All Episodes
Previous Next
Nov. 18, 2022 - Viva & Barnes
09:50:37
Emergencies Act Inquiry, November 18 - Live with Chat
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Order another.
The Public Order Emergency Commission is now in session.
Good morning, bonjour.
Hey, Commission Council this morning.
Good morning, Mr. Commissioner.
Shantona Choudhury, Commission Council.
I'd like to call Ms. Jacqueline Botten and Mr. Jeffrey Hutchison to the stand.
I'm going to call Ms. Jacqueline Botten
Ms. Bogdan, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
I wish to affirm, please.
For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
My name is Jacqueline Bogdan, J-A-C-Q-U-E-L-I-N-E.
My last name is Bogdan, B-O-G-D-E-N.
Do you solemnly affirm that the evidence to be given by you to this commission should be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
Yes.
Mr. Hutchinson, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
I prefer to swear on a Bible, please.
For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
Jeffrey Hutchinson.
Pardon me, I'll get close to the microphone.
Jeffrey Hutchinson.
J-E-F-F-E-R-Y.
Surname H-U-T-C-H-I-N-S-O-N.
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.
I so swear.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Good morning, Ms. Bogdan, Mr. Hutchison.
We'll just start with a bit of housekeeping, which is introducing your witness summary.
So you'll recall sitting for an interview with Commission Council on August 30th, 2022?
Yes.
Okay.
And following that interview, Commission Council prepared a summary of that interview.
You've reviewed that summary?
Yes.
And you can confirm that it's accurate to the best of your knowledge and belief?
Yes.
Okay.
So for the record, that's WTS 6072.
No need to call it up right now, Mr. Clerk.
Ms. Bogdan, I understand you were the Deputy Secretary of Emergency Preparedness.
Is that correct?
Yes, that's correct.
Okay.
And Mr. Hutchison, your title is?
I'm a Senior Advisor at the Privy Council Office, and I currently have the duties of Assistant Secretary in Emergency Preparedness.
Okay.
And just so you know, we're conducting this examination panel format.
I may direct questions to one or the other of you.
If I direct it in general, then whoever's best placed answer is free to answer.
And you can also, of course...
Jump in if someone else has something to say about a point I ask.
So the first question is probably from Ms. Bogdan, which is, I'll just ask you to briefly explain the structure of the PCO Emergency Preparedness and COVID Response Secretariat.
Okay.
So we are, the Secretariat is a newly created Secretariat at the Privy Council Office.
It is within...
It reports to the National Security and Intelligence Advisor.
She has responsibility for four different groups, and so the Emergency Preparedness and COVID Recovery Secretariat is one of those.
There's also the Foreign Defense Policy Secretariat, the Security and Intelligence Secretariat, and the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat.
Okay, and when you say it was newly created, when was it created and why?
So the Secretariat was created in October 2021, thereabouts, and it was created to support the new dedicated role of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, which is the Minister is situated in the Privy Council office, and so our Secretariat was created to support him in his activities.
And that would be Minister Bill Blair?
Yes, correct.
Okay.
And as I understand it, Minister Blair is supported both by the Emergency Preparedness Secretariat within PCO and by the Department of Public Safety.
Is that right?
That's correct.
Okay.
Can you explain how that interaction works and what each of you do to support the minister?
Okay.
So, from the Privy Council Office perspective, we support the Minister in his horizontal responsibilities.
So, you know, when the Prime Minister created this new dedicated role of Minister of Emergency Preparedness.
You know, he asked the minister, and this is outlined in his mandate letter that's available on the Prime Minister's website, to exercise a leadership role and coordinate efforts to improve our emergency preparedness and our emergency management capabilities in the government, working, of course, with provinces and territories.
And in addition to that, he also asked Minister...
The Minister to exercise a convening and coordinating role to support both the Prime Minister and the Cabinet in the acute phases of emergency response.
So, you know, for example, this would be one of those situations.
He would do something similar for, for example, Hurricane Fiona, which we dealt with at the end of September.
Okay, so maybe that's a good time to explain what different kinds of emergencies does emergency preparedness deal with?
All hazards.
So we would be concerned with human-made situations that might arise, such as the protests, the occupation of blockades.
But we would also be concerned with any number of natural disasters or public health emergencies.
Like, for example, part of the genesis of this is we've just lived through two and a half years of...
COVID-19 and all that that has entailed for the country.
And in addition to that, we've seen an acceleration of climate-related impacts on the country.
So an increase in devastating fires, floods, and we need to be increasingly prepared to respond as a country to those kinds of events.
So in a sense, the Secretariat was...
Creative in response to a recognition that there are a growing number of emergencies that Canada has to deal with?
Correct.
And that we need to be prepared to respond to those and working proactively with any number of other orders of government, civil society, private sector, to make sure that the country is as prepared as it can be for what we can see on the horizon.
And when were you appointed Deputy Secretary of Emergency Preparedness?
January 10th.
I started January 10th of this year, 2022.
Okay, so shortly before the events of the freedom.
Correct.
And Mr. Hutchison, can you briefly describe your role?
Certainly.
My principal role is to support the Safety, Security, and Emergency Management Committee, and Minister Blair is the chair of that committee.
So I have a small team that ensures that we have membership agendas, appropriate documents that are ready for cabinet consideration, that sort of thing.
I also, as part of the functions that Ms. Bogdan was describing, when there is an emergency of one sort or another, then I work with my counterpart at Public Safety.
We have a fairly close partnership.
And we can pull our counterparts across town together to make sure that we have good information sharing, up-to-date situation reports, that kind of thing.
And who would you, sorry to interrupt, but who would your counterpart at Public Safety be?
The Assistant Deputy Minister of Emergency Management Preparedness Branch.
His name is Trevor Bubson.
okay Okay, the next thing I'll ask you to do is briefly explain the role of emergency preparedness in responding to requests for assistance.
So can you tell us what a request for assistance is, a request for federal assistance, RFA is the acronym, and the process by which it's reviewed?
That question's for me.
Sorry.
There's a framework whereby provinces can make a request for federal assistance in certain circumstances where They just need help in managing an emergency.
And you see that in different situations.
So after Hurricane Fiona, for example, you saw the military deployed for sandbagging and logistics and things like that.
That's generally done under an RFA.
Our role in that tends to be kind of at the level of coordination.
It's actually our partners at Public Safety that...
Really manage the core of that process.
So a request comes in normally with some advance warning.
There's often discussion with the province beforehand as to what's being sought, why, whether all available resources have been considered and utilized in the province.
We're usually aware that it's come in as it comes in.
We know it goes to public safety.
There are discussions between public safety and the minister's office in terms of determining the outcome.
And then in the normal course, a response in the form of a letter would normally go to the province and resources are deployed or not in accordance with the decision.
Okay, thank you.
That's helpful.
One of the many things we're doing in this commission is attempting to sort out who does what within the federal government, and it's not always an easy answer.
That was helpful.
Okay.
We're now going to move to the meat, essentially, of what we're going to talk about today, which is your role in convening and coordinating the federal government's response to the Freedom Convoy.
And I'll just let you know, in the time that we have, given in an attempt to sort of use our time productively, given that we heard from the NSIA yesterday and we'll be hearing from the clerk and the deputy clerk this afternoon, we're going to be concentrating on the first couple of weeks.
So sort of right up until the first IRG.
We'll go a little bit beyond that, but that's where I anticipate we're going to be focusing our efforts this morning.
I'll open it up to you to tell us essentially what role you played in coordinating the federal government response.
Okay, so I guess the first...
Part of our role.
Obviously, PCO plays, you know, as it does in many different situations, helps to coordinate the federal government response to any given situation.
And the same would be true in this case.
And so what we're trying to do in coordinating that response, we'll convene departments and agencies together.
We're trying to develop a common understanding, a common kind of up-to-date understanding of the situation and assess that situation.
We're determining, you know, what are the actions that the federal government needs to take in response to the situation or might need to take.
