bottom of page one, "I /we do not presume to have all the answers.
	However, we have been heavily engaged with these ideologically driven protests for a while now.
	Through hard-earned experience, we have managed to pick up a few strategies that may help." He then refers to old growth logging, coastal gas link, and other "ideologically driven" protests.
	You replied to his advice to say thank you for the great response, and you referenced that you had used these points in your briefings of superiors like ministers.
	The Union of BC Indian Chiefs would like to know if Indigenous peoples advancing their rights through public assembly and awareness strategies would be considered ideologically driven protests in the same way or the same manner as the Freedom Convoy was considered.
	I'm not sure I have an opinion on that in the sense that I think if somebody has an opinion or they are wanting to hear their voice in a certain ideologically way, it doesn't mean that it's a negative thing when we say ideologically motivated towards something.
	Like I said, it's about...
	It doesn't matter what the cause is, it's just making sure it's peaceful and making sure it's following the rules that are set out in law.
	Okay, thank you.
	Just to ask one last follow-up question on that.
	Considering Indigenous peoples have unique and distinct set of legal rights and we see that in UNDRIP and for reference I can cite to articles 26 and 28. But oftentimes Indigenous peoples do not have redress to properly address their rights and oftentimes they have to assemble in a public forum to seek recognition and implementation of their rights in different contexts.
	Do you think that there should be a different response by government in consideration of kind of this uniqueness of Indigenous assembly?
	I think it would be up to the lawmakers to decide that.
	I think peaceful protest is absolutely necessary in a democratic society, and I think people should have the right to have their voices heard.
	And of course, because I'm in law enforcement, I'm probably a little bit biased in the sense that peaceful protest we promote, but if it's not in line with the rule of the law, then we are asked to intervene.
	Okay, thank you.
	I'm going to wrap up with just a few quick questions.
	Before I begin asking you our questions today, the Deputy Commissioner today mentioned that he had not read the Ipperwash Inquiry Report.
	Commissioner Lucky, have you reviewed this report?
	I've read bits and pieces, but not cover to cover.
	Okay, thank you.
	And are you aware of...
	Dynamics of systemic racism and specifically anti-Indigenous discrimination in policing and responding to public order or emergency events?
	As a result of the IPRWASH in regards to the IPRWASH report?
	No, just broadly within the RCMP, are you aware of dynamics of systemic racism and policing of Indigenous peoples?
	We are doing a lot of initiatives within the RCMP in regards to systemic racism.
	We've introduced some new courses that we've actually made available to all police agencies, Uniting Against Racism.
	Cultural awareness and humility courses.
	We're updating our curriculums at our training academy.
	We also have the blanket exercise that is...
	is at our training academy and that is available for all employees of the RCMP and it's all about and we've reviewed our whole recruiting process to make sure there's no systemic barriers to prevent Indigenous people but also the BIPOC community into entering into the RCMP.
	In our recruiting we're trying to be more progressive in our proactive recruiters so that we would be able to Have more Indigenous people in the RCMP because it's more representative of the communities we serve.
	And I think it would strengthen our organization to have more Indigenous people as police officers in the RCMP so we can connect with those communities.
	We do try to have people that are Indigenous to go to Indigenous communities that can assist us.
	A higher than average percentage in the government for Indigenous employees, but it's not something, it's not very high in general.
	It's at about 7%.
	And I think we need to have, I think if we had a greater diversity within our organization, it would bode well for working in Indigenous communities, working with Indigenous people on protecting their, you know, rights and allowing them peaceful protest.
	Okay, you're now out of time, so if you could wrap up, please.
	Okay, thank you.
	May I ask one last question, Commissioner?
	Yes, go ahead.
	In the past, Indigenous peoples defending their rights and speaking up for their distinct legal rights have been profiled as causing public order, emergency events, or disturbing the peace.
	We are now in a new era of recognition and affirmation of Indigenous rights, especially since the passing of Bill C-15.
	Would you agree with that?
	I think we always have to progress as a police organization and ensure that we are meeting the needs of the various people that we protect and serve.
	And would you agree that it's important for Indigenous peoples to be able...
	You're now, that's not one question.
	You're now into more than one.
	Okay, my apologies.
	Thank you so much for your time today, and thank you, Commissioner, for the opportunity to ask our questions today.
	Thank you.
	Okay, next is the Ottawa Coalition.
	Good evening, Commissioner.
	Emily Tamman for the Ottawa Coalition, and we don't have any questions.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Government of Alberta.
	Good afternoon.
	For the record, my name is Stephanie Bose for the Province of Alberta.
	All of our questions have been asked and answered.
	Thank you.
	Okay, next is the Windsor Police Service.
	Good evening, all.
	This is Tom McRae for the Windsor Police Service.
	We have no questions, but we'd like to give our time to Canada, please.
	Okay, next is the City of Windsor.
	Good evening.
	My name is Graham Reeder, and I'm counsel for the City of Windsor.
	I'll be directing my questions today to Commissioner Luckey, but I welcome any input from Deputy Commissioner Duham if my question touches on his knowledge instead.
	Okay, your camera doesn't seem to be on.
	I don't know if that's your intention.
	I don't have an objection if the witnesses don't.
	Oh, okay.
	Not at all.
	My apologies, Commissioner Rouleau.
	So I'll get started.
	How many RCMP officers, you talked about the Odovision detachment in Windsor earlier this afternoon, or this morning rather.
	How many, approximately how many RCMP officers are in that detachment?
	At Windsor?
	Yes.
	I have no idea.
	No, I'd be guessing.
	I would be guessing.
	I have no idea.
	Okay.
	Do you know if there's a tactical support group stationed in Windsor?
	No, there isn't.
	It would be posted either in London or Toronto, in the major centre.
	Okay.
	Can a municipal police force ask for a tactical support group assistance directly to the RCMP?
	Well, as we've learned, obviously, Ottawa City Police did that, and we provided resources.
	Generally speaking, it's from police to police.
	There's often requests in where we are, the police of jurisdiction.
	In Ontario, we don't have that normal jurisdiction, so it's through the Ontario Police Act.
	But often in places like Alberta or Saskatchewan, if there's something going on in a major city, Like Regina, they may reach out to the RCMP to assist in a tactical response.
	Okay, and what does that process look like when you are not the police of jurisdiction?
	Can you just describe it?
	Like I said, I've been told that normally it goes through the Ontario Provincial Police in Ontario, where any municipality within Ontario, if they need additional resources, they go to the OPP, and they may not need to ask the RCMP because the OPP may find resources at a neighboring detachment or municipal police agency within Ontario.
	Understood.
	As I understood, a police jurisdiction, a municipal police force would not go directly to the RCMP.
	They would go through the OPP.
	Yeah, that's what the normal course of event is.
	Okay, thank you.
	Would you agree with me that when the RCMP is not the police of jurisdiction during a disruption, particularly at a port of entry, as in Windsor at the bridge, that the RCMP's role is to support the police of jurisdiction in protecting the port of entry?
	Not when we're...
	We're not the police of jurisdiction, but we can assist any police with the right process.
	But in, for example, in Ontario and Quebec, if in fact Windsor, which is right on the border, if they needed assistance, it wouldn't automatically default to the RCMP.
	We're not policing in that capacity in Ontario or Quebec.
	Okay, understood.
	Has the role of the RCMP changed at all in Windsor with respect to the protection of the bridge since the convoy protests?
	No, not at all.
	In Windsor, our folks are still focused on the federal mandate.
	Okay.
	And to your knowledge, has the RCMP ever been the police of jurisdiction to respond to events at the Ambassador Bridge?
	Not to my knowledge.
	I don't believe so.
	And it's not because if it's a federal location, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a federal concern or issue or policing matter.
	We've heard that a couple times here with the NCC grounds.
	It should be RCMP, but again, here in Ottawa, the police's jurisdiction for criminal matters in the City of Ottawa is Ottawa Police Service.
	Thank you.
	Those are all my questions.
	Thank you.
	Okay, thank you.
	Next is the Government of Canada.
	Good evening.
	For the record, I'm Donnery Nygaard.
	I'm one of the Council for Canada.
	There's been a bunch of discussion today about various meetings that occurred on the 13th, but I just want to take you back one day.
	And if we could have SSM NSC or.nsc.can.50214.
	And just to situate you, Commissioner, this will be for you.
	These are the IRG minutes, or they should be for the day before on February 12th.
	See that?
	Yes.
	And this was a virtual meeting of the incident response group on that day, and you attended that virtual meeting?
	Yes.
	So if we can go to page six, please, of the minutes.
	Thank you.
	And if we can scroll down just to where it says the Commissioner of the RCMP.
	And Commissioner, there's quite a long excerpt and I'll let you have a quick read over it.
	It starts here and it goes down onto the next page.
	And I'm going to highlight just a few things, but I want to just let you situate yourself first.
	you can ask the clerk when you want to scroll down.
	You can scroll.
	Okay.
	And I think that's the end of the minutes that refer to your update.
	And so this was quite an extensive update of what was happening across the country.
	And you have, I just want to draw your attention to a few things.
	If we can go back up to the beginning of where the Commissioner's comments are started.
	So yeah, right there.
	So you started by talking about things that were happening at Thunder Bay and the GTA.
	And then you went on to discuss the situation in Windsor, correct?
	Yes.
	And you mentioned the negotiations that were occurring in Windsor and the delivery of the letter from the Ontario government that occurred there, but that the protesters did not accept that letter, correct?
	And then you also describe the situation in Cornwall at the bridge there.
	Yes.
	And then you go on to describe the situation in Ottawa, including halfway down that paragraph that there were a number of additional convoys that were reportedly still traveling towards Ottawa on February 12th.
	Yes.
	And then you go on to describe the situation in Coutts on the next page.
	Yes.
	And you indicate there that the situation in Coutts is unique and there's a heightened risk to safety of persons, including police, including indications of weapons on site.
	I just wanted to pause there for a minute.
	The arrests were made in Coutts the following day.
	Is that correct?
	Yes, I believe so.
	On February 14th.
	And so that was the information that you were giving to this committee as a whole at that point in time about what was going on in Coutts.
	Yes.
	And then finally, you talked about the situation in Emerson.
	Yes.
	So with this kind of sort of cross-country update on February 12th, is this what you were referring to in your speaking notes that you didn't actually get a chance to give on February 13th when you said there's a number of ongoing incidents which we're all well aware of?
	Yes, this is the normal type of situational report I would give.
	And I think this is probably being cleared up by my friends, but just to make sure, you did appear at the IRG and at the Cabinet meeting on February 13th, but you did not speak at either of those meetings, correct?
	Yes.
	But the notes that you had prepared for those meetings, you did in fact pass along to various people, correct?
	Yes.
	so and if we can pull up pbnsc can four zeros three two five six and this is uh you've seen this already but just This is the email that you sent to Mr. Jones, and can you tell us who Mike Jones is?
	He's the Chief of Staff to Minister Mendencino.
	So he's in Minister Mendencino's office, is that correct?
	Yes.
	And you would expect him to pass this information on to Minister Mendencino?
	Absolutely.
	And so in what you set out in that email to Mr. Jones, that was other than the situational report, but as far as your discussion of the Emergency Measures Act, that was included in that email, correct?
	Yes.
	And then if we can pull up pb.nsc.can403245.
	And that was at...
	Sorry, that previous email was at 747.
	Oh, it's still up there.
	It's 1247, which means it was 747.
	So that was prior to the Cabinet meeting, correct?
	Yes.
	And then you also forwarded it on directly to Minister Mendocino and also to Jody Thomas.
	And just for those who don't know, who is Jody Thomas?
	The National Security Advisor.
	And she's the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister, correct?
	Yes.
	This particular email includes the majority of those speaking points that you had earlier prepared to speak at the meeting, correct?
	So that information was passed on to both of those individuals at 8.03 by the looks of it from the time stamp on there.
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	And part of that briefing, one of my friends took you to this, had to do with the guns that had been stolen in Peterborough, correct?
	Or part of your talking points had been to alert people to that.
	Do you recall that?
	Yeah, I'm not sure if it was this, it was another meeting, I think, or may have been this one.
	I'm not sure which one.
	I think if we scroll down in here, we will, and I didn't make a note of the plate.
	All right.
	There it is.
	Yes.
	Very good.
	Okay.
	Right.
	Who was this meeting?
	So that was information that you had passed on on February 13th, correct?
	And my friend indicated that those, and at this point in time, you say that it's still being looked into, there's an ongoing investigation.
	You don't know if it's related to the current protests.
	Yes.
	And my friend rightly pointed out that it was sorted out rather quickly and the guns were thankfully retrieved a couple of days later.
	But that was on February 16th, as I recall, after the Emergencies Act was invoked.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	And if we go to the February 16th IRG minutes, which is ssm.nsc.can.
	five zeros four zero one And if we go just onto the third, it's page five at the top of the page.
	Yes, if we scroll down a little at the right there to the National Security Advisor providing her update.
	And you'll see there, it says about halfway down, while some trucks...
	Oh no, sorry, that's the wrong place.
	Oh, it says notably the weapons that had been stolen in Peterborough have been recovered.
	Is that what you're...
	Yes, yes, exactly.
	So she was providing that information, but I assume she got that information from you, correct?
	And so everyone was informed that that was no longer a worry as of February 16th.
	But that was the first, that was when the weapons were actually received.
	I'm assuming.
	And my friends also discussed with you the delegation of the provisions, the authorities that were provided to you under the Emergencies Act in regard to tow trucks.
	And I just want to take you to the...
	February 17th IRG minutes the next day, which is SSM NSC CAN 50402.
	Page five again.
	About halfway down the page, just after those redactions, if I can have you read that.
	Which one?
	Just after the second set of redactions there.
	Second set.
	She also confirmed that she has delegated some powers to other RCMP and OPP officers to be able to compel or commandeer equipment such as tow trucks, confirming that the RCMP will cover costs associated with this.
	RCMP will manage these pressures in the short term.
	So my question to you was, I think you said earlier that you had only delegated those powers to Commissioner Karit.
	This indicates that you'd delegated them to other RCMP members as well.
	So did you delegate those powers internally to the commanding officers in the other divisions?
	I don't think so, but if I had, it would have been to...
	The commanding officer of E-Division, sorry, BC, Alberta, and Manitoba.
	But I don't think there was plans to, but they never needed them.
	So that might have been not exactly accurate.
	Okay.
	And then on still staying on the tow truck theme, can we have PB.CAN.401628?
	And maybe we can just scroll through so the commissioner can see the entire document.
	Do you recognize this?
	Yes.
	Can you tell us what it is?
	This is the receipt for the various tow trucks that were used during the protests as part of the authority under the Emergency Act.
	So it's an invoice from, if we can scroll back up a little bit.
	It's to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
	And if we scroll down further.
	It's from the province of Ontario.
	It's coming from Ontario.
	So your evidence is that this is the receipt that was sent to you from Ontario for the tow trucks.
	That were compelled under the Emergencies Act?
	Yes.
	Because I think you had said earlier it was a big bill, but you hadn't...
	I think we're still cash managing.
	And is it your understanding...
	What is your understanding of the RCMP's authority to pay this bill?
	Well, it's...
	The federal government will cover the costs.
	They've asked us to pay for it and then cash manage it.
	And if we need the money back, we'll get the money back.
	But pay for what?
	What are you given authority to pay for?
	Pay for the use of tow trucks in the protests.
	The commandeering of tow trucks and the use of those tow trucks to remove vehicles.
	Thank you.
	Deputy Duhem, I want to turn to you for a moment with some of the other powers that were granted under the Emergencies Act.
	One of my friends from the CCELA spoke to you about, in particular, the economic provisions of the powers that were granted under the Emergencies Act.
	And you mentioned that the RCMP did not...
	Take any action in relation to insurance contracts.
	Did I hear that correctly?
	That's correct.
	And why is that?
	We focused on providing the right information to the banks, to the financial services, to freeze the accounts.
	The insurance, yes, that was a possibility.
	One of the concerns we had is if you freeze the insurance, where does the truck go if someone's ready to leave?
	Puts us in a position.
	So we didn't really look at that.
	Really focused on identifying the people, validating who was there, and getting the information to the financial services.
	And that sort of exercise of discretion in how and which particular aspects of a law to enforce at any given time, is that something...
	The discretion is something.
	And you have to remember, as I said earlier, that we had 24 hours to figure this out, as well as the financial services.
	So we went with the one that we figured would have the greatest impact.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Commissioner, I want to take you back to some more of the IRG minutes that...
	from the meetings that took place while the emergencies act was in place and I'd like to go to the February 18th minutes which are SSM NSC CAN 50403 and when we get there to page five please Your updates always seem to be on page 5. Page 5 is pretty
	popular So if we can scroll down to the second last paragraph on the page.
	So that paragraph that starts as it relates to additional activity over the weekend.
	There are reports of additional convoys en route to join the Ottawa protest, including the Alberta Freedom Convoy, three chartered buses from Toronto, two from St. Jerome and Gatineau.
	Police are ready to intercept and divert these convoys where possible.
	That ability to divert convoys, what is that based on?
	That's based on one of the authorities in the emergency act.
	And if we can also...
	Sorry, I'm afraid I didn't take very good notes here.
	We'll go to the next day's IRG at SSM NSC CAN five zeros.
	Oh, no, sorry.
	It's not the next day.
	406.
	This is a couple of days later, a few days later on February 21st.
	and it's page five again.
	And if we can scroll down to the second last paragraph again.
	And you'll see there in in the middle of the or To the beginning of the paragraph, it talks about a convoy traveling from Fort McMurray to Ottawa was indeed intercepted by the Ontario Provincial Police, who advised participants not to go to Ottawa, but not prevent them from continuing their trip.
	And is it your understanding that that advice, or what is your understanding of the advice that was given by the OPP at that point, if you have an understanding?
	Well, just with the Emergency Act, the authorities were not to go into a protest area.
	So they were advised not that they wouldn't be allowed to go into Ottawa.
	So some of them went to Armprior.
	There was a secondary, not a protest site, but a secondary site where trucks were getting together at another site.
	But there was no protest at that area.
	Okay.
	And if we can just go back a couple of days, the Commissioner has asked questions a couple of times about the ability for people to lawfully protest while this enforcement action was being taken.
	So I wanted to take you to the IRG minutes of February 20th, which is SSM NSC.can50405.
	Page 5. Just scrolling down, just before the redaction, a little ways up from the redaction there, you'll see police order units continue to wear tactical gear.
	I'm sorry, no, next one.
	Police are also monitoring a gathering that has formed at the War Museum of approximately 100 people and a small work gathering of 30 to 50 individuals at Confederation Park.
	So, can you tell me what you know about those gatherings?
	Well, of course, there's always potential for lawful protest.
	And then around Ottawa, there's two examples.
	These people were lawfully protesting.
	They weren't impeding the flow of traffic or the flow of pedestrian traffic.
	And so I believe that they were allowed to continue with their protests.
	And we monitor those protests.
	Because it's not just...
	Safety of people not in the protest, it's also safety of the protesters when they're lawfully protesting.
	We want to make sure that they are safe when they're doing that.
	But they were permitted to remain there in protest.
	Thank you.
	In answering some questions...
	For counsel for former Chief Slowly, you indicated that the protest in Ottawa wasn't a national security event.
	It was just an event, I think you said.
	Yes.
	And you were specifically talking about the Ottawa situation.
	Yes, I say it was part of a national event.
	It wasn't a national security threat.
	But when you say that, you're not assessing whether or not either the Ottawa...
	Protest or the situation in the country as a whole was a threat to the security of Canada, correct?
	No, we had, like I said, I think I mentioned earlier, there were some snippets of information on open source that came through intelligence, things that were similar to the storming of the parliament, but none of it manifested itself.
	So it wasn't a national security threat.
	It was a national event.
	But in answer to one of my other friend's questions about the definition in the CEASES Act, that's not something that you were turning your mind to or that you were assessing.
	No, and it definitely wouldn't be me doing any of the assessments.
	I'm just the messenger.
	There'd be people a lot smarter than myself.
	And Deputy Duhem, I wanted to turn for you for a moment to discuss the plan that was...
	Put in place and developed by the Integrated Planning Unit in Ottawa, and you as the Gold Commander, what was your view of how that plan was eventually executed?
	The final plan?
	I mean, I think the result speaks for itself.
	Minimal force used.
	In the execution.
	And over a couple days, two days and a half, we were able to successfully clear the sites.
	I should mention that there's approximately seven or eight sites where the trucks were parked in the downtown area.
	And by the time we got to, the first one would be Weller and Nicholas.
	By the time we were done that, we took care of Sussex.
	Welling, Sussex and Rideau.
	And then a third site was in front of Parliament Hill.
	And by the time we were done with Parliament Hill, all the other sites, the people had left.
	So I think the results speak for itself.
	There's no injuries, very little use of force, and it was done in a coordinated fashion and very professionally.
	Thank you.
	And in that plan, when it was developed, what was the role of tow trucks?
	It was, I should say it was a phased-in approach in a sense, and you heard the Commissioner mention about the role of the PLTs.
	On that Thursday night, February 17th, there was an increased presence.
	In the control access zone, or what became the control access zone.
	There's increased communication with the people who are there, informing them what the act is, giving them an opportunity to leave.
	And it's only Friday morning with light snow on the ground that we started operationalizing.
	So what would happen is we go to one site, and this is typical procedures where tell the people to leave.
	If they don't leave, then use the right amount of force necessary.
	But then once, if we have the rest people leave, if people left, it was good.
	If we have the rest people removed, Tow trucks will come in tow the vehicles and impound them.
	And that was an integral part of the overall plan to clear out Ottawa?
	It was for the first three sites for sure.
	And you wouldn't have been able to accomplish that without those heavy tow trucks?
	We would have to explore other options.
	There weren't many options.
	For big rigs, what are your other options?
	I take it you can't articulate any other options at this point?
	No.
	And you've both spoken about the need to shrink the footprint when dealing with protests in general and this protest in particular.
	Can you, either of you or both of you, explain to us why that's important?
	Well, it's all about public safety and officer safety.
	So when you have...
	Thousands of people, that is not the time to do enforcement because the risk to public and police safety is at a much higher level.
	So even sometimes if there's a criminal co-defense, sometimes you will deal with it after the fact because if you go inside that crowd to deal with it, you might inflare that crowd.
	And just police presence can be enough to inflare a crowd.
	On the right time, you know, being there at the wrong time.
	So our tactics are usually to reduce the footprint through incentivizing or motivating people to leave.
	Obviously...
	Sometimes it's as simple as you will be arrested, but there's always going to be groups of protesters who will stay and will wish to be arrested.
	So you still have to get rid of that footprint.
	So obviously in the Ottawa scenario on the weekends, it was far too big.
	And so trickling off Monday and looking at...
	We looked at past weeks, and our numbers were the lowest on, I think it was Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
	So that was the time to start doing the enforcement.
	Unfortunately, we lost some time in our plan, so we did a very quick engagement of two days with the crowds to say, "Now the Emergency Act is here.
	This is what will happen." If you don't leave, these are some of the consequences.
	There was many people who actually wanted to leave, but their trucks were kind of stuck in amongst trucks.
	And those people, we tried to make arrangements when the time came to move those trucks to get them off the site.
	And once the footprint was down to the minimum numbers we felt we could get them down to, that's when we started our enforcement action.
	And that makes it a safer environment for everybody.
	If I may add, and I believe it's Chief Slowly who shared this at a briefing, or Steve Bell, when you're referring to a lot of people, they were in a situation that in some instances they couldn't perform an arrest on an individual because the OPS would be swarmed.
	By people around the police car.
	And the only tactical option would be just to release the individual and get out of there.
	So the controlled access zone that was in place on Friday morning, that was a benefit to our operations in the sense that Friday morning, there's no one that was entering the controlled access zone.
	Other than the people that were already there.
	They're not allowed to leave, not allowed to come back.
	So that limited.
	And the fact that the work that was being done with regards to informing the people what the EA is, I seriously think that deterred people for coming to see what was going on on the Fridays and Saturdays.
	So that prevented the footprint from growing as it normally would.
	What was done to shrink the footprint that was already there before the enforcement action was taken?
	Allowing people the opportunity to leave and telling them the consequences of some of the consequences that would happen and some of the new authorities that we had under the Emergency Act.
	So, for instance, the financial authorities were one incentive.
	Some of our police officers are reporting that people were leaving because their spouse had called and said, you need to get home so we can get the account unfrozen.
	And so motivated.
	And you've also spoken...
	I have two more questions.
	Okay.
	You've also spoken about children to some extent.