And the objective there is really to make sure that, you know, we're ready to do whatever's needed, the efforts are coordinated, and ideally that the course of action is effective.
So what we would have been doing in this particular case, like the Emergency Preparedness Secretariat, you would have heard, for example, from others who testified earlier this week that there was a governance structure set up at the Deputy Minister level.
There was governance that was set up at the ADM level to facilitate that sharing of information.
What we would be doing is then in the, you know, let's say the week preceding the arrival of the demonstrations in Ottawa, Helping ensure that that information that is being collected is flowing in to, for example, staff of the Office of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, staff in the Prime Minister's office, so that they have visibility over this.
Something that is on the horizon that is happening.
What information do we know?
What do we not know?
What action are we taking?
And they have confidence that the federal government across departments and agencies is doing what it should do in response to this kind of situation.
Okay, so when we spoke in your interview, you identified as January 30th, as sort of the day that it became clear to you that the convoy wasn't going anywhere fast and there would have to be some coordination.
I won't say response at that point necessarily, but some coordination of what the federal government was going to do about this at this point.
So can you walk us through that first week of the protests and how that unfolded?
Okay, so maybe if you'll permit me.
So in that week, I think our efforts really began in seriousness in the week in advance of the arrival of the demonstrations, right?
So the briefing that I was mentioning for the Office of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the Prime Minister's Office, we were also, as we got closer to the weekend, thinking about making sure that ministers also had a collective and common understanding of what we knew about the weekend.
And so we would have started briefing, having joint briefings of ministers the Thursday before the arrival of the convoy.
And again, we're just making sure that they have a common understanding of the situation.
The other thing that we're doing is we're thinking a little bit about making sure that we're prepared in the event that things don't go as planned.
That weekend, right?
This is a scenario that has been billed as a peaceful protest, a slow roll that will go through the nation's capital, and there's a series of activities on the hill and, you know, in the park, a prayer service, and that those things will happen as intended.
In the back of our mind, we are also thinking about, you know, what if things don't go as planned?
There's a lot about this situation that we don't know.
You know, it isn't like Canada Day, where law enforcement happens on the same day every year.
They are weeks to prepare.
We don't have perfect information about the situation as it's developing.
We don't have fidelity, for example, on how many trucks, how many individuals.
You know, so we're thinking about that.
And when you have large groups of people get together, you always need to be foreseeing the possibility that intentionally or otherwise, you know, it could lead to violence and loss of life.
And so we're thinking about how do we make sure that the government would be ready and we could bring ministers together if something unfortunate happened over the weekend.
And it wasn't a theoretical possibility, like some of the statements that were being made in the lead up.
To that weekend, you know, references to the January 6 attack on Capitol Hill.
You know, we, I think the Federal Public Service was well aware of the actual threat of loan actors that could take advantage of the situation.
So that's kind of what's going through our mind.
On one hand, making sure that everybody understands what's happening.
We hope everything is going to go as planned, but we also need to be prepared.
If things don't transpire as they're presented.
So to get to your question, which is about, you know, when did you know that things were...
So I think it became clear to us on Sunday that things...
I remember watching the news conference that was held by the organizers of the convoy, where it was made clear that they were staying.
And so then...
We're starting to give some thought to, okay, Parliament is scheduled to return on the Monday.
We, you know, we're still in hybrid format, but we know some ministers are going to be making a decision to return to Ottawa, either flying in on the Sunday evening or the next day.
We need, you know, presumably the Prime Minister would like some information about whether it's safe and secure for them to do that.
How will they access the Hill?
We're also thinking about our own employees in the Federal Public Service, whether that's at PCO or other employees.
While we're in a remote work posture, there are still many, including in the security and intelligence sphere, that need to access our buildings.
So we need to be thinking about their health and safety.
So by that Sunday night, we would have been having meetings with the National Security Intelligence Advisor and then ultimately with the Clerk in order to brief her.
So that she would be in a position to brief the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister's office about the current situation kind of leading into the week.
Okay.
Do you recall when the Prime Minister was first briefed?
I don't.
Okay.
I don't.
We'll ask the clerk.
That's fine.
Okay.
So essentially, what you just told us, if I can summarize it, is...
The initial posture before the convoy arrived was on the one hand, you have the information you have.
On the other hand, it's expect the unexpected.
Correct.
Okay.
And then when the unexpected, let's put it that way, sort of happens on the 30th, what happens from there?
How do you respond from there?
How does your role kick in?
Okay.
I mean, the events have unfolded.
We, you know, have the return of Parliament on the Monday for the first two days of that week.
So that would be January 31st and the 1st.
We're continuing.
We've been at this point having daily briefings for ministers.
And those briefings consist of just so that...
That listeners and the Commissioner understand.
What we would do with these briefings every day, we would have the Commissioner of the RCMP.
We would have the Director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.
And at a certain point, we would have had the Deputy Minister of Public Safety and a few others.
Providing real-time live updates of the situation as it's developing.
And at this point, we have a situation not just in Ottawa.
We also have a situation in Coots, which is developing.
And so, you know, we have two different situations to be alive to.
So we're keeping ministers apprised by midweek.
We have these two situations midweek, which would be February.
31st, first, second.
Second, probably?
Yeah.
I'll just stop you there with one question.
Which ministers?
Which ministers?
At this point, we would have Minister Blair, Minister Mendicino, Minister LeBlanc, who is the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, Minister Al-Gabra, who is the Minister of Transportation.
I believe those four ministers at this point in time.
Okay.
Yeah, and this is the ministers who've been meeting on a daily basis to take stock of the situation and understand what we know, what we don't know, and what actions are being taken.
So by midweek, around Wednesday, you know, we have the situation.
There's not clear signs that the situation is going to be resolved.
Or we don't have confidence of any signs that it's going to be resolved.
We're also starting to hear a lot of reports that there will be additional protest activity over the weekend, both in Ottawa and in Alberta.
And so starting to be concerned that not only is the situation not resolving, but the situation could get worse.
So at a certain point here...
We make a decision that it is time to convene a cabinet committee, which is the Safety, Security, and Emergencies Committee.
Do you want me to explain the mandate of the committee?
I will.
I'm just going to ask the clerk to pull up the minutes from that first SSE meeting, which is ssm.nsc.can50292.
So you can continue with the benefit of the minutes.
Okay.
So this meeting, this is maybe just for the benefit of others who won't know.
This is a standing committee of cabinet.
It's the cabinet committee on safety, security, and emergencies.
It has a three-fold mandate.
One is to be concerned about threats and risks to the safety and security of Canada and Canadians.
It has a second responsibility for management of ongoing emergencies.
And thirdly, to ensure that there's proactive, integrated, forward-looking thinking around our level of emergency preparedness and capacity to respond to emergency management.
So that's the intent and purpose of the committee.
It's a standing committee that will meet on a fixed schedule, but it also, like other cabinet committees, has the ability to meet on an ad hoc basis.
And that's exactly what we would have done at this situation, is decided, okay, I think it's time to bring together and support a conversation amongst the, you know, standing cabinet committee.
And so the meeting would have proceeded in two ways, as you'll see reflected in the minutes.
Asking, you know, key heads of different institutions to report on the situation.
So the Commissioner of the RCMP, I think the Director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service also provided an update, probably Deputy Minister Rob Stewart.
And the idea there, just like the ministerial briefings, is to give everybody a common understanding of this situation, how it's evolving, what we know, what we don't know.
And then the second part of the discussion is to start to talk a little bit more about what more the federal government might want to do to try to support the resolution of this situation.
So you will see, I think, in the minutes, there is a placemat that, you know, puts together...
A quick snapshot of some different range of options that the government could consider.
And it wasn't perfect, but it was there to kind of stimulate conversation on the range of options within federal jurisdiction of things that ministers and departments might be able to think about.
Okay.
Mr. Clerk, can you just scroll down to page 8, I believe?