	Can you tell me what the risks are or the concerns are in relation to having children?
	In the vicinity when you're taking enforcement action?
	Well, because we can't predict how that enforcement action is going to go.
	We want to do it with the minimal amount of force.
	But if all of a sudden that turns and we would have to use more force or get into maybe using...
	Some kind of irritant.
	We don't want children there.
	We don't want anybody to get harmed.
	And children can't really defend themselves as adults can run and know a direction to go because we always provide an egress, but children aren't, you know, able to do that in all cases.
	And so based on all of the things that you've just said, Would it be fair to say that the enforcement action in this case couldn't have happened in the way that it did without the Emergencies Act?
	I would say the Emergency Act allowed us to have the safest type of enforcement.
	It allowed us to reduce that footprint because there was large amounts of people there.
	And it not only allowed us to reduce the footprint, it allowed us to stop people from coming in.
	And we saw how every weekend those numbers grew.
	Tenfold.
	And it avoided people coming into the area.
	We obviously blocked off the areas as well.
	And it allowed for a much safer result.
	And I think Deputy Commissioner Durham said it himself.
	The results speak for themselves.
	Thank you.
	Those are all my questions.
	Any re-examination?
	Thank you, Commissioner.
	I have just two areas that I'll re-examine on to accommodate that.
	I realize we're running late in the day, so I'll be as quick as I can.
	Go ahead.
	The first of them, I think they're both for you, Deputy Commissioner.
	The first one has to do with some answers you gave to questions about meetings you were at with senior government officials.
	Where you were, I'll just use the word uncomfortable, I don't think you voiced a strong principled objection, but you were uncomfortable that perhaps that line between government and police might, if not be crossed, I think you used the word, it was getting blurred.
	By the presence of those senior officials at the meetings.
	Do you recall that evidence?
	Yeah, and the way I wrote it and what was going through my mind is two different things.
	But I found that having them, and this is my opinion, is having them reach directly in kind of blur the communication.
	Because I've always said, I haven't seen, if you look at the Police Act.
	The Minister of Public Safety, Solicitor General, the Commissioner of OPP all have a role to play when something's unfolding in Ontario.
	And I just think that having federal representatives reaching in just blurred the lines as to exactly...
	We request how the request should be funneling in.
	I viewed it as the Commission is ultimately responsible for the RCMP, and any briefing of government departments should be done.
	But this is my own opinion.
	It should be done to ensure that we keep each other in the right lanes and whatnot.
	Thank you.
	And do you remember which meeting it was that focused your attention on that point?
	I don't remember exactly what meeting.
	I'd have to go through my notes, but it was one where we're with Chief Slowly and other people around the table because, obviously, Public Safety and PCO wanted to talk to Mr. Slowly.
	But I don't recall everybody who's on that call.
	Do you recall whether there was more than one meeting where you had this same discomfort?
	I think that was the only one, because as of around the 12th of February, I broke off and was assigned full-time for the RCMP side of the convoy.
	So I think that was the only one.
	Okay.
	Thank you.
	The second line of questions has to do with your answers to questions about freezing bank accounts or giving banks information that they would use, as you put it, to exercise their discretion to freeze accounts.
	And I'm not going to...
	Well, let me begin by reminding you of the two caveats you made, and just so you know that these questions are asked with those two caveats in mind.
	The first one I remember was you saying, "We didn't write this law." And the other one was we had maybe 24 hours to implement it, so we had to move very quickly.
	Not only law enforcement, but financial services as well had to figure out how we're going to process with all this.
	Well put.
	So both you had to initiate action and then the financial services industry had to react to that all within a very short period of time.
	So we accept those caveats, but I want to ask you about the way you phrased it, which is that...
	The notices you gave to the financial institutions didn't require the financial institution to freeze the account.
	It gave them the discretion to form their own view about whether the account should be frozen.
	Now, what I've got in front of me is the Act, or sorry, the regulation and the actual notice that the RCMP served on financial institutions.
	But let me see if I can do it without taking you to those documents.
	Would you agree with me that, in effect, you strike me as a practical man, Deputy Commissioner, in effect, once the financial institution got one of those notices that absent, for example, that you gave some exceptional information that the bank had that the...
	The information they'd been given by the RCMP was just wrong.
	Absent that information, they were effectively bound by the regulations to take measures to stop dealing with that customer.
	Yeah, and I said discretion because I'm not familiar with the exact language that's in the order or the regs.
	If they had to, I'm not quite sure.
	Our responsibility was to provide that information to the financial services.
	And then they had, I'm not going to say an obligation, but they were the ones responsible for deciding if they're going to freeze it or not based on the information that they might have in their holdings and the information that we had.
	Would it be fair to say that you fully expected the financial institutions to stop dealing with these customers as soon as you gave them the To a certain degree, yes, but I don't know what the bank had in their holdings with regards to these individuals once we identified them.
	Thank you.
	That will serve for my purposes.
	And so, Mr. Commissioner, those are my questions in reexamination.
	Thank you.
	I know you all want to get out of here, and I know we have a witness waiting who probably is even more eager than you to get out of here, but if I could just ask a couple of very, just a few questions.
	Firstly, you spoke about the Hendon report, and I think this is for you, Deputy Commissioner, but it seems to me odd that the Hendon report, if you've looked at it, is really a...
	National in scope and I don't really understand why that function is being carried out by the OPP rather than the RCMP and I realize it's shared and OPP has the RCMP has input in it but it would it would have been sort of my sense that that should be a national initiative.
	Do you have a comment on that?
	And you Commissioner also if you'd like.
	I'll leave it off, Commissioner.
	I didn't see the Hendon Report.
	My understanding is there's national information coming in from different provinces, but the Hendon Report, my understanding of the Hendon Report was really...
	A view of what was going on in the province of Ontario, but being fed in from different organizations.
	That was my understanding of the project, so that the OPPU is in a position to have a view, a good understanding of what was going on in the province of Ontario, which they facilitated a lot of the work for the commissioner when she's briefing downtown, because we relied on our partners to provide that situational report when it comes to what was going on in Ontario.
	So my understanding is it's really focused on the province, but there's national intelligence that was fed in.
	From events going on across the country.
	And I would add, it's not unusual for something to originate from outside the RCMP.
	And I would think that eventually, if this was something that was ongoing, there would be a point where we would probably pass it off.
	We would take it, and if it became national in scope.
	But I think it was because of the fact that...
	Things were going to converge on in Ontario, and they were dealing with various aspects of that.
	It originated as Deputy Commissioner, and I'm not intimately familiar with the report myself.
	Yeah, I think it originated from an Ontario need, but developed into something bigger.
	And I guess the follow-up question is, is there something that the RCMP produces that's equivalent to the Hendon report that updates nationally?
	We do have, like, each province has a criminal intelligence service that is integrated with all police agencies.
	So there's CISBC, CIS Alberta, and each one of those are integrated, and we have a centralized bureau.
	So all of it can go in that way.
	I think it was more sort of a, like, almost like a task force of intelligence taken out.
	To examine something specific, because we have all kinds of mechanisms to feed that information and produce those types of reports nationally.
	We do have a team that looks at it on a monthly basis of different events that are taking place across Canada, and we'll prepare a document for that.
	Obviously, when it gets bigger and starts moving, you'd have to look at probably increasing.
	But on a monthly basis, we do provide a report.
	Our intel folks do provide a report of what's going on across the country.
	And throughout this...
	Even before they arrived in Ottawa, our ideological-motivated criminal intelligence team did produce some strategic threat advisory, just informing people, the community, both law enforcement and the government, as to key things that are going on and some of the things that we're seeing.
	And that was fed into a lot of the combined intelligence group as well.
	Don't get me wrong.
	I'm not seeking to criticize.
	I have a recommendation mandate.
	And I'm trying to understand what is good, what can happen, whether some changes.
	There's another avenue for that because under those...
	Criminal Intelligence Bureaus.
	There's what we call a National Executive Committee that has representatives from each province.
	They meet once a year.
	They mandate the Criminal Intelligence Service Canada of what they want to dig deeper into.
	They could actually be tasked with doing a whole report on protests or doing the opioid crisis.
	They do various different reports on specific elements.
	As per the recommendations of that National Executive Committee, which are all police officers from across the country.
	Okay.
	Turning to another subject, where did the officers come from that participated in the enforcement action in Ottawa?
	Do you have any idea where factually they did come from?
	So, if my memory serves me right, I think there's 14 different public order units that were deployed to Ottawa.
	16?
	Okay, there goes my memory.
	And I think there's somewhere around 25 or 26 different law enforcement agencies or department that participated in what took place here.
	And I do have a list of the different organizations that participated, but I don't have it with me.
	So RCMP from different provinces, they all participated?
	For the most part.
	And then there was Saskatoon City Police, Calgary City Police, all the major municipalities provided resources as well.
	But we do have an actual list.
	Okay, and which leads me to the next question.
	In the period immediately leading up to and at the time, That the emergency was declared and the actions in Ottawa.
	What was the status of police resources available if there had been another crisis somewhere?
	I'm just trying to get a sense of what was the status of the police resources for regular policing as is necessary and to cover for some...
	Emergency, any kind, whether it's a...
	I can't speak outside of the RCMP, but that's exactly why we only draw 10% at any given time out of a province.
	Plus, to that 10%, we also have federal resources that are, like Deputy Dem explained, we have 5,000 across the country.
	We can draw on those resources.
	They aren't first responders.
	They are on important Tier 1 investigations, for example, but they're not first responders.
	And that's why on the provincial side, under our provincial and municipal services agreement, we only can draw up to 10% for that very reason, so that we're not leaving some area vulnerable by taking too many from one area.
	The initial concern, Commissioner, is we were seeing some popping up here and there, and that's why we decided to go within the organization.
	The first step was to use federal policing members across the country, so it has no impact, as the Commissioner said, on the frontline policing.
	In those provinces.
	And again, as the Commissioner said, I'm not able to speak on behalf of other law enforcement as to what was that threshold for them where they felt comfortable in releasing a number of members.
	And another example, I don't believe we took any resources from BC because you'll hear from Deputy Commissioner Zablocki.
	He had invoked an Article 9 to take resources from BC for his situation.
	And would there be many POU units available for redeployment that weren't already deployed to Ottawa and to BC, or rather to Alberta at the time?
	I don't know how many there are available.
	I don't either.
	But most big municipalities have their own public order units, and some of our bigger divisions have two.
	One of our divisions has two.
	We don't have anything in certain divisions, but I would say that the number of public order units, I'm not sure how many they have in Ontario, but there was a big majority of the public order units were here in Ottawa.
	So from an RCMP perspective, we do have a public order unit in...
	In the province of Quebec, and we have two units here in Ontario, one in Toronto and one here in National Capital Region.
	And mindful that this is not a full-time job.
	These are people that are on regular duties and then they volunteer to this type of work.
	And in the larger divisions, there might be one or two public order units.
	I know that Southeast Quebec have two or three public units.
	There's one here to assist us, but it varies, as the Commissioner said, from one agency to another.
	But there's no sort of central number available that you can tell me about?
	We do have all the numbers of the resources that came here, but to say whether they've surpassed a threshold, and it's important to note that, like I said, these people are not full-time, so we're actually taking from the front line.
	Frontline policing when we take some of them are federal resources, some of them aren't, but for the most part they're uniformed police officers that are doing that as an additional duty.
	Okay, and then you spoke about or you were taken to your memo or speaking notes for the IRG and about the fact that criminal code has been sort of utilized.
	And you remember those notes.
	I guess my question is, did you make any recommendation to IRG or to Cabinet on the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
	No.
	We stayed away from that.
	It was for them to decide if it was necessary, if they had met the threshold.
	That was for...
	It's no different than any of the other legislations that we are...
	We're providing input on.
	We provide, you know, the input in regards to questions, same as cannabis legislation, the gun legislation.
	We provide the subject matter experts in that field, but we don't say whether it's absolutely needed or not.
	That's for the parliamentarians to do.
	Did you have a view?
	I think, obviously, I have a view now, I think, and we've talked about it in, I have a Chiefs of Police roundtable, and we've talked about, should we be looking at some of these authorities and looking at if there's some regulations that could be put into place to add to these, to give us additional authorities?
	And like I said, it's not for the people who are legally protesting.
	It's for the ones that refuse to leave and are blocking roads and downtowns.
	And disabling vehicles and not wanting to leave.
	That's what the legislation or regulations, however you put it, would be helpful because the only motivation we have for people to leave the area is to arrest, which means then often that means we have to resort to some level of enforcement, which could lead to an intervention, which again, now we're using some level of force for arrest, which is not where we want to go when people are...
	Refusing to leave because a lot of these people are very true to their cause and we don't want to have to be forced to use that type of intervention.
	So if there's things that may motivate people to leave that do not involve the police, that's something that should be considered.
	Which gets me to my final question.
	Do you have any...
	Any suggestions as to what I should be recommending, either with respect to the relationship of the RCMP with the government, with respect to the Emergencies Act, or protests of this type?
	I think one of the ones that was mentioned is facilitating an ease of swearing of members from anywhere in Canada.
	You know, providing some type of recommendation that would ease that.
	I don't know why that would be something that we need to do and provide an impediment.
	It's not like somebody's going to come into a province and just start enforcing laws.
	It's when we have additional requests for assistance.
	There's one looking at the authorities that were in the Emergencies Act, and nobody is, you know...
	Nobody wants to infringe on anybody's Charter of Rights.
	But when people aren't following the laws, this is where, like I said, we don't want to be having to use force to deal with that.
	We don't pick and choose what we enforce.
	That's the unfortunate position that we're in.
	And I think more and more people are going to want to let their voices be heard.
	I wouldn't want this to be, you know, increasing exponentially so that the police are dealing with this and, you know...
	That 24 days that that lasted, that was a huge drain on all resources in policing.
	And also it undermines policing who are trying to, you know, keep things as peaceful as possible.
	But, you know, we talk about if we went in too early, what would be the circumstance?
	What would be the commentary if we came in too early and did quick enforcement?
	We'd probably be criticized for that, criticized for late enforcement.
	So how do we deal with this?
	And not letting it last for 24 days, because I don't think it's acceptable in anybody's books that that went on for as long as it did.
	But it was a difficult situation, and I've said this before, I can't imagine the pressure that Chief Slowly was under during those days, and it's not an easy thing to reconcile with.
	Deputy?
	I would add, Commissioner, that I think the whole Definition that we find under the Parliament Act with regards to Parliament Hill and the precinct should be revisited and set those boundaries where there's limited traffic in certain areas at the downtown core of Ottawa.
	That's something.
	Other than that, I think the Commissioner covered it.
	Again, it would be nice if...
	I was told that the swearing-in process, although I thought it was smooth, I was told that there were some hiccups or bumps on the road, so if there's any way we could do it from a national perspective, that would be great too.
	Okay, well, thank you both very much for your testimony and your perseverance in all these questions, and I understand your...
	I'm feeling a little under the weather, Commissioner, so that's appreciated that you came nonetheless.
	Thank you.
	Thank you, sir.
	So I think we're going to go on to our next witness, finally.
	I don't know if we need a couple of minutes to change the setup.
	Yes, we need maybe five minutes, so we'll just take a few minutes to get the witness up and organized.
	The Commission is in recess for five minutes.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	The Commission is in recess.
	Okay, so we have our final witness for the day.
	We have a witness sworn, please.
	Will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
	For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
	My name is Curtis Michael Zablocki.
	Zablocki is spelled Z-A-B-L-O-C-K-I.
	Do you swear that the evidence to be given by you to this commission shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
	So help you God.
	Yes, I do.
	Thank you.
	Good evening, Deputy Commissioner Zablocki.
	And my name is Gordon Cameron.
	You might remember we met out in Saskatoon for the interview of you and your colleagues.
	And now the summary of that interview that you will have looked at to confirm its accuracy has already been adopted by those who proceeded before you.
	But while I've got you in the stand...
	What I'm going to do is just ask you to confirm that you did review that summary of your interview, and to your knowledge and belief, it's accurate.
	Is that correct?
	Thank you for that, Mr. Cameron.
	On page 18, there's an amendment or a correction that I would like to make in the context of that summary.
	Please go ahead, then.
	Thanks.
	Yeah, I believe it's the first paragraph on page 18. About halfway through, there's a sentence that refers to, well, uses the words lip service in the context of...
	The towing association that we were working with within the province of Alberta.
	And it infers that we weren't getting straight information or clear information from that towing service.
	And I believe that's inaccurate.
	Quite to the contrary, they were working and doing their best to be helpful.
	Okay, well, thank you for that clarification and correction.
	And with that correction...
	You can confirm that the summary of your interview is otherwise accurate?
	I will do that, yes, thanks.
	Thank you very much.
	I'd like to begin by asking you to describe some of this.
	Well, let me ask you, you were in the audience when the Commissioner and the Deputy Commissioner were justifying earlier today?
	Off and on through the day, yes, sir.
	We'll repeat that, but just so that you can put your evidence in context.
	Can you describe what division of the RCMP is under your command and how that fits in with the way that the RCMP is organized nationally?
	Yes, certainly.
	So I'm the commanding officer for what we call K Division, which is the province of Alberta.
	And the commissioner, so myself as a deputy commissioner, I'm a direct report to the commissioner, to Commissioner Lucky.
	And we've heard that the country is divided up into divisions, and we're going to hear a little bit about the interaction between your division, K-Division, which is geographically Alberta, and if I've got it correctly, E-Division, which is geographically the province of British Columbia.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	And did you also interact with the Prairie Provinces or any of the other divisions, the knee division?
	Not in the context of the Coutts protests, no.
	Thank you.
	Can you describe what role the RCMP plays as the police in the province of Alberta?
	Certainly.
	So the RCMP...
	The RCMP is the contracted provincial police service for the province of Alberta.
	So there's a contract between Public Safety Canada and the province of Alberta with the RCMP as the provincial police service or the police service provider within the province.
	So in essence, the provincial police service has responsibility for policing communities with populations of less than 5,000 persons.
	In addition, we place communities, populations above 5,000 that have a desire to contract with the RCMP to provide that policing services.
	And those are primarily in the context of municipalities.
	So we have 48 municipal policing contracts in addition to our broader provincial policing contract within Alberta.
	And of course, within those responsibilities, we also place a number of Indigenous communities and Métis settlements as well.
	Thank you.
	That's a very complete description.
	I want to get past the conception a lot of us have that the RCMP is only a national or is Canada's national police force.
	When you are the police of jurisdiction, when you are in effect the provincial police for the province of Alberta, you're wearing RCMP uniforms, correct?
	Very true, yes.
	Okay, but you are...
	In effect, the same type of police force as the OPP is in Ontario, the Surrey Tate de Quebec is in Quebec.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	They are provincial police services in those two locations you've mentioned, as we are within the province of Alberta.
	And the same is true of E-Division in British Columbia.
	They are the provincial police of British Columbia.
	That's true, yes.
	Thank you.
	And you described the way that your policing Can flow down to municipalities?
	And with respect to Coutts in particular, which we're going to obviously focus on today, was there any other police force with jurisdiction in Coutts or the vicinity relevant to the blockade at Coutts other than the RCMP?
	No, the jurisdiction for policing in Coutts, the community of Coutts in the area, was the jurisdiction of the Provincial Police Service or the RCMP.
	Thank you.
	See if I can refine that a little bit.
	That was all the RCMPK Division as Provincial Police, not any of the municipal, not where you were providing municipal police forces?
	Correct.
	Thank you.
	Can you help us with the...
	I'll give the acronym and the name, the Community Conflict Mediation Group, the CCMG, and where that fits in your organization for K-Group, doubtless it's the same for the other divisions, but if you can describe it for K-Group, K-Division for us.
	Certainly.
	So that is a group of trained individuals that we use, I'll say, to intervene or engage in protest situations like we had at COOTS.
	These are individuals that are trained in mediation, negotiation.
	They're trained to engage, communicate, open the channels of communication.
	They're trained to de-escalate as well.
	So it'd be similar to the PLTs that I think maybe have been described previously during the Commission here and such.
	So we often...
	Utilize these teams to engage with the organizers of protests and advance of protests if we have alerts and information to suggest that there's going to be blockades or issues or challenges around protests.
	And are some or all of the members of the CCMG?
	Full-time and dedicated to that role, or all of them perhaps, some part-time, how does that get structured in K Division?
	Right, so these are police officers that have substantive work outside of their CCMG roles.
	But if an event arose where some interaction with a public order incident was required, you would call on those people, perhaps take them out of whatever other station they're in and bring them to the location where they're required?
	Correct.
	Yes, correct.
	And is it fair to say that...
	In the K Division and in the province of Alberta, those officers would get some reasonable level of experience at that work, given both the environmental and perhaps Indigenous issues that are encountered in the province of Alberta?
	Yeah, that's a very accurate statement.
	Our folks have been engaged in a number of protest situations, giving them that experience.
	Thank you.
	Now, coming to the events in question at Coutts, can you describe first, just to begin the story, where you first saw the protests forming up when you first became aware of it?
	How did this first come to your attention or perhaps people who report to you when it first came to their attention?
	Yeah, I think it first came to our attention in Well, I'll say on January 19th, we received some open source information suggesting that there was going to be a protest or a blockade at Coutts the very next day on the 20th of January.
	Again, on the 19th, there was a separate source of information received, I believe it was open source information, that suggested there was going to be a blockade on the 29th.
	of January at Coutts.
	So the 20th came and went without any protest, without any activity at the Coutts port of entry.
	On January 26th we received some further open source information about a potential blockade convoy to Coutts and a potential blockade at Coutts as well.
	Started to, of course, started some of the planning around that.
	We engaged with our CCMG staff, identified the organizers of the convoy.
	And engaged in open communications with them.
	Over the course of the days leading up to the 29th, we had several meetings engaging partner agencies, including the Alberta sheriffs.
	Canada Border Services, also our U.S. partners in the U.S. CBP, Customs and Border Patrol entities there as well.
	Some of the information indicated that there was going to be a number of trucks, up to a thousand trucks on the...
	United States on the USA side coming to the port of entry.
	So we had, like I mentioned, we had engaged our U.S. partners there as well.
	We prepared to deploy some resources to COOTS for the 29th as well, but we had activated our Gold-Silver command structure as well.
	We had activated our Division Emergency Operations Center.
	Because there were other planned protests or convoys in the province of Alberta scheduled for January 29th as well.
	We consulted with legal counsel around our authorities, our authorities to stop vehicles, just to confirm that as well too.
	So we took a number of steps in preparation for the possibility of a blockade.
	Now I'll go back to our engagement with the protest organizers.
	And the last information, the best information that we had leading up to the 29th, and it was from the protest organizers, was that they were no longer going to blockade at Cootes, but they were simply, well, not simply, but they were going to conduct slow rolls through to Cootes with the convoy.
	And we realized that it was their intention to do three slow rolls to Cootes.
	Back to Milk River, the community of Milk River, which is also on Highway 4 north of Coutts.
	And they would conduct three slow rolls through this area, ensuring that they had maintained at least one lane open at all times while they were conducting these slow rolls.
	At the time you were...
	Performing all of these preparatory measures and analyzing the intelligence, did you or the people who were doing the intelligence analysts for you form a view about whether the people who were planning the slow rolls, as it was initially envisaged, whether they were associated with or aligned with the other convoy events that were...
	Emerging then, coming all the way from Vancouver towards Ottawa and from other locations, ended up being various other ports of entry and ultimately Ottawa?
	I think it was reasonable to conclude that this slow roll was associated to perhaps the larger convoy that was traveling west-east across the prairie provinces and into Ontario.
	Okay.
	I'm going to try to do this without a map, but you mentioned Highway 4, and would it be fair to say that the Coutts border crossing is a particular place on the Canada-US border that one can drive up to, and there's a CBSA border point there, but that the slow rolls wouldn't just be at the border point.
	I think this was one of the things you've described in other parts of your evidence, that the whole highway down to the border point was vulnerable to whatever activity that the slow rolls would engage in.
	Maybe you could just describe the geography for us and what a challenge that presented to you from a policing point of view.
	Sure.
	As you've alluded to, the slow rolls wouldn't go right to the port of entry.
	And it would be if they were going north to south, they would come to the U.S. port of entry as they traveled southbound.
	But there was a turnaround in advance of that, and that convoy would utilize that turnaround between the two southbound and the two northbound lanes, and then be able to do loops back to Milk River if they so desired.
	Geography there it's very flat and open and I'll say you know through the ditches and fields they're very accessible if one was or had a desire to to move off the roadway and to travel through the ditches or into medians or into the adjacent fields as well.