Is this the placemat you were talking about?
Okay, so can you just walk us through obviously not all of it, but the general ideas that are expressed?
Yeah, sure.
So, you know, like I said, you're thinking about all of the things that are in Area of federal responsibility.
So you're thinking about what authorities do you have?
What influence do you have?
What resources do you have?
What are the kinds of things that you could do?
So you see on the left-hand side of this document, the convening and engagement power that...
The convening and engagement sort of influence that the government could bring to bear.
So, for example, is there more that we should be doing with provinces and territories that we're not already doing?
And that could be, you know, ministers.
Ministers at this point had already been doing some engagement.
Should there be more?
You know, should we be thinking about a call between the prime minister and premiers or anything?
Just thinking about all of those things.
Engagement with the City of Ottawa directly.
Should we be doing more?
And what form should that take?
Making sure that we're determining whether additional assistance should be provided to the Ottawa Police Service.
Sort of increasing their ability to respond to this situation.
So that I think falls under policing agreements.
What agreements are in place between the OPP and the OPS?
What agreements are in place with RCMP and OPS?
So would it be correct to say that that reflects the federal government sort of attempting to sort out, or the committee rather, sorting out what the jurisdictional issues are there?
I don't know if it's attempting to sort out the jurisdiction, because I think jurisdiction is clear in my mind.
Like, what we're trying to do there is to ask ourselves, what support does the city need?
What support does, you know, the Ottawa Police Service need?
And how can we be helpful?
And it might be people, it might be equipment, it might be bollards.
You know, we didn't do that kind of thing at that point, but...
Later in the, you know, you're sort of thinking about those kinds of things.
So to put it a slightly different way, what can we do within our jurisdiction?
Totally.
Totally.
You know, to help bring this to, yeah, to a resolution.
Okay.
Is there anything else you'd like to say about this particular document or should we move to the next?
No, I think that's good.
It just essentially sets out there's any number of ways that we can bring influence to the situation, provide direct support, being creative about it.
But this was a start of a more formal conversation that we need to be thinking about supporting the resolution of what's happening.
Okay.
And then so how does that lead into the next meeting of the SSE, which I believe was February 6th?
Yeah.
So, you know, as we expected that weekend, there was an increase in protest activity.
And, you know, we, you know, not only saw an increase in protest activity in Ottawa and in Coutts, you know, you saw the situation expand into B.C., Manitoba now, in central Canada.
You know, we're seeing similar slow-world protests in Toronto and in Quebec City.
Fortunately, those two jurisdictions learned a little bit about the experience in Ottawa and were able to manage those situations differently, and it didn't result in...
You know, what we were seeing happen in Ottawa.
So we see, you know, an increase in protest activity over that weekend.
I believe that is also the weekend where we received a formal request for assistance from Alberta for both people and equipment to help resolve, you know, the situation in Cootes.
Just stopping you there, we'll just ask the click to turn that one up.
So that's SSM.can6082, please.
Thank you.
This is the request from Alberta that you ranked.
Okay, so can you just walk us through that from your perspective and what was done with that request?
Sure.
So this is the request that was received from Alberta.
And I think you need to scroll down to actually get to the essence of the request.
Yeah.
So looking for federal assistance that includes the provision of equipment and personnel to move approximately 70 semi-truck trailers and approximately 75 personal and recreational vehicles from the area.
And looking, you know, essentially for assistance from the government to deal with that.
So the request would have come in to Directly to the minister's office, it would have also went in directly to the Department of Public Safety and Emergency for them to work on.
For us, in receipt of this request, I probably received the copy from the minister's office.
What I would have been wanting to do at that particular moment in time is to make sure that my colleague that looks after intergovernmental affairs is aware.
There's probably a record in the collection that I would have shared it with Michael Vandergrift, who is the Deputy Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Privy Council Office, and also wanting to make sure, you know, that the National Security Intelligence Advisor is aware and that the clerk and the deputy clerk are also aware that we've received this request from Alberta that we'll need to be.
And as Jeff explained, slow down.
I'm very sorry, sir.
Council was reminding me, and I knew that you've warned others.
Sometimes I can speak very quickly.
I will try.
I get excited.
Sorry about that, sir.
And it's an exciting inquiry.
All right.
I will try to breathe.
Okay.
So I would have made sure that those who needed to know inside PCO at a senior level were aware.
And then, as Jeff had explained earlier, or Mr. Hutchinson had explained earlier, public safety would have done what they do to sort of look at the request and how the government would want to respond to that.
And eventually skipping ahead.
I don't know if you have anything to add on that, but it was determined that this was not a request that could be fulfilled as intended.
That's correct.
Okay.
Sorry to have interrupted you.
So we're on February 6th now.
Yep.
So we're on February 5th.
We received this request.
And I'm not entirely certain if we knew then or we knew on Sunday, but we were anticipating an additional request for assistance from the City of Ottawa, looking for additional resources to help the Ottawa Police Service.
So by Saturday, we had decided, okay, we need to bring ministers together again on Sunday night.
So we began the preparations for that discussion on Sunday night.
Okay, so we'll just go to the minutes for the February 6th SSE, which is ssm.nsc.can50293.
That's funny.
I'm sorry?
It says Postal Station B, but it wasn't.
It was a virtual meeting.
Very good memory.
Okay.
So, yes.
Can you situate us for this meeting and how it took place and what was discussed?
So, I mean, this meeting was similar to the meeting that we had on Tuesday night in that it sort of was transacted in two ways.
One was to update ministers.
on the situation as we knew it at that point in the afternoon and those briefings would have been delivered as they were on the Thursday night by the Commissioner of the RCMP, the Director of CSIS and others to make sure that Ministers had an up-to-date situational awareness and then there would have been a follow-up discussion about you know we've seen an escalation of protest activity over the weekend.
You know, we're going into week two now of this and what additional things, you know, picking up from the conversation on Thursday and over the weekend.
Because remember, we're still briefing, you know, the core ministers over the weekend.
They were very seized with this over the weekend.
What more should we consider doing heading into the week?
So, you know, as an example.
One of the ideas that was talked about was, should we seek to bring together the representatives of the Ontario government with the government of Canada and Ottawa, which is what became known as the tripartite discussion or tripartite table.
And so that was, you know, one of the, like that is, you know, one example of.
Something that would have, tangible action that would have flowed from that meeting.
I would have been asked the next day to organize that meeting and get that started.
Okay, so this is February 6th.
So this is the day that the City of Ottawa declares a state of emergency.
And was that part of the discussion at this meeting, if you recall?
If we knew it at that time, I can't remember the timing.
I'm sorry, I didn't go back and double-check the timing.
This meeting was at 2 o 'clock in the afternoon.
I don't remember that the minutes reflect that, but, you know, if we knew that at the time, it would have been something that would have been successful.
And in any event, as you said, a decision was taken that it was time to convene a trilateral.
Yeah, that would have been one of the things, yeah.
Okay, so can you take us through that a little bit?
You said you were tasked with setting up the next day.
Sure.
So I would have, you know, sought to organize that the next day.
I think the meeting...
Would have been, you know, maybe at five o 'clock that day.
And so we were seeking to invite the Ontario Solicitor General and her Deputy Solicitor General, who is the head, it's Mario Di Tommaso, who you've heard testimony here at the hearings, and then the Mayor of the City of Ottawa, as well as Minister of Public Safety Mendicino and the Minister of Emergency.
And he would have had a few individuals from the senior public service.
So, for example, I was there.
Rob Stewart, the deputy minister of public safety, would have been there.
And the conversation was really, you know, the idea here was, can we get the three orders of government together?
There's a situation in Ottawa that there is no line of sight on resolution.
How can we help?
What more can we do to help?
Okay.
And so that first, that was convened same day then, February 7th, 5 p.m.
And as we know, Minister Jones did not attend that meeting.
Correct.
There was not representation from Ontario.
Was Mr. DiTomaso?
Nope.
Okay.
So the first one was Songs, Ontario.
Can you tell us in general terms sort of what was discussed and what came out of that first meeting?
I mean, it was a good conversation just to update on from each party.
I'm sure there would have been a recollection, for example, that we had already, additional RCMP officers had already been deployed to support the City of Ottawa.
This is Monday, Monday the 7th.
I'm sure the mayor would have indicated to the ministers that there was a request forthcoming for about 1,800 additional personnel.
And he would be looking for support and he would be looking for support and response sooner rather than later.
Okay, that's fine.
And despite the fact that you appear to have a fantastic memory, it's not a memory test.
So if you want me to bring up a document, I can do that.
Thank you.
Okay.
So that sort of takes us at this point to, we're in the second week of protests, getting into that, and the third and then final, I believe, SSE.
So that was February 8th.
The document number is, drumroll please, ssm.nsc.can50295.
Was this one also an ad hoc meeting or was this a regularly scheduled one?
This is a regularly scheduled meeting.
And I think, so as I said, you know, there was intention heading into this week to be...
You know, intensifying and thinking about what proactively the government could do to support the resolution of the situation.
I think it's important to also maybe note that at the start of this week is we'd already seen some protest activity around the Ambassador Bridge.
And now we're in a situation where that, you know, is a much more dire situation.
And so what we decided to do was to add on an item at this meeting.
And again, update ministers and talk about what more might need to be done.
And I think, you know, the situation is becoming increasingly concerning.
You know, it's getting worse and not getting better.
And we don't have line of sight.
On how these different situations that exist are going to get resolved or get better quickly.
And so there's a further conversation about what more ministers or departments and agencies need to be thinking about doing.
Okay.
And just a clarification here.
So the SSE is a cabinet committee with, as I understand it, no decision-making power?
Yeah.
So this is true for all.
Standing cabinet committees is that they will deliberate either on policy or other issues and make recommendations to the prime minister and cabinet.
But they're not a decision-making body.
Okay.
So coming out of the February 8th SSE then is a decision that it's time to do something more, essentially?
Okay.
So what is the more?
What happens after that?
So, I mean, I think it's important to acknowledge that Nobody's been sitting around doing nothing, you know, up until this point, right?
But it's leaning in a little bit more.
And so what I would say happened next is, for example, you know, very early the next morning, the clerk of the Privy Council Office pulled all of the, I shouldn't use the word pull, convened all of the deputy secretaries of the Privy Council Office and deputy ministers who were implicated together and asked us.
To, you know, pull together in written form all of the options that are available to the federal government to resolve this situation and get that into some kind of a form that we could put it in front of ministers, whether that is another SSE meeting or what, but, you know, to be decided.
Okay, so sorry, I'll just interrupt.
pb.nsc.can502418.
I just want to make sure that this is what we're talking about here.
Okay, so this is an email from Mike McDonald.
If you just scroll down a little bit, there's an email from you.
To Genevieve Binet, who is also at PCO, Mike McDonald, who we know is the Assistant Secretary.
Mr. Hutchinson has copied.
Genevieve, I'm looking at this now and we'll make changes and track changes, send back to you.
My sense is we need more info from RCMB.
So this is what you're discussing.
That's essentially what's happening, right?
We've had a conversation with the Clerk amongst deputies that morning.
And our team are acting as a bit of an aggregator of information that is coming in from departments.
We're not writing a lot ourself.
We're just pulling it in from departments.
And the nature of the conversation that we had that morning was, I think I would characterize it, if you permit me to do that, can I do that?
To, you know, is two things.
So on the one hand, what is all of the range of things within existing federal authorities that can be brought to bear to resolve this situation?
You're looking at not just resolving the current situation, you're also thinking about mitigating the situation getting worse, right?
Because we do have a serious situation.
And, you know, how do we prevent it from getting worse?
So I think that the Commissioner and those who are listening today would have heard in other testimony that was given by other Deputy Ministers this week, some of the things that we talked about in that meeting that morning, the work that had been underway and getting that on paper.
So the kinds of things I'm talking about are, for example, you know, a first order of business is to think about...
What additional resources does law enforcement need?
You know, whether that is people or its equipment or, you know, whatever it is that they need in order, money, what is it, in order to be able to enforce the laws and address the situations that we're seeing.
You know, another example is engagement.
You know, do we need to be doing more in terms of engagement with other orders of government or engagement, for example, with the organizers of the...
The protests and the demonstrations.
So that's a second line.
And I think you maybe had heard that from Deputy Minister Stewart during his testimony earlier this week, that that was something that he had been working on.
You know, the other examples of things that we were working on, you would have heard from Deputy Minister Keenan about the strategic enforcement strategy, right?
How do we, you know, encourage...
People to consider taking their trucks and leaving.
They're engaging in illegal behavior.
Can we help in that way?
The tow truck strategy, which I think gave everybody gray hair, just thinking of the millions of ways that we could try to resolve that situation.
And there was other things in that bucket of things that we need to do within our existing authorities, like in the vein of thinking about How do we make sure this situation doesn't become worse?
One of the things that, for example, the president of the CBSA would have been worrying about is how do we harden or what's another way to say that?
Make more resilient our border points across the country.
Like, you know, at this point in time.
You know, at the SSE meeting on the 8th or, you know, as we're having that discussion in the morning, he's been reporting out on no less than 10 different, you know, border points being occupied.
Ambassador Bridge is, for all pretense and purposes, blocked.
He's having difficulty redirecting that critical traffic to Sarnia.
Like, so we need to think about how do we make sure that this situation doesn't get worse, right?
Because these are critical supply lines, both in terms of Canadians, both in terms of trade.
You know, and so we need to be thinking about that.
So we're kind of working on what are all the things that we can do within our existing authorities to try to support the resolution of this situation and not have it escalate or become worse.
Okay.
I think if we just scroll down a little bit in this document, Mr. Clerk.
Find essentially that list that you just described.
Perfect.
Okay.
Sorry.
I should have allowed you to do that.
That would give you sort of the kind of lines of effort that we were thinking about.
So enforcement, engagement, finance refers to thinking about, you know, one of the, I talked a little bit about the trucks.
One of the other policy problems that we had was the fundraising, you know, and what do we do about the fact that there is a significant amount of money that is being raised?
That is going to support illegal activity and what do we do about that?
Okay, so I'm going to ask you to walk us through all of those options or a little more slowly with the assistance of the next document which is pb.nsc.can502418.
oh sorry 2419 okay so do you recall Ms. Bogdan this being the attachment to that email essentially that said Out the various plans that have been discussed?
This was the first cut, right?
We're taking information that's being provided from different organizations.
I can't remember off the top of my head whether this came from the RCMP or public safety, but it would have been one or the both of them.
Okay, so this is essentially it's assessing the request because at this point the request for additional resources I think it was 1,800, had been made.
Is that right?
Yeah.
By this point, we are Wednesday.
Yep.
And so the assessment is spelled out there.
1,000 regular, 600 public order, 100 investigative, 100 civilian.
Yeah.
And what's said about it is the broad request at both levels of government is without specifics and is almost impossible to meet until details are worked out.
Given other operational demands faced by RCMP, OPP and other police services.
There's a requirement to understand the specific resources needed and the objectives the OPS is trying to achieve prior to providing those resources.
Correct.
So this is the information that you would have been receiving from Commissioner Lucky and the RCMP?
Yep, presumably.
Yep.
Okay.
Yeah, and this is a request that is going to both levels of government, right?
And I think both of...
You know, both the RCMP and the OPP would be asking themselves the same questions, right?
Like, what's the order of magnitude of the people that you need?
And what is the plan that you're putting those people against, right?
Because I remember that quite distinctly at a number of occasions.
The Commissioner making that clear is that it isn't just about the number of people.
It's what are the duties?
Like, what is the capabilities that you need?
What will you be asking them to do?