	Okay now while you're on that point I'll mention it because it becomes relevant to the developments later on but What I was describing was that you didn't just have a particular border point to be concerned about, that anywhere along the road accessing that border point could effectively block the border point.
	But another point you just mentioned is that in terms of controlling that roadway, there were certainly some vehicles, such as farm vehicles, which could go around any policing effort you might undertake on the highway.
	Did I get that right?
	Yeah, that's correct.
	You know, a situation where this convoy could stop anywhere on the road and effectively block the highway at any point, whether it was, you know, just south of Lethbridge, the city of Lethbridge, or if it was, you know, closer to the port of entry.
	It would be very challenging at that point to deal with that situation.
	Now, maybe it could take us to the day that the blockade actually materialized and how the...
	K-Division forces dealt with that, how the blockade materialized, and how the police reacted to that.
	Yeah, so the convoy was in the process of doing their slow rolls when, I'll say suddenly, one of the semi-trailer tractor units jackknifed itself on the roadway, effectively blocking travel in both directions.
	Bringing the convoy to a halt at that point.
	So, effectively, you know, I would say at that point, creating an offence in the context of provincial or criminal code statutes.
	Did you, Deputy Commissioner, or the people working in K Division on this, on the reaction to this slow roll, which ended up becoming a blockade?
	Did you form a view about whether that particular truck that jackknifed itself and blocked the road or others who followed the same pattern, was that, as you and your forces perceived it, the intention of everybody on a slow roll or was that the actions of some smaller part of the slow rolling trucks?
	A certain segment or portion of a group, as I mentioned earlier, the organizers, that wasn't their intention to blockade.
	And we later learned that they had lost that control.
	And as we saw over the course of the next few days, a splinter group, a splinter leadership group developed.
	From the larger protest group.
	And we know as well that there were a number of individuals that were caught up in that blockade that did not have the desire to be part of that blockade.
	Do you mean they got trapped in it?
	Exactly right.
	It was in the next couple days following that, well, specifically on January 30th, we were able to assist a group of about 30 or so Semi-trailer units.
	They had cleared Canada Customs coming north into Canada.
	They were on the Canadian side of the border at that point, but had been blocked by the convoy and had nowhere to go.
	So we worked with them, with Canada, with CBSA and USCBP to allow them to turn around.
	Move back through the US and come back into Canada and another location.
	So they had no desire to be part of that blockade at all.
	And then the following day, the 31st, there was another group of individuals, of folks that were, I'll say, caught up in that blockade that were released and were able to move on from the blockade.
	You described fairly extensive planning and preparation and anticipation, that is, advanced knowledge and consequent planning and preparation and anticipation of the slow roll.
	And yet, we've heard that it's in the evidence of the Mayor of Coutts that he thought that the RCMP were caught off guard.
	By the blockade, were you caught off guard by the protest and the slow roll or by it having turned into a blockade by this jackknife that you described?
	So we knew there was, at the very least, going to be a slow roll through COOTS.
	However, we were also planning for, you know, potentially a blockade as well.
	As I mentioned earlier, we had deployed resources to that immediate area.
	We didn't deploy resources in a quantity that would allow us to take any...
	Necessary enforcement action in the context of arrests and such at that particular time.
	So we needed the 30th and the 31st of January to deploy further resources into the area to bring up our resource numbers to ensure that if in fact it was necessary to take enforcement action, that we have sufficient resources to do our best to ensure public and police officers' safety at that particular time.
	You know, I think one can say that in a situation like this where you have the number of participants that were present and the number of vehicles that were present, the best way to resolve that type of a situation is trying to gain voluntary compliance to move people along, right?
	Those are difficult situations to manage in that context.
	And during those first few days that you described, the 28th, 29th, 30th, while you were trying to marshal your forces in case enforcement action was necessary, was your CCMG group in trying to deal with the protesters?
	They were, right?
	They were.
	They were challenged, though, in those first couple days, attempting to identify a leadership group within the larger protest group.
	And it seemed like no one wanted to step forward to identify themselves as leaders.
	I would say it was quite quiet, is the way it was described to me, as far as any interaction or even the potential to find individuals to interact with us that might be part of a leadership or playing a leadership role in the protest.
	Now, taking us, we've gone through the 28th, 29th, 30th, and...
	Do I understand correctly that part of the forces you marshaled in anticipation of potential enforcement action was to get some heavy lift towing capacity arranged in case it was needed?
	Right.
	That was part of our objective and part of our operational plan.
	When we weren't getting a response in the context of engagement with our CCMG, we recognized...
	The potential that we might have to take enforcement action in that situation.
	So we did a range for towing capacity.
	Of course, this is heavy duty towing capacity to move these large tractor trailer units from the roadway that were blocking the roadway.
	And we got cooperation to do that.
	In fact, we were able to marshal some tow trucks.
	I believe it was on the 31st.
	And have them in place.
	As it turned out on the 31st, later in the day, we got the engagement from individuals within the protest group and started some communication and actually some negotiation at that particular point.
	So we held off on any enforcement action that particular time and held off until later in the day.
	Unfortunately, later in the day, those negotiations, I'll say negotiations, Fell off and given that time of the day we weren't able to initiate any action with the with the tow trucks at that particular time.
	Our communication with the tow truck operators and the companies was such that they indicated they would be back the next morning and as such it was the next morning that we planned to Deploy resources into the protest group and, of course, first seek compliance for the operators of the vehicles to move along.
	And, of course, if they did not volunteer or comply with that, we were preparing to make arrests.
	And with the arrests, you know, ensuring that we had the toying capacity to necessarily remove the trucks from the roadway.
	Do you know why the towing capacity wasn't there by the end of the day of the 31st?
	We understood that tow companies, tow operators were receiving phone calls.
	There was a barrage of online negative.
	Commentary to towing companies and operators as well around their potential participation and assistance of the police in the situation.
	So there was a lot of that surfacing and of course, you know, that was a...
	A significant factor in towing companies and operators deciding not to assist the police the following morning.
	And throughout the remainder of the event at Coos, did you ever manage to regain commercial towing?
	Contracts or commitments from either those companies or others at Cootes?
	No, we did not.
	No, that never came to be.
	And I would say our folks made significant efforts to obtain that requisite towing capacity.
	We canvassed towing companies across Alberta, Saskatchewan and British Columbia.
	We even reached into the United States, into Montana and canvassed towing companies there for their interest in assisting us.
	I would say for various reasons we were turned down and found no cooperation in that context.
	I'm just going to take a slight digression Deputy Commissioner and talk about a topic that That I saw pass by as you were describing the geography and the scenario.
	And I'm going to begin, I'm going to talk about the efforts that K-Division undertook to see if you could get the protesters to relocate or otherwise carry on their protest in a way that wouldn't, well, block traffic or put another way.
	And I'm going to begin that with a quotation you might recognize.
	This is Chief Superintendent Daru, who you'll know as the officer in command of the Southern Alberta District.
	And this is the quotation from him that I'll put you and then ask you to comment on.
	Our first and typically most effective approach in moving a protest into a lawful state is communication.
	At Coutts, we engaged our community conflict management group to move the protest back to a lawful state.
	That's the end of the quotation.
	I just want to ask you about that concept of, as Chief Superintendent Daru put it, the step number one when confronting A protest that has become unlawful is to see if you can find a way to make it lawful.
	Again, have I caught his thought correctly?
	Yeah, I believe you have, yes.
	And what types of steps were you hoping to take, or the people working in K Division, to see if that could be done with respect to the protest at Coutts?
	Yeah, well, one of the primary things that we attempted to do...
	Was create a lawful protest site.
	So again, we wanted to move the unlawful protest from the port of entry area further up the highway, when I say up the highway north towards Milk River, or quite frankly, away from the immediate port area.
	And so we did a number of things to try and accomplish that.
	We created what we call the Community Stakeholder Engagement Teams.
	We assigned two senior police officers to engage with the community leaders in the area, so the community leaders from Cootes and Milk River and the municipalities, to work with them to help us potentially find an area that would be suitable.
	To create as a lawful protest area.
	We were cognizant that, you know, the protesters to get them to move to such an area that, you know, this would have to be an area of visibility.
	So somewhere along the highway potentially was one of the requirements that we certainly had in mind as our folks undertook this work.
	And we needed to have an area that was convenient, that was accessible.
	And as I mentioned, visible.
	So we commenced that work.
	It would have been during the second week of the protest situation there.
	I'm just going to interrupt you there, but please hold that sequence because I do want you to continue on with how you attempted to find that.
	But just if I can explore that thought that you were describing before about...
	Trying to balance the interests of the protesters and the interests of the law enforcement that's present.
	I think you're describing a tension where the protesters want visibility.
	Perhaps they even want to be a nuisance or cause people to pay attention to them, do something to attract attention.
	And yet you want to make sure they...
	You want them to be able to do that much, correct?
	Right.
	We want them to still be able to protest, but in a lawful manner, right?
	And, of course, that would include, you know, them leaving the port area and moving elsewhere.
	And so there's this tension between you wanting to make sure things are legal and not too disruptive and the protesters wanting to be somewhat disruptive so that they're getting attention.
	And so one thing you described is moving them to an area where they're not obstructing as much traffic and yet still have the visibility they're looking for so they can make their point.
	Right.
	And is that also the...
	The thinking behind approaches such as opening one lane or letting so many cars through an hour, in other words, so that they're having some disruptive effect, but not to the point where you would call it an illegal disruption?
	Well, you know, opening one lane, I would suggest, would still be an illegal disruption at the port entry, but I suppose that...
	It's a bit of a consolation, but our objective was to open the entirety of access through the highways, right?
	And part of your CCMG group would be having these discussions with the protesters to come up with some give or concession that allows them to have a highly visible and...
	Highly visible protest appropriate to their objective, and yet ideally not be illegal and to allow things to go ahead without as much disruption as possible.
	Is that fair?
	That's fair.
	I interrupted you on that point of the objective, and you were about to describe how your folks attempted to accomplish that by relocating the...
	Right.
	We engaged, I'll say, the protest leadership early in that week.
	And again, this is the second week of the blockade.
	And initially, there seemed to be some interest from the protest leaders in that.
	So we continued our work with identifying a proper location.
	And we were able to work with...
	The Government of Alberta actually had a small parcel of land adjacent to Milk River.
	It was alongside Highway 4 so that visibility component would have been met there as well too.
	So the Municipal Affairs Branch within Alberta Transportation Branch within the Alberta Government worked with us and created a site there for a lawful protest.
	Okay, and how did that succeed in solving the problem at Coutts?
	In the end, it did not.
	The interest definitely waned, and the feedback we received later that week from the protest leadership indicated that they were no longer interested in moving to that lawful protest site.
	Did they say why?
	I don't believe they did.
	Did you form a view?
	I've been talking again about our balance.
	Did they not consider that that lawful protest site would give them the visibility and the disruption they wanted to make their point?
	You know, I suppose that was potential.
	I don't know that we had enough information to really form a view other than they didn't perhaps see value in moving and they thought their position might be stronger by staying at the port of entry.
	And at some point, I understand, well, for some period, for the first week or so, I understand that you were attempting to minimize enforcement in the terms of traffic tickets or other Highway Traffic Act defenses.
	Is that correct?
	Right.
	So the first week, yeah, we didn't move out strong or heavy on traffic enforcement.
	We wanted to ensure that, you know, well...
	Quite frankly, it wasn't until Checkpoint 10 was created that we started to have concerns around traffic, not traffic flow, but just, you know, the haphazard parking of vehicles.
	And I'll describe Checkpoint 10. It's a location, again, on Highway 4. It's between the port of entry and Milk River.
	And it's at the intersection of Highway 501 and it was a location that earlier on in the blockade we created a checkpoint there to try and regulate the flow of traffic down to the port of entry and of course we wanted to allow community residents And legitimate traffic to coups to travel through there,
	but we also wanted to negate the flow of protesters to the protest site as well, too, via vehicle.
	So we created this checkpoint.
	And over time, this checkpoint...
	You know, it almost turned into another blockade location for the protesters as they gathered there, as they formed there.
	In fact, they eventually brought farm equipment and from time to time would put it across the roadway, effectively blocking access through checkpoint 10. And so it was as a result of some of the safety concerns around checkpoint 10 that we started to become a little stronger on our traffic enforcement under the Traffic Safety Act.