And you need fidelity on that plan.
Both, you know, for their safety and to make sure that you have enough individuals to be able to prosecute on that.
And I remember when this came in, right?
It was a big, big ask.
And it was a big ask for a lot of different kinds of needs and services, like including everything from, you know, media relations help and things like that.
Like we were asking ourselves, okay, could we do a call out, you know, find individuals within the federal public service to lend them?
Like, is there a way we can help?
Like that was really the...
The way everybody was thinking at this point in time is like all hands on deck.
How do we help get this done?
Kind of thing.
Okay.
So I think that some of those concerns are reflected.
If we just scroll down the document a bit and then we get to strategic enforcement options, scroll down to the next page and you can take us through what's being expressed here.
I believe this is what you were referring to when you were saying that.
Yeah, this is a short form kind of articulation of what you heard from Deputy Minister Keenan a little bit earlier in the week about the strategic enforcement strategy is how do we, you know, show that there are consequences or, you know, economic consequences.
Or other consequences, both through the police and law enforcement, but also is there a way to work with provincial transportation authorities and looking at, you know, for example, you know, the Ontario Highway Traffic Act and, you know, these are commercial vehicles that are, you know, that are registered either in the province or Ontario or other provinces.
Is there a way that we could work with provincial transportation authorities to try to resolve the issue?
And this is being cobbled together, this document, not cobbled, but put together on February 9th, which, as we know from Deputy Minister Keenan, is the day after he received a letter from Ontario Ministry of Transportation, which I think he characterized, and I'm paraphrasing here, but it's a polite thanks, but no thanks.
Yep.
Okay.
So if we just keep scrolling down a bit here now, we get to border-related enforcement options.
So I think this probably refers to what you were telling us about CBSA dealing with no less than 10 different potential disruptions.
And the prospect that that could get worse.
And I think when I was talking about, you know, the idea of making sure that our critical infrastructure, like that we've hardened it or made it more resilient, you know, I was strictly talking about the borders, you know, ports of entry.
But we were also worried about things like rail and, you know, other modes of transport, right?
So, yeah.
So both domestically and...
Correct.
And cross-border.
Yeah.
Like, what are the other, you know, what are the other places that could become a target of protest activity or blockades, right?
And do you recall having any information at that point that those things might happen?
Any intelligence on that?
Well, I think there's been testimony here about the slow roll around the airport in the City of Ottawa.
I think there were indications around rail.
I can't remember precisely what they were.
But yes, I think that we were hearing that.
You know, and even if they're unconfirmed reports, right, you still have to take all of that stuff seriously and be thinking about how do you mitigate the situation getting worse, right?
Okay, so then if we just scroll down now to page four, we get to the engagement plan.
So we'll be getting into this in a little more detail a bit later, but can you walk us through a little?
what the idea is here with potential engagement.
We see at the second bullet, engagement could open lines of communication, signal willingness to listen, create leverage to move protesters out.
Yeah, so at that point in time, that's on the table as something that could be helpful in the situation.
Yeah, it's as...
Like, there's a range of options that we can explore here, right?
And we need to, you know, the idea of potential engagement with the organizers of the protesters.
Like, it's been an idea that was thought of and talked about.
And so now starting to put some definition around, well, what would that mean?
What would that involve?
Who would do that?
Okay, and now just scrolling down a little bit, there's one point I want to ask you about, and I don't know if this is information that you were aware of or came from you, but it says here, DM of Public Safety and NSIA are meeting with senior levels of the City of Ottawa daily, talks about potential expansion of engagement to include the Federation of Canadian Municipalities or other mayors, and then says...
The chief, and I assume that's chief slowly from the context here, continues to communicate publicly his view that OPS lacks resources to effectively manage the situation.
This may be somewhat true, but may also be a strategic tactic and may need to be managed.
Do you have any knowledge of where that information came from?
No, not.
I mean, no, I don't.
I don't.
The DM?
The sort of bullet before about the Deputy Minister of Public Safety and NSIA are meeting with senior levels, that's factually true.
Where the idea of engagement could be expanded to include the FCM, I don't know where that idea came from.
Whether that was from us or it came from another department, I really can't recall.
But I know the idea that's behind it, right, is that we're thinking about It's not just addressing the situation as it exists today.
It's preventing the situation worsening.
So thinking about, you know, what we had seen with Toronto and Quebec City, right?
Having learned the lessons of how to create the conditions for peaceful protests, but not allow it to turn into an occupation or a blockade.
And so the idea behind that is, how do we share those lessons learned?
You know, these situations are not a normal occurrence.
And so, yeah, I think that's kind of the idea behind that.
I'm going to, that's maybe speculating a little bit.
Yeah.
Okay.
Scrolling down, the next discusses international engagement.
So what's been going on between CBSA and U.S. Customs and then the Public Safety and Department of Homeland Security.
We're in touch in meeting following that.
And then the next page discusses Ontario engagement.
And at that point, I think February 8th is when the second tripartite happens as well?
That's correct.
Yep.
Yep.
And as we know, there was no representation from Ontario at the political level at that one.
Correct.
Okay.
Or the public service level.
Okay.
Mr. DiTomaso was not there either.
Did not participate in that one either.
Okay.
And then we have summarized here, and we'll get into this more next week when the ministers testify, but Minister Mendicino and Minister LeBlanc starting to reach out to...
To Premier Ford specifically.
And then we have DMIGA.
So that would be Intergovernmental Affairs from PCO Mr. Vandergrift.
Correct.
Speaking to his counterpart in Ontario on February 9th.
So presumably this reflects some attempt on the part of the federal government to get that engagement going at a...
Yeah.
That's what I had mentioned earlier is that engagement can take many forms, right?
And so how can we influence...
And work closely with other partners to bring this to a resolution.
Okay.
So the next page then, please, and we'll spend too much time on this today because we spent a lot of time on it yesterday.
But financial levers being considered, which at that point were the PCMLTFA.
I'm comforted by the fact that Mr. Sabia doesn't like that acronym either.
And we can just keep going.
And the second option is the Bank Act.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then the last thing that's discussed in this document, page 9, is what's described as the federal narrative.
So can you tell us a little bit, what is that?
What is the federal narrative here?
What's the purpose of putting this on paper?
I think it's just to help.
Is it a communication strategy?
Yeah, it's part of the communication strategy.
I mean, in these kinds of situations, it's important to have clarity and consistency on your communications about the initiative.
And I think at this point, where are we?
We're the ninth.
The federal government wants to make sure that Canadians understand that, on the one hand, we understand their frustration with COVID and the world that we have all had to live with up until that point.
And I didn't read the narrative again before my testimony.
You can take a minute to read it now if you want.
Yeah, and then talking about what is the...
Okay, so I'm not that far off.
The first is sort of empathy and understanding with the frustration that everyone is feeling with the current situation.
And then starting to talk a little bit about what it is that we're doing to support the jurisdictions to resolve the situation.
To protect us?
Oh, okay.
This is the work that we've done with provinces and territories to respond to COVID.
Okay, if we could keep going down.
What we're now seeing is unfortunately a very real demonstration of this frustration and exhaustion.
So, you know, expressing understanding, but also making clear that illegal actions are not the answer, right?
Yeah.
And so this kind of notes are kind of put together to help ministers and others, you know, have a common, consistent message about how do we want to talk about this situation.
Canadians expect to hear from their government.
They want to know what they think.
And I think this is an early draft of that.
I think there would have been additional drafts.
Okay, so this document then, we can take that down now, thank you, Mr. Clerk, is put together and as you say, it summarizes essentially the options being considered, efforts made, options being considered, what's done with it.
So who's that circulated to?
What happens to it next?
Yeah, so this is the 9th.
That's an early version.
Would have been a later version.
Okay, so that would probably be SSM.can408758.
Okay.
Yeah.
This is the February 10th version?
Yeah, and there are...
We had that very...
This is the February 10th version because it's three o 'clock in the morning by this point.
That's why it's February 10th.
But so, you know, the 9th, we had that early conversation with the clerk.
People have been working really hard.
They're feeding us information and we're trying to package it into some kind of form that kind of makes sense.
Right.
Or that could help the whether it's the, you know, senior leadership in the PCO.
Have, you know, briefings or discussions either with the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's office, but just, you know, the Clerk had asked us to get these ideas together on paper, pull it in from departments and get it on paper.
Yeah, and knowing that, you know, part of our job in the public service is to put together options and advice for Ministers to consider what to do.
Okay.
Mr. Clerk, can you just pull up now?
757 So, Ms. Bogdan, I think this is the email that you sent and looking at that timestamp, that does mean it's about 2.45 in the morning.
To Mr. Hutchison, Ken McKillop, Ms. Thomas, whom we heard from yesterday.
So, essentially...
Higher-ups at PCO.
And do you want to walk us through your thinking in this email, what you're conveying about what your efforts have been in putting this together?
Okay.
So at the top of the email, here I'm just, you know, the document that you had projected earlier was an earlier version, right?
Like a first cut.
And here I'm just saying to them, so we've done the best we can.
To not just take the input from the departments, but try to put it together in a way that might be thoughtful.
I think, you know, with the emphasis on enforcement, both in Ottawa and Windsor, and I've kind of put it into, you know, plan A is provide resources, you know, whatever's needed to help resolve.
You know, if that's not successful, what else do we need to be thinking about?
And that's always the world we're in, is what can we do within existing resources?
And when that doesn't work, or the situation escalates, or deteriorates, however you want to characterize it, you need to be thinking about what is plan B?
You know, what other, you can call it...
Plan B, or you could call it Track 2, but you need to be thinking about what other options that you might need to be thinking about.
And again, I'll just say this is part of what we need to do in government, is to be thinking ahead to make sure that we're ready if the government looks to us and says, "What are our options?
How can we proceed?" We've actually done the homework and we've pulled that information together.
We don't wait until we're asked.
Okay, so I think you've foreshadowed what I was going to ask, which is plan A here and plan B is what eventually then becomes known as track one and track two in the IRG tracker?
Yeah.
Okay, track one being, as you said, what can we do with existing authorities and plan B or track two being?
What other authorities might be of assistance, whether that is the Emergencies Act or some other type of new legislation or amendment.
Just a couple more questions on this.
We have a tripartite table, you say, booked at 12 p.m. for federal ministers.
Hopefully, the Ontario minister and Mayor Watson and officials will check in the morning whether the Ontario minister has accepted the meeting or not.
Do you recall whether she did, whether she attended?
No, Ontario wasn't able to participate in any of the meetings.
Okay, so this email goes out.
And where do things go from there?
So the next morning, I believe that the clerk had a conversation with the Prime Minister, and there was a decision taken to convene the incident response group.
So that is another cabinet committee.
This is its express purpose and is to be called.
In a crisis or national emergency of some kind.
And it includes the Prime Minister, and it will include the most implicated ministers who need to be there to help provide information and advice.
And so a decision was taken that morning to bring together the incident response group.
And the only other thing I would say about that is...
That cabinet committee is a decision-making body, so it can make decisions.
Yeah.
Okay.
And is that because the prime minister, as a matter of procedure, it is a decision-making body because the prime minister is there?
Okay.
Yes.
Well, I think we'll be hearing a lot more about the IRGs from the clerk and the deputy clerk this afternoon, so we won't go too much further into that.
There's one thing that I'm hoping you can help us with, and that's actually addressed more to Mr. Hutchison, probably.
It's actually to both of you, but as we referred to it before, but the engagement proposal that Mr. Stewart ended up preparing.
So, Mr. Clerk, if I can ask you to pull up SSM.can408759.
So this is an email on February 10th.
Timestamp is challenging, but that's probably about 2 o 'clock, 2 or 3 in the afternoon.
It's an email from Mr. Stewart to both of you and to the NSIA providing input for our advice on engagement.
So can you just summarize for us the context of this email and why Mr. Stewart was sending it?
Why to you?
How did this come about?
So this is...
The same as other departments were doing the day before that we talked about.
Like, if you saw in the document, there was kind of a placeholder for more information about the engagement proposal.
And so this is what Deputy Minister Stewart was able to send to us the next day to kind of be integrated into the package.
And I think it, I mean, he is better placed to discuss the contents of this, but I think it's a reflection of...
You know, where we were at that point in time.
He had begun work on developing some advice on a potential path for engagement and had been doing that with police.
Mr. Hutchison, I gather you were involved in some of those calls, and the police expert was Marcel Bowden.
Can you tell us a little bit about those calls and how that progressed?
Certainly, that's correct.
I was involved in those calls.
So, my understanding, and I don't have first-hand knowledge of this part, but Deputy Minister Stewart obtained the name of Marcel Bowden as an expert in PLTs.
Crowd psychology, those kinds of issues.
Deputy Minister Stewart intended to speak with Superintendent Bowden, and he called me and asked me if, or texted, I can't remember how he contacted me, but he asked me if I would be willing to participate.
I said, certainly.
As Ms. Bogdan mentioned earlier, this was kind of an all-hands-on-deck moment.
If you were asked to help, you helped.
So, you heard Deputy Minister Stewart describe my role as observer and he just wanted to ensure that PCO had line of sight on the conversations.
So, we had a phone call with Superintendent Bowden.
I agree with Deputy Minister Stewart's characterization that we learned quite a bit about PLTs and engagement and sort of the general approach.
I think It was underscored that the utility of this kind of engagement at this point in time would be to see if we could shrink the footprint of the protests, much more so than looking for a resolution or a complete pathway to ending the protests in Ottawa.
It was more about that intermediate step of shrinking the footprint.
My recollection of the discussion is that there was quite a bit of focus on...
The idea of leadership and I know when Superintendent Bowden testified earlier in the inquiry he used the word "juice" and that was a term he used in our phone calls both on the 10th and the 11th.
Who has the juice?
And by that he meant we need to find the leaders that have the influence on the ground so that if they were to enter into any kind of arrangement that there would be People that would follow them in the execution of that arrangement.
My recollection was that, while there may have been numbers of leaders thrown around, certainly on the first day, that was very much a question of, we'll need to see, we're still assessing.
And then Deputy Minister Stewart started to put the ideas on paper.
There was a second call with Superintendent Bowden.
There was also discussion about how to keep the different lanes clear.
And I think that has been referred to so far in the inquiry as matters of church and state.
How do we ensure that the police are operating under their authority?
How do we ensure that engagement that might happen by officials or even at a political level are coordinated but not interfering with the police authority?
Certainly an attentiveness to the coordination element of how this could play out.
And based on those conversations, Deputy Minister Stewart put together a piece of paper, which I know is in the minutes from a subsequent IRG meeting.
He put together a proposal for consideration at the IRG.
My understanding of our intent in those meetings was to essentially Test the viability of a proposal.
Was there a proposal for engagement?
What was the best possible proposal, I guess, that we could put forward that might have a chance of being accepted?
So it was about doing the legwork on putting together a proposal and then...
Putting that up to decision-makers to consider.
Okay.
And thank you.
That's helpful to be walked through that.
And as we know, that proposal was eventually brought, I'm sorry, to the IRG on February 12th, and it was decided there not to pursue the engagement strategy.
The way Deputy Minister Stewart put that was that it wasn't taken up.
The way I put that in our witness summary was it didn't proceed.
I think that's the best characterization.
Fair enough.
It didn't proceed.
It didn't go anywhere from there, put it that way.
And I think, I believe in your witness summary, you described it as overtaken by events.
Correct.
I think that I probably shouldn't have used that expression because it's a bit of an idiom, but that comes from a previous stage of my career.
But the discussion around engagement was essentially...
Rendered moot by the events of the next couple of days, including the IRG and the cabinet meeting and then eventually the invocation of the act.