	And did you perceive any beneficial impact of that enforcement from your point of view?
	Did it have the effect you were hoping it would have?
	Well, it didn't help resolve the blockades, which, of course, was one of the primary objectives.
	I'm not sure what that traffic enforcement, exactly what that effect had.
	I don't think it was significant.
	Now, as these events are unfolding, as you've described, the attempt to set up the lawful protest zone, the attempt to establish Checkpoint 10 and its evolution, have you yet started to bring in resources from either within the province of Alberta down towards Coutts or from E-Division in British Columbia over to Coutts?
	We brought resources down to Coutts initially in preparing for the slow rolls.
	The potential of a blockade.
	We brought some resources at that point.
	We furthered that same weekend and brought additional RCMP resources from across the province to Cootes.
	And then later in the week, I believe it was the 3rd of February, we made a request to initiate Article 9 under the Provincial Police Service Agreement to bring in resources from British Columbia.
	So our folks have been on the ground for almost a week, solid day shifts and night shifts and such there too.
	So we were looking to provide some relief for our folks that were working on the protest.
	And can you describe, do you need to engage any of the provisions of...
	Of the agreements you have with municipalities in Alberta or other segments of Alberta to move those resources down to Coots?
	Or as long as it's within Alberta, do you have the unilateral ability to move them around?
	Right.
	There's no direct mechanism within the contracts with the municipalities for that.
	The provincial contract is overarching and allows us to do that with the municipalities.
	I'm not going to ask you to be a contracts lawyer, but just from an operational point of view, how it works when you seek resources from another province?
	We're able to do that under the Provincial Police Service Agreement.
	In Alberta, quite frankly, we've done it a number of times.
	Obtaining resources from British Columbia.
	We did it this past summer as well for the papal visit, which was a significant lift for policing services within Alberta as well.
	And we've also done it for natural disasters where we needed additional resources to support our policing efforts as well, too.
	So that request goes out through the commissioner.
	We'll send a letter to ministers.
	Advising that, in our case, Alberta would be seeking additional resources under Article 9 of the Provincial Police Services Agreements.
	And when the Commissioner sends out that letter, we'll use K-Division and E-Division here, and the Commissioner wants resources to go from E-Division to K-Division, and she writes to the Ministers of the respective provinces telling...
	Right.
	Is she asking permission to do this or is she invoking a right that the RCMP has under those agreements with the provinces?
	It's more the latter.
	And the Commissioner has the authority to draw up to 10% of resources from a province to assist in other RCMP jurisdictions under the contract deemed emergency or extraordinary circumstances or events.
	And have there been occasions when the Commissioners asked that resources go from K Division over to E Division?
	Specifically to E-Division, I believe so.
	I believe we may have accomplished that with some of the protests recently in British Columbia, if I recall.
	I know we sent resources.
	I don't know if we sent resources in a significant quantity to trigger Article 9 in the contracts, but I know we assisted with resources in British Columbia.
	And when you get resources from E-Division to come and work with UNK Division, They are basically the same.
	They are RCMP officers wearing RCMP uniforms who've been trained with the same equipment and went through the same college, etc.
	Is that right?
	That's correct.
	And I'll say there's significant value in that, being able to bring resources from other provinces who have the same training and use the same type of equipment.
	And you can seamlessly insert them into your operations.
	Right.
	Now, on February 3rd, you might recollect this, we can call it up if it's necessary, but you might remember writing to Minister Savage in Alberta.
	And in that letter, you made this statement.
	The situation at Coutts does, in my opinion, constitute an emergency in the province of Alberta.
	Do you remember saying that?
	I do.
	And when you said that, well, obviously you viewed the situation as an emergency.
	Were you making reference to Alberta's emergency legislation or anything else in particular that prompted you to use that expression?
	Or was that just a characterization of what you were facing?
	The reference I was making using the word emergency was to the provincial policing contract.
	So emergency is defined within the provincial police services agreement and is defined as emergency in the context of a policing situation where additional resources are needed to deal with an event or a developing or present situation.
	Right, so this is different than the commissioner giving notice.
	To British Columbia that you're going to borrow some of their resources here.
	you're giving notice.
	I would say your emergency would have the same meaning in that context.
	Yes, it would.
	Fair enough, thank you.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Can you tell me about your efforts to obtain towing assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces?
	Certainly.
	So it was February 4th when I signed a request for assistance, which is a form that we have to complete when we're desirous of support or assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces.
	So that request was forwarded through to our national headquarters.
	And I didn't hear immediately the results of that request.
	It was a number of days later when I learned that there had been inquiries made with the Canadian Armed Forces at our national headquarters level and that...
	The Canadian Armed Forces did not have the equipment that would be suitable or of assistance to our situation at Coutts.
	And was your effort to obtain towing assistance with Canadian Armed Forces equipment wholly independent from the request by the province of Alberta to Ottawa to obtain assistance from the Canadian Armed Forces?
	So I was aware that the government of Alberta were also making a request through to the Canadian Armed Forces for similar assistance.
	In fact, I had a conversation with government officials where, you know, I think it was myself that suggested we both should be putting the request forward.
	I see.
	So you each knew that the other was making the request, and it was basically for the same end result, which was that the Armed Forces towing equipment be able to help out at COOTS?
	That's correct.
	And you both got roughly the same answer?
	I'm aware of the answer that we as the RCMP received, and I'm not real firm on the answer that the province received.
	Are you aware that our reference for this is what Alberta has said in its institutional report, but you might be aware of it as well, and I think you've spoken about it in your interview summary, that eventually Alberta acquired, like bought, the province of Alberta bought some heavy lift towing capacity.
	Can you tell us about that?
	Yeah, certainly I can.
	As I mentioned earlier, we had made a number of efforts to locate towing capacity.
	We were unsuccessful.
	We also looked to see what was available for used or new towing equipment, and it was in those same early days that officials from the Government of Alberta made similar efforts, again contacting towing companies to see if they were available, and then quite frankly received the same.
	The same response as the RCMP received.
	However, they also set out to see what might be available on the market for towing equipment and eventually did purchase used towing equipment, heavy-duty towing equipment, to potentially assist at Coots.
	And was that ever?
	Was that equipment ever put into service for the purpose of clearing Coutts?
	It was, as I mentioned, it was acquired.
	It was moved to southern Alberta and staged.
	And it was on the 15th of February where the equipment was, or at least some of the equipment, was moved down to the immediate port of entry, the immediate Coutts area.
	Was it used to move protester vehicles?
	It was...
	Eventually used to move protester vehicles, not in the context of disassembling the blockade, which happened essentially on the 14th and the morning of the 15th of February.
	It was used subsequent to that, I believe later on the 15th or the 16th, to remove two or three vehicles that had been involved.
	In an incident the evening of the 13th where a police vehicle at a checkpoint was nearly struck and was forced to take evasive action as one of these vehicles that was seized came at it in a reckless fashion.
	Was the heavy lift towing equipment used to lift heavy vehicles?
	It was in the context of those two or three vehicles that I just described.
	Involved in that incident?
	Involved in the incident, but again after the protest had disassembled.
	Understood.
	Thank you.
	I want to talk to you about the incidents or incidences.
	Continuum of your concern about firearms among the blockade participants at Coutts.
	And if I can begin by putting it this generally, it's our understanding that the RCMP had concerns about firearms at Coutts as early as the early days of the protest that is around February 1st.
	Can you explain how that happened?
	Right.
	So it came to our attention.
	That an individual within the protest group may have had a firearm with him and had displayed it within the protest group.
	We weren't successful in following up to obtain any further information around that, so we weren't able to validate, I'll say, the report that we received.
	That is, no one was willing to point a finger when you went and asked about it, is that what you're saying?
	Yes, in essence.
	And then around February 9th, there was new information about another issue with firearms, and you're going to want to be cautious, and you've probably thought about this a lot.
	We're going to try not to ask any questions that elicit answers that you're reluctant to give, but can you tell us what you can about how that, what we'll call a more serious incident involving firearms that first came to your attention and how it evolved?
	So it was on the 9th, as you alluded to, when we received some information about a potential cache of firearms.
	At the port of entry within the protest group, that information came to us through our CCMG folks and as a result we undertook some covert investigational methods to further investigate that information which of course was very concerning to us.
	And required a very focused effort and investigation going forward.
	And I understand you were prepared to take further investigative steps, but that the events were precipitated by an incident at the protest site.
	Can you take us through that?
	I'm not sure.
	Could you rephrase that again, please, counsel?
	Yes, I understand that you were prompted, your forces were prompted to act on its concerns and move in and make arrests and conduct searches, and that that was prompted by an incident involving a vehicle that, well, it's probably the incident you were describing earlier, the collision between one of the trucks and one of your...
	Right, the near collision, and you're correct.
	We had planned to execute an operational plan the morning of the 14th of February.
	In the early morning hours of the 14th, we were planning to execute an operational plan in the context of the execution of search warrants and potentially arrests.
	As a result of our investigation around the information that pertained to firearms within the protest group.
	We did execute that plan earlier than we initially anticipated, given the near collision, I'll say, with our police vehicle.
	We came upon As a result of that incident, we came upon some of the subjects that we were intending to arrest later that morning.
	And so for that reason, we made those arrests at that particular time and initiated the enforcement action.
	And if you can just describe it in numbers of arrests and charges and...
	Firearms seized.
	Can you give us a description of how the operation proceeded?
	So that morning, we executed search warrants at Smugglers Inn, which was the headquarters for the protest group, or certainly the leadership within the protest group.
	We executed search warrants at a mobile home and two travel or holiday trailers that were adjacent to that particular residence.
	And we, from the mobile home and the travel trailers, we seized a number of firearms.
	We seized, I believe it was 13 long guns, two handguns, two sets of body armor, machete, significant quantity of ammunition as well.
	We arrested...
	12 individuals during the course of the execution of those search warrants.
	And later, that same day, on the 14th, we arrested an additional individual who we allege was part of the, I'll say, the cell or the group of four who are today charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
	Police officers also charged with mischief and charged with possession of weapons dangerous to the public peace.
	So that 13th individual was arrested away from the site.
	As they traveled to the site, they were arrested between the City of Calgary and the community of Coutts.
	And it's alleged when they were arrested that this individual was in possession of two firearms at that time and heading to the Coutts site.
	And there's probably a long list of charges associated with that, but can you give us a general description of what criminal charges came out of this operation?
	Certainly.
	So four individuals were charged with conspiracy to commit murder.
	They were also charged with mischief and they were charged with possession of weapon dangerous.
	There were additional, I believe, six individuals that were charged with mischief as well as possession of weapon dangerous.
	Um...
	That's 10. I'm obviously missing a little bit here.
	Yeah, I'd have to refresh my memory on the others there.
	I want to just ask a bit about the relationship between the people who were involved in the firearms offenses.
	And the rest of the protesters.
	And my starting off point for that, Deputy Commissioner, is to ask it this way.
	There's some information in the public domain about how you learned about these individuals and the firearms cache.
	But I'll let you use your words to make sure you're comfortable with how you describe it.
	But the way you told us earlier was that it was your...
	The liaison group that first learned or started the investigative steps with respect to this firearms cache and arrest, is that right?
	I believe I may have said that, right?
	And as I think about that, I think it was another source of information that did come to us and that was the result of a covert investigation.
	What I'm trying to find out is, if you're allowed to tell us, did you learn about the individuals who were involved in these firearms from your interaction with the other protesters on the site?
	No, we did not.
	Okay.
	So it was an investigative effort through which you, in effect, penetrated.
	Enough to get the intelligence that allowed you to make these arrests and these seizures.
	Is that right?
	Correct.
	That's right.
	Now, with that said, can you tell us what impact, at least as you saw it, this incident of the arrests of the individuals and the seizure of the firearms, what impact that had on the other protesters, the ones who weren't involved in the arrests and who weren't?
	Charged or otherwise connected in any way with the investigation that resulted in the arrests?
	Yeah, it certainly seemed to have an impact and quite frankly I think it obviously contributed to decisions that the protesters made to distance themselves from that group of individuals that had been arrested and charged and ultimately dismantle the blockade and move in a different direction.
	I'll try to get you to expand on that, and so I'm just going to lead you even more than I have so far.
	You sensed that the rest of the protesters...
	I'm going to use the word we're embarrassed by or ashamed by, but wanted to distance themselves from the people who had the firearms and were arrested.