And maybe, you know, the sort of what happened in Windsor, right?
The Ontario government had attempted to do that and it wasn't fruitful.
So I think that would also be one of the considerations.
Fair enough.
Sorry, Mr. Hutchison, were you going to add something on that?
No, I was done.
Thank you.
Okay.
And I believe when we were discussing this with Deputy Minister Stewart the other day, we were discussing those different branches of attempts at engagement in Windsor and then this theoretical possibility and then what was happening with the Mayor of Ottawa.
And I believe he agreed that there was no coordination over these.
It was a lot of people trying to do something, but no line of sight over all of it, which complicates things.
Do you agree with that?
I wouldn't necessarily have front-light first-hand knowledge of that.
I have no issue with his characterization.
Okay, fair enough.
Okay, the last area I want to address with you briefly.
Mr. Clerk, if you can pull up SSM.can50429.
So, we're skipping way ahead here.
We'll skip invocation, we'll skip enforcement, and we're going to go to the time that revocation was being considered.
So if we skip down to the end of that email, please.
Please.
Thank you.
Well, actually page three, I think is probably where it starts.
Just a little, so good morning.
This is Ms. Thomas saying good morning.
Jeff has put pen to paper.
Jeff, here would be you, Mr. Hutchison.
Correct.
And if we scroll down a bit more, and again, so the following couple of pages describe, well, I'll let you tell us what they describe, but this is pen to paper on thresholds of revocation of the Emergencies Act.
Is that right?
Certainly, yes, it is.
It's correct.
So, as you will, Flesh out in more detail with other witnesses, after the invocation of the Act, there was fairly careful monitoring of how measures were implemented and the impact they were having, the daily meetings that we had had before invocation continued.
And as we went into that next weekend, the 20th, I think, was the Sunday, if memory serves, And the large police action in Ottawa had taken place and circumstances had evolved at other protest sites across the country, including ports of entry.
Earlier in the day, the National Security and Intelligence Advisor had reached out to the deputy community implicated and asked, you know, Essentially, what's your assessment of where we're at with the need for the Emergencies Act?
And after that step, she turned to me and said, can you put some ideas on paper?
Unlike invocation, my understanding of the Act is that it doesn't have specific criteria or a test for revocation.
So we were looking to put together policy advice on When revocation was appropriate.
It had been part of our narrative for that week that the Emergencies Act would be utilized only as long as necessary, and there were several people who would add to that not a minute longer.
It was really a very strong message to us, not a minute longer.
And I think in that weekend, the people who really do, as Ms. Bogdan described, the PCO rule, they're really charged with looking ahead.
What's coming?
What's the next step?
They knew that we needed to have the criteria in place.
My first draft, I would characterize as pretty rough.
You can see some of my thinking there, which was influenced by some of the conversations I had earlier that day, that what we didn't want to do was Keep the orders in place long enough that the emergency, the crisis started to recede, but then revoke the orders at just the moment when everything could go back to the way it was or worse.
So you see my reflections on, you know, even if trucks have left downtown Ottawa, are they still positioned to come back?
We didn't want to be in a position of...
Having things reestablished quickly.
So that kind of influenced the thinking.
And the other thing I was trying to sort of think through is, you know, the orders themselves.
How would you assess that they had served their purpose?
In this email exchange that you have pulled up, you see some back and forth with some deputy ministers.
Deputy Mike Keenan in particular used some language about, okay, these factors may be indicators of the sort of things we're looking at, but what this really comes down to is, is it necessary?
Is it still necessary?
And the way I understood that language and the way I tried to use it from that point was you have to understand your threat level.
And then you have to understand whether that threat is manageable within the existing authorities, meaning outside of the Emergencies Act, or whether you still need the leverage of the Emergencies Act to address the threat that you've assessed.
So it became two points with some indicators that followed to help people think through the two points, but those two points became sort of the...
The focus of how the advice evolved from that point.
Okay, so essentially this is starting from first principles almost because there are no criteria that you're working with.
How do we put together the criteria?
And the attempt, as I understand it, is to find that sweet spot between being confident that it's not too early and the emergencies won't recur and revoking at the earliest minute possible.
Yeah, I guess that's a fair characterization.
Okay.
Subject to that, those are my questions for you, but before I sit down, is there anything that we haven't discussed today that you would like to raise?
No?
This may be a record.
I think we're about five minutes early.
This may be the only examination that has ended early.
Thank you very much.
One other, but this is, and it may have been you, but I think it's a good sign.
So, we can turn to the convoy organizers, please.
Sir, the democracy fund is going to go first.
I just need to get some things set up, if that's okay.
Okay, democracy fund first.
Okay.
Good morning, Ms. Bogdan.
Good morning, Mr. Hutchinson.
Good morning.
My name is Alan Honor, and I'm a lawyer at the Democracy Fund.
I just have a few questions for you.
And I apologize.
I arrived a little bit late today, and I had to listen to some of your evidence in my car.
And so I just want to confirm, at the SSE meetings, the RCMP commissioner and the CSIS director...
Would provide situational updates to ministers such as Minister Blair and Minister Mendicino?
They would have been there, yes.
They are members of that committee, yeah.
Yes, and both of you would have been there as well?
Correct.
And the president of the CVSA was in attendance and so was the NSIA?
For each of the meetings, to be absolutely certain, it would be good just to check the minutes because it...
That's part of what has been disclosed, I think.
But they were sometimes present?
Yeah, you can say that for sure.
And later when the Prime Minister convened the IRG meetings, you were both in attendance?
Correct.
And Commission Council didn't concentrate on this area for the sake of time, but I understand you both attended Cabinet meetings as well?
Not full Cabinet, no.
You attended the Cabinet meeting on February the 13th, though, did you not?
Oh, yes.
Sorry.
Sorry.
When you...
Sorry.
Yes, that is correct.
Yes.
Sorry.
I was thinking about the normal, regularly scheduled cabinet meetings as opposed to the one we had on.
That's fine.
And Mr. Hutchinson, you were there as well, I understand.
I believe so.
And that was the last cabinet meeting before the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Can we please pull up ssm.nsc.can50242_rel.0001?
So on that day, on the day of that last cabinet meeting for the Invocation of the Emergencies Act, the NSIA Jody Thomas gave a situational update.
And what we're looking at right now appears to be...
Remarks that were prepared for her to deliver to Cabinet that day.
Does that sound right to you?
That's what it looks like, yeah.
Okay, and I won't ask you about everything she said at Cabinet because I understand some of that is subject to national security confidentiality, but I want to take you through parts of this document and then just ask you about them.
So if we can scroll down just a little bit.
Stop there, please.
So first of all, we see this notation about Ottawa.
And we have a note that the City of Ottawa announced an agreement with protest leader Tamara Leach that could lead to approximately 70% of trucks and cars leaving residential areas in the downtown for the next 24 hours.
And it goes on.
And then if we look down just a little bit more, if we can scroll down.
To Windsor, that's great.
Before I go on with Ottawa, at this point, NSIA Jody Thomas did not announce, I understand, the fact that the OPP and the OPS and the RCMP had an operational plan that they were about to put into place, right?
You don't recall that, do you?
Sorry, can you repeat that question again?
You know, we'll come back to that.
Let's just go back here.
So to Windsor, we have an update.
As of February 13th, police enforcement action continues with reports of arrests being made and vehicles towed.
Correct.
And we know that later on that night, just past midnight, the bridge was reopened, correct?
Correct.
Okay, can we scroll down some more, please?
A little bit more.
More, please.
Okay, so Emerson, Manitoba, as of February 13th, the blockade remains north of the POE.
If we look down to Coutts, all services have been temporarily suspended at Coutts, POA as of 1,400 hours Eastern Time.
And you'll agree with me that arrests happened later on.
That day, and Coots was actually cleared.
We know that now, but you didn't know that then, right?
We didn't know that then, that evening.