	Is that the sense you got?
	Yeah, that was my sense.
	Yes.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	And do you have anything else you would like to tell us about how the matter wrapped up?
	I mean, it came to a pretty prompt conclusion, to put it in a summary way.
	After the arrests, basically, the protesters, they wanted to clean up the site, but they did that and then left, correct?
	Yeah, I think it's important to say as well that the protest group, or at least the protest leaders, wanted to negotiate their dispersal from the blockade.
	Initially proposed and looked to potentially address their legal positions or standing as far as any potential charges that they might be facing into the future.
	So that was put on the table by the protest group.
	However, it was not accepted in consultation with legal counsel and our policing services.
	But it was agreed that they could They could stay in the location for a few more hours to clean it up before they left?
	So the agreement was such...
	So these negotiations, I'll say, happened the afternoon of February 14th.
	Ultimately, it was agreed that the protesters would remove...
	And at that time, it was a lot of farm equipment and tractors that were across blocking the highways, but that they would remove their...
	Their equipment and their tractors from the roadways, they would park them alongside in the adjacent lots or field, and they would turn the keys over to the RCMP.
	They indicated that they had an interest to remain overnight for one more evening, that they wanted to clean up the site, including cleaning up the site the following morning.
	So that was the arrangement in the agreement.
	Again, through negotiation that was arrived on late afternoon of February 14th.
	Thank you very much, Mr. Commissioner.
	Those are my questions of Deputy Commissioner's blocky and I will hand it over to the rest of the parties.
	Okay, thank you.
	First, the convoy organizers.
	Council stepped up.
	we should jump to the government of Alberta instead.
	Good evening, Deputy Commissioner Zablocki.
	My name is Stephanie Bose.
	I'm counsel for the province of Alberta.
	Much of the questions I had prepared for you have actually already been covered, but I just have a few areas that I'd like to ask some questions about.
	So I understand that in responding to these protests, the RCMP had various tools at their disposal.
	The Criminal Code, the Traffic Safety Act, and the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct, yes.
	And I think you talked about this a little bit in your testimony, but when you're dealing with large protests like this, you can't just go in right off the bat and start laying a bunch of charges.
	Would you agree with that?
	I would agree.
	The first step is to try to negotiate some of the various aspects of the protest.
	That's correct.
	And there was some success at various points in time in negotiating with the group of protesters.
	Is that correct?
	Yes, that's correct.
	There were times when the RCMP could negotiate the departure of some of the trucks that were there.
	Right.
	Times when the RCMP could negotiate the opening of various lanes to and from Cootes port of entry.
	Yeah, I think that's true.
	I'm not sure how much influence we had in negotiating the lanes to be open, but we certainly put an effort forward.
	Yes, that's correct.
	And there were times when the RCMP were able to escort vehicles that were there for the purpose of actually accessing the Coups port of entry.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	And I also understand there was difficulty, though, at other times in negotiating with the group of protesters.
	Yes, that's correct.
	And is that because there wasn't always clear leadership with the group of protesters?
	That was certainly the case in the early days.
	Certainly from the 29th, 30th, 31st into that week, there was really an absence of who the leadership was at that particular time.
	So again, we didn't make a lot of progress negotiations, obviously, in those early days.
	Did you feel that at some time the leadership eventually stabilized and there was an identifiable group that you could negotiate with?
	It seemed to.
	There were certainly individuals that came forward to speak with us.
	There were individuals that came forward and were speaking to media as well and conveying their messages.
	And we had a lot of communication with those individuals, yes.
	Okay.
	And very soon into the protest, the RCMP set up various checkpoints, the most significant one being checkpoint 10 near Milk River.
	Is that right?
	I would say that was the most significant checkpoint, yes.
	And the purpose of the checkpoint was to prevent further vehicles from joining the blockade closer to the Coutts port of entry.
	Correct.
	And you felt at that time where...
	The incident commander felt at that time that the RCMP had sufficient authorities to set up those checkpoints to limit travel to the port of entries to only those that were there for a legitimate purpose.
	Is that fair to say?
	That's very fair to say, yes.
	And eventually, this changed from policing a public order event to a criminal investigation, correct?
	That's correct.
	And that changes the approach to policing the protest?
	It does, but, you know, I would say, you know, potentially even from day one, this could have been deemed a criminal event as well, right?
	The offense of mischief, blocking, interfering with critical infrastructure, highway, you know, that was very significant.
	And, of course, I think you're referring to, however, the criminal investigation in relation to the firearms certainly changed.
	Right, so you had to...
	Conduct a criminal investigation alongside a policing the public order event.
	Correct.
	And your testimony today was that you were prepared to execute search warrants and make arrests related to the criminal investigation in the early morning hours of February 14th, but that those actions actually ended up occurring earlier because of the circumstances.
	That's correct.
	We initiated those actions before midnight on Sunday the 13th.
	So at that point in time, were the police confident that they had all the tools they needed to execute those search warrants, make those arrests, and deal with enforcement related to the blockade?
	Yes, we were confident we had the needed authorities.
	So the authorities related to laying charges under the Criminal Code or the Critical Infrastructure Defense Act, the Traffic Safety Act, but also the tools you need with respect to heavy towing capacity.
	And the towing capacity came in right at the end of the blockade situation, of course.
	I think I mentioned the towing capability, the heavy towing capability was available on the 14th to 15th of February.
	And even if equipment wasn't quite there yet, you knew it was on the way and it had been secured for the RCMP's use?
	Right.
	It was brought to Coutts on the 15th, morning of the 15th.
	Do you know when the protesters first indicated a desire to leave the protest site?
	Can you be more specific in context?
	So, our understanding from the testimony of Marco van Heugenbos is that the protesters didn't want the Coutts protests to be associated with the criminal element uncovered by the search warrants and laying of criminal charges.
	And you indicated that the protesters had attempted to negotiate.
	Their departure and in relation to any potential criminal charges they could be facing.
	I'm asking the question of at what point in time did the protesters first indicate to the RCMP their desire to start to leave the protest site?
	Yeah, that time was approximately mid-afternoon, mid to late afternoon on February 14th.
	So, as you're aware, we made the arrests early in the morning hours of the 13th and 14th, and it was later on the 14th that they first indicated.
	And I think they went back and forth a bit amongst their group to make their final decision, as I understand it.
	And did they give you any indication of what their reasons were for wanting to leave at that time?
	Was it simply because of the...
	The criminal investigation that had been undertaken?
	That was my understanding, is that it was, again, they wanted to distance themselves from that criminal aspect, that criminal investigation.
	Okay.
	Now, all of this happened without the powers granted under the Emergencies Act.
	Is that correct?
	That's correct.
	And I understand that at that time, some of the protesters did transition over to the legal protest site.
	Is that your understanding as well?
	Yeah, and that occurred after the blockade dissolved, I'll say.
	Some of the protesters moved to the Lawful protest site.
	Primarily protesters from Checkpoint 10, as I understand it, not from the main protest site near the border.
	Okay.
	Do you know how long protesters stayed at the legal protest site?
	I believe some stayed for quite a period of time, a number of weeks, and perhaps beyond as well.
	Maybe a couple months in duration.
	There were never a large number at that particular location, but there were some that certainly seemed, I'll say, somewhat comfortable or steadfast in their desire to stay.
	And they were there even after the public order emergency declaration was revoked, correct?
	That's correct.
	And after that time, with no extra powers under the Emergencies Act, there were no further blockades of any of the port of entries in Alberta.
	Is that correct?
	There were no further blockades at the port.
	That's correct.
	All right.
	Thank you, Deputy Commissioner.
	Those are my only questions today.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	Convoy organizers, please.
	Good evening.
	My name is Brendan Miller, and I am legal counsel at a Freedom Corp, which represents the protesters that were just in Ottawa in January and February.
	I don't represent anyone who was at Coutts, but I have a few questions for you.
	Sure.
	If we could please first bring up, and I know my friend was trying to avoid investigative privilege, and I have something that may assist and deal with that.
	Could we please bring up poe.hrf0000008?
	So sir, what this is, it's a news article by CBC journalist Megan Grant and Rachel Ward and I understand in September of this year they...
	brought an application and got access to some of the ITOs in the matter and what this is is a summary of what's in those ITOs and for the folks at home what that means is an information to obtain it's an affidavit an application from a police officer to obtain a search warrant so I'm wondering if we can just scroll through this and if you could tell me I'm not going to have to read it to you just if the facts in here are accurate because these are public facts and we don't need to worry about any form of issue with privilege So
	what I can tell you is that I, you know, obviously I think you probably assume that I haven't read the ITOs and I'm not familiar with the facts in the ITOs.
	So I'm not sure how much I can assist with your question.
	Well, maybe if I can, I guess I was going to try just to avoid having to go through it and I'll see if this information I put to you, you can agree with.
	I understand that for that operation, the undercover operation, there was a wiretap as well as a search warrant for the raids.
	Do you remember that or you're aware of that?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And there was two undercover officers from the RCMP embedded with these individuals who were eventually arrested.
	Is that fair?
	Again, I'm going to refrain from getting into any of the details of that particular investigation as those charges are before the courts.
	Right.
	And I understand that.
	And this is all from this article.
	I'm not taking it from anywhere else.
	And I can appreciate that.
	It is a news article, right?
	It's not from a court document itself.
	So, again, my hesitancy.
	Understood.
	It's fair to say that the entire time with these individuals, almost from the get-go, the RCMP knew about them and they were on it.
	Is that fair?
	I don't believe it's fair.
	That's not my understanding.
	Okay.
	But from early February, is it fair, prior to their arrest, around February 5th?
	They were aware of these individuals, and the first one was arrested on the 13th, Mr. Lysak, and the remainder were arrested on the 14th.
	No, we weren't aware of them on February 5th.
	Okay.
	And can you give a date of when you did become aware of these individuals?
	As I mentioned earlier, we became aware of potentially a cache of weapons.
	On the 9th of February.
	9th of February.
	All right.
	And according to this article, the two undercover officers essentially interacted with these gentlemen in a bar and were able to gather intel, and that led to the arrest and the raid on the House.
	Is that fair?
	Again, I'm very hesitant to comment.
	Thank you.
	Well, that's the, this article just...
	It outlines that and I understand the ITOs are actually publicly available so I'll try to get those for the Commission so they just have a better understanding.
	I might probably get them from Alberta sometime next week.
	If we can bring up pb.nsc.can.00003039 _rel.0001 Okay.
	Have you seen this document before?
	I saw this document just very briefly before I took the stand here this evening.
	Oh, okay.
	So you're familiar then with respect to this document being a memorandum, I believe, from your legal department in March of 2020 with respect to the Emergencies Act, but it's not speaking about a public order emergency.
	It's speaking about a public welfare emergency regarding COVID.
	Is that fair?
	Again, I wouldn't say I'm familiar with the document, sir.
	I just had it put in front of me a short time ago.
	Could we please scroll down?
	And to the second page, please.
	And the third page.
	I apologize.
	All right.
	And I just want to take you to the role of the RCMP.
	And my colleague with the CCF touched on this a bit with the Commissioner.
	This summarizes it nicely and gives us an internal document.
	There at the second point, it states that under Section 18A of the RCMP Act, Section 14A of the RCMP regulations, RCMP members serving as peace officers have a duty to enforce the law.
	And it's speaking to orders invoked.
	Under the Emergencies Act.
	So, is it fair to say that, I know you haven't been overly familiar with this document, but when there was the invocation of the Emergencies Act, was it your understanding that the RCMP, due to the operation of Section 18 of the RCMP Act and 14 of the RCMP regulation, was compelled?
	As a matter of duty and law to carry out enforcing the orders that were passed under the Emergencies Act.
	I'm not sure that I understand your question.
	So the purpose that that's in there is that it's explaining that Section 18A of the RCMP Act and Section 14A of the RCMP regulation collectively require the duty to enforce the law.
	And when the order...
	That is passed, under the invocation is passed, that it's at least implicitly that those two sections of the RCMP Act and the section of the RCMP Act and the regulation compel the RCMP to carry out whatever is in those orders.
	Is that fair?
	It seems to suggest that, yes.
	Right.
	David Shirogi for the Government of Canada.
	Just a brief objection to that last question, and I understand that a response has been given.
	The witnesses testified that he's not inherently familiar with the document.
	And the question that was just asked is to provide his opinion as to the purpose of certain sections of the document within a legal opinion.
	And given the testimony we've had, I'm not sure that's...
	I'm going to move on.
	He's answered the question.
	So, you've been an RCMP officer pretty much your whole entire career, I take it.
	You didn't have a second career before what you're doing.
	That's correct.
	Right.
	And you've worked in, you're essentially in the highest ranks of what you can do within the RCMP subject to becoming a full-time commissioner like Ms. Lucky.
	Is that fair?
	Correct.
	All right.
	Could you opine at all or give us evidence that when a regulation or an order is passed by an executive branch of government, That requires certain things and certain conditions or puts restrictions on any area or individual.
	That due to the operation of Section 18A of the RCMP Act and Section 14A of the RCMP Regulation, that essentially the passer of that regulation or the passer of that order is able to direct.
	What the police are to do.
	Sorry, I'm just going to object again.
	These are legal interpretation questions that are being asked of the witness, and that's inappropriate in our view.
	I'll rephrase.
	Have you had situations arise where there is orders and counsel or regulations that dictate whether specifically or whether implicitly?
	that the RCMP has to do something with regards to carrying out that regulation or with regards to carrying out the Ordering Council.
	Nothing comes to mind at this particular moment?
	Right.
	So, it's a very...
	If there is an order or a regulation that would compel the RCMP to do something, that would be a very exceptional...
	You're asking a very hypothetical question.
	I don't know that I can comment.
	That's okay.
	Thank you very much.
	Thank you.
	Okay, next the Democracy Fund, JCCF.
	Good evening.
	Alan Hohner for the Democracy Fund.
	We have a very few short questions for you.
	I should be out of hearing.
	Two minutes.
	We've heard evidence about how the province of Alberta procured its own equipment after having trouble securing tow trucks.
	But before doing that, I understand that the RCMP contacted tow truck companies from the western and northwestern United States, but they all refused to help.
	Is that right?
	Correct.
	They refused or some weren't able to.
	There were, I'll say, various reasons why they were not able to assist.
	And one of the reasons why some of those tow operators were unable to assist was because they were unvaccinated.
	I'm sorry, is that a question?
	Yes.
	And your question is?
	Is that correct?
	Yes.
	In regard to the operators in the United States, that was some of the feedback.
	We received when we made some of that contact.
	They were prevented from coming into Canada because there was an ordering council in place which prevented unvaccinated people from coming into the country unless they were part of an exempted class.
	Does that sound right to you?
	It could be.
	Tow truck drivers were not part of that exempted class as far as you know?
	I'm not certain.
	And this border mandate, sorry, this border mandate that we're talking about, The vaccine mandate was in fact one of the animating factors behind the Coutts protests and other protests across Canada.
	It seemed that when that was put in place on January 15th that the activity in relation to convoys and protests increased.
	Thank you.
	Those are my questions.
	Two minutes dead on.
	Windsor Police Service, please.
	Good evening, Heather Patterson for the Windsor Police Service.
	I don't think my camera's working, unfortunately, but we have no questions for this witness, so you don't need to see me.
	Well, thank you.
	Thank you.
	The City of Windsor.
	Good evening.
	Graham Reeder for the City of Windsor.
	We have no further questions and we yield the remainder of our time to the Government of Canada.
	Thank you.
	Next is National Police Federation.
	And our questions were asked by Commission Council and answered, so thank you very much.
	Government of Canada.
	Good evening, Deputy Commissioner.
	Donnery Nygaard, one of the counsel for the Government of Canada.
	You spoke to Commission Council about some of the reasons that the tow truck companies were not willing to cooperate after the first time that they showed up and then they didn't the second time.
	And I'm not sure if I caught all of the reasons that you indicated, but...
	So perhaps I could just get you to repeat those again.
	Sure, certainly.
	So when we sought that assistance after it had fallen through, we learned that some of the companies were subjected to online harassment, negative comments.
	Some were subject to harassing phone calls.
	To their place of work.
	We also heard that, in particular, one company had been offered a donation, a financial donation, in return for withdrawing their assistance or not assisting the police with that situation.
	So there were a variety of reasons.
	Other responses were, no, we're busy, we have other work we're doing, and so on and so forth.
	Some seemed connected to COOTS and others perhaps weren't.
	And to your understanding, what was the complaint, what was the group protesting about?
	So I think it started as a protest around the public health measures that had been put in place both provincially and federally.
	And as I mentioned earlier, the convoy aspect of protests seemed to initiate or perhaps increase after the January 15th announcement around international travel restrictions.
	And did you have any understanding of what they were trying to accomplish with their protest?
	I think they wanted to be heard.
	I think they wanted the...
	The health measures to be revoked or removed or stood down.
	It seemed that that was just through the thrust of their concern.
	And during the protests in Coutts on February 8th, the Alberta government made an announcement rolling back some of the mandates, correct?
	They made that announcement on February 8th, that's correct.
	And did that have an impact on the protest?
	Well, unfortunately it did in the context of prior to the 8th, there was one lane of traffic in each direction open through the port.
	It was shortly after the announcement on February 8th that the protesters blocked that free lane of travel and communicated to us that they weren't happy with the announcement.
	And just to back up for a moment, there was obviously a number of border blockades across the country.
	The Coutts one was the first, correct?
	Correct.
	And it developed around the same time that the convoys arrived in Ottawa?
	That's my understanding, yes.
	And prior to the arrests that occurred on the 14th and the incident on the 13th that you've described, If any level of violence or that kind of behavior was there at the protest?
	Well, there were about six incidents, you know, not unlike I described earlier, where we had to take evasive...
	Well, let me be more clear.
	There were approximately six incidents where large equipment, tractors, trucks...
	We went through barricades, around barricades, in essence, you know, breaking the perimeter that we had set up.
	And I would call it a perimeter, but it was a very loose perimeter given the geography of the area.
	And as I mentioned earlier, the ability to travel through medians and ditches and across fields.
	But nonetheless, there were about six incidents.
	That really concerned us and the safety of our police officers at that site.
	And my friend asked you about the charges that were laid, and I'm going to call up a document.
	It's pb.nsc.can.408371.
	Thank you.
	And this appears to be a briefing note that was provided for you.
	Is that what this is?
	Yes, it appears to be.
	And if we scroll down, there's an update on the arrests that are there.
	And is that a list, at least for the first 11 people that were arrested of the charges that were laid?
	Yes, it is.
	And you said that there were additional, I believe you said there was 13 people in addition.
	Can you tell us what the other two were?
	Or does that list help distinguish that?
	So there was another individual that was charged under the Critical Infrastructure Defence Act as well, but not charged in relation to the criminal investigation within the protest group.
	And I believe one of the individuals...
	That fled, went through a barricade, and again, the incident where our police officer had to take evasive action, I believe that individual was charged as well.
	Yeah, I'm sorry.
	I was unclear in my question.
	I thought, and maybe I'm mistaken, I thought I had heard you say earlier that there were 13 individuals charged in relation to the investigation, but that some were charged not on that day later, but perhaps I heard you wrong.
	No, that's what I said.
	My understanding is there were 12 in relation to the investigation, and then the 13th was later that day.
	He wasn't arrested on site.
	So we've got 11 listed here, so we've got two missing, is that right?
	Appears to be.
	Okay, that's just what I was trying to clarify.
	Okay, thank you.
	After the...
	Blockade was resolved after these arrests and the protesters entered into the negotiations and agreed to hand over their keys and then clean up and leave the next day.
	Did you receive any information in the following days about the possibility of additional blockades arising?
	About the possibility of additional blockades?
	Threats, so not actual blockades arising, but were you receiving any...
	And perhaps it's easier if I take you to a document.
	If we can call up pb.nsc.can 404268.
	And first, can you tell us, do you recognize what this document is?
	It doesn't look familiar to me, but I'm sure I can interpret it.
	Okay.
	If we can scroll down towards...
	Oh, they're up a little bit.
	The last bullet point there under Superintendent DeRox.
	Is that information that was provided to you as well?
	So this is subsequent to the dismantling of the blockade?
	Oh, yes.
	We can go up to the top and see the date.
	On the 17th at 0900.
	Okay.
	I don't know that I was privy to that information.
	Okay.
	And were you...
	We'll pull up another document, pb.nsc.can.
	four zeros eight three six two Have you seen this document before?
	I believe I have.
	If you could scroll to the bottom, that may be helpful.
	Yes, I have seen this document.
	And if we can scroll back up to the top, right up to the top.
	So it talks about in order to keep protests legal.
	And then if we could go down for a little bit further, and then it quotes from the Emergency Act.
	The provisions that have to be complied with and the consequences that may occur if they aren't complied with.
	Do you know what this document was used for?
	My understanding it was used on February 18th as we had...
	I'll say stragglers at checkpoint 10 that were still occupying, not blocking the roadway, but occupying aspects of the roadway in the immediate areas, median, so on and so forth.
	And they remained at checkpoint 10 even after the dismantling of the main site through the main blockade at the port of entry.
	And as I understand it, our staff, our police officers presented or handed out this document, this pamphlet to To those individuals, encouraging them to disperse or move to the lawful protest site.
	And do you know if they did?
	I believe they did.
	I believe they eventually did, yes.
	And then if we pull up one last document, pb.nsc.can.405444.
	Now, as the Commission...
	Indicated earlier, when you were interviewed, a number of your colleagues were also there, including the Deputy Commissioner from BC.
	We don't have them appearing before us here, so I'm going to ask you a question about BC.
	This is an email that appears to be from an RCMP officer.
	This one is to the RCMP officer, but if we scroll down, you can see at the beginning.
	It appears to be from her.
	And then if we can go back up to the response she receives.
	And perhaps I should ask, have you seen this email before?
	No, I'm not familiar with it at all.
	So could I have you read the response that starts, hi, Deborah, just so you can familiarize yourself with what it says?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	And it seems to indicate that this individual was providing tow truck services as a result of being directed to by the Surrey RCMP under the Emergencies Act.
	What is your understanding of the delegation of the Commissioner's power to compel tow trucks within the RCMP?
	Was that power delegated to you, for example, or to your colleague in BC, as far as you're aware?
	For certain, I can tell you that I received that delegation from the commissioner, and I subsequently made delegations to, I believe, four of my senior officers as well in Alberta.
	I would assume it was also made in the context of the commanding officer.
	Of British Columbia to give him that ability to do the same.
	Are the concerns expressed by this tow truck operator who's saying that they're going to comply but is expressing some concerns, are those similar to the concerns that you were hearing when you were attempting to get tow trucks?
	They are.
	As I read here, you know, this individual is indicating his office staff experienced abusive behavior and threats and so on.
	And it also appears that they have a towing contract with the RCMP or for the RCMP at Surrey.
	But because of that, they were reluctant or unable to fulfill that.
	Thank you.
	Those are all of my questions.
	Thank you.
	any re-examination?
	You're not going to want to hear this, Mr. Commissioner, but I have one question.
	Mr. Clerk, could you please call up PB NSC CAN 408508?
	And Deputy Commissioner, I'm just going to ask you a few questions because I might be able to...
	Show you a document that you're more willing to talk about than the newspaper article you are willing to talk about with my friend, Mr. Miller.
	Have you got the right document there?
	It should be an RCMP, K-Division Criminal Law.
	There we go.
	Thank you.
	Do you recognize this document, Deputy Commissioner?
	I believe I do, but I wouldn't mind if we were able to scroll.
	Scroll down through it just quickly.
	Okay.
	Yes, I do recognize it.
	Thank you.
	And the only questions I have about this is to ask you if, first of all, does this document accord with your understanding of at least the publicly available information about the investigation?
	Yes.
	And the point that I'd like to draw to your attention is the section under assessment, which reads, to date, there has been no information uncovered to suggest that there is an organized effort between the individuals charged in Alberta and individuals involved in the Ottawa protest.
	Do you see that there?
	I do.
	And that's your understanding of the assessment of the criminal investigation to date?
	That is, yes.
	Thank you.
	I have no other questions.
	Thank you, Commissioner.
	Okay.
	Well, thank you very much for your testimony and for coming and for being resilient, although it may be still Alberta time for you, which is not for us or for most of us.
	So with that, you're free to go.
	And with our thanks.
	Thank you.
	So we'll adjourn until tomorrow morning at 9.30.
	And we, again, Should anticipate long days.
	I hope not as long as today, but that I'll try and be more regimental with the time allocations, but I can't guarantee it.
	Okay, thank you very much.

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