Right.
Yes, that's correct.
So we have Coots still going on, we have Emerson going on, and can you scroll down a bit more?
A little bit more.
So Sarnia, as of February 13th, the Blue Water Bridge remains open in both directions.
Fort Erie, Ontario, as of 13th of February, Fort Erie, POE.
Is open for commercial and traveler traffic.
And if you look down below Toronto, no major impacts reported from protest activity.
And can we scroll down a little bit more, please?
Now we see Winnipeg, no major impacts.
Fredericton, no major impacts.
Cornwall, Ontario, as of 13 February, the Cornwall POE remains open.
You see that?
Yeah.
Okay.
Saskatchewan, no major impacts.
Sorry, that's Regina, Saskatchewan.
Halifax, no major impacts.
Montreal, no major impacts.
Scroll down a little bit more, please.
We get an update here about the INVE.
I won't go through it for the sake of time.
Can we scroll down a little bit more?
We get an update here about what's going on internationally.
And if you can scroll down a little bit more.
We get an update about foreign interference.
RRM Canada has not observed any significant indicators of foreign state-linked interference as it relates to the trucker's convoy.
Can you remind us what RRM is, please?
I can't remember what RRM stands for.
That is, you would find that in the testimony from the Associate Deputy Minister, Cindy Turner-Schwiesen.
Okay, Mr. Hutchinson, do you recall?
I don't know that acronym.
Okay, but they monitor for indicators of foreign state-linked interference.
Correct.
Yeah, I can't explain the acronym, but the description is correct.
If we can scroll down a little bit more, please.
A little bit more.
CSIS, CSE, no concerns at this time.
Social media analysis, I won't go through it, but let's look at the overall assessment here.
What we see is a remark that the majority of the events have been peaceful.
Now, what I want to ask you, based on, you know, everything, all the meetings you've attended up until that point, all the briefings you've attended up until that point, do you think this document leaves out anything important other than things that are privileged?
acknowledged.
Does it leave out anything important?
Anything important that the government would want to know when deciding whether or not to invoke the Emergency Act?
Does this sort of show a totality of the circumstances across the country?
So, I guess, first off, I need to say I'm not the author of the document.
Fair enough.
You know, there is a team that pulls this information together to support.
The National Security and Intelligence Advisor when she would be relying on these talking points.
I'm just asking you about what you would know based on all the briefings you've attended up until that time.
So like not being able to go through each kind of individual situation.
Like I think I remember where I was on that Sunday night and what I was worried about.
And the situation that we were seeing.
So you referred early in the document to, you know, the situation in Windsor at the Ambassador Bridge was being resolved.
That is true.
And the point of the port of entry was being opened.
But I think at that point in time, we were also concerned about keeping it open.
And what it would require in order to keep that border point open, given what the country had been through for the last seven days, right?
That situation had existed for almost a full week.
So you had no fidelity over whether that situation and the need to keep that open.
That weekend, like the weekend that we're talking about here...
We continued to have other instances of things that were happening across the country.
So, for example, and I can't remember this, and you're scrolling down the situation at the Pacific Highway.
There were large demonstrations in BC at the Pacific Highway.
There was a circumstance where, for example, four individuals were charged.
Let me just stop you for a second.
Can we scroll up to where it's going to mention Vancouver here?
Just maybe a little bit right there.
Okay, so as of February 13th, no delays reported at the Pacific POE by the CBSA.
Yeah.
Okay.
So here, okay, that is there.
No delays, okay.
But we did have an instance, right, where the RCMP has charged four individuals who have broken through an RCMP barricade there.
I'm sorry, I made you hit your time.
But it's important because what we're seeing, In BC, and what we're seeing in Alberta is instances of where law enforcement is, you know, there are an increasing kind of threats, and I think that was something that we were concerned about.
So that's there, and that's reflected.
Okay, and let me just ask you one last question, just to follow up on what you said.
You mentioned the situation in BC, and was that the situation with the truck, which apparently broke through the blockades?
Yeah, it's a...
It was a military-style, that's my recollection, it was a military-style vehicle that had tried to break through the blockade.
And I believe that made it into the Section 58 explanation that there was a military-style vehicle that broke through the blockades.
That may be, you could verify that.
And you are aware that by military-style vehicle, they meant a vehicle that was painted in camouflage?
Yep, that may be.
Thank you very much.
Those are my questions.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next to the convoy organizers, please.
Good morning.
Good morning.
My name is Brennan Miller.
And I'm counsel for Freedom Corp, which is the corporation and entity that represents the protesters that were in Ottawa in January and February of 2022.
So first, again, you've said you were at all of the IRG meetings, correct?
And that you were at the cabinet meeting on the 13th?
Yes.
All right.
And I understand in your position as Essentially, assistant deputy minister and as a bureaucrat within government, there is times that you have to interpret legislation.
Is that fair?
That is something that public servants would do in consultation with...
Usually you have advice from lawyers on the interpretation, but yes.
But again, you do it yourself at times, right?
Within your ministry because it's...
You agree that there's legislation that sets out what you can do and what you can't do.
Is that fair?
So, well, the first part of your question, no, I don't interpret legislation on my own.
And I believe the second part of your question is correct.
Parliament passes legislation that sets out what they're...
Their vision and intent for legislation is, and in some cases it says what you can and you can't do.
Okay.
And can you agree in this circumstance you're aware that the Emergencies Act requires for its invocation for there to be a finding, that there to be a threat to the security of Canada?
Ah, I'm aware of that, yes.
Okay.
And can you agree with me that a threat to the security of Canada in the Emergencies Act, from your understanding, has the same meaning as it does in Section 2 of the CSIS Act?
I'm going to decline to answer this.
This question, I'm sorry.
I don't feel that in my current responsibilities and my knowledge and understanding that I can answer that question for you.
Okay.
Can I please bring up document COM0000739, please?
It's just one of the Commission documents actually.
Okay, can we scroll down, please?
Scroll down.
Scroll down.
And scroll down.
There we go.
Thank you.
Okay, this is one of the Commission documents, and I just want to know if this is your understanding and was your understanding at the time, okay?
This is something that the Commissioners wrote.
And it says, "Threats to the security of Canada has the same meaning assigned by Section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Act." Do you have any reason to disagree with that?
Again, I don't feel expert enough to be able to answer that question.
Were you ever advised that that was the case prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
Sorry, objection, Mr. Commissioner.
That question invites a question of legal advice.
So, obviously, she cannot answer if it concerns legal advice.
I'm not saying whether by a lawyer.
What about CSIS, the RCMP?
The Canadian Security Intelligence Service, or Canadian Security Intelligence Establishment, all of the other civil servants outside of the DOJ, did they ever advise you of that?
Me personally?
No.
You in a group of people?
There would have been discussions about this, but I think those questions, you know, about...
We're, you know, put to the National Security and Intelligence Advisor yesterday, and I would defer to whatever answers she provided to the Commission yesterday on these questions.
I don't feel in a position that I can answer those questions very specifically.
Right.
Based on the role and the responsibilities that I had in supporting.
The Privy Council Office and at the time of the events that transpired.
So can I ask this question?
Outside of the National Security Intelligence Advisor yesterday, where you heard her advising that there was going to be legal argument that this means something different than it says, and then there was going to be no one seems to be able to answer this.
You understand, though, that To invoke an emergency under the Emergencies Act.
That you can only do so if certain legal requisites under that act are met.
Is that fair?
I think I'm going to decline to answer this question.
Thank you.
Okay.
And can you agree that many ministers have stated in public That law enforcement advised them that the threshold to invoke the act was met.
Have you heard them say that?
I don't know that I can answer that either.
Okay.
We have not heard.
We've heard all of law enforcement so far testify.
And it doesn't appear that anyone in law enforcement advised them.
That a threshold to invoke the CSIS Act was met.
Do you agree with that?
I have no idea.
I'm sorry.
I'm not in a position to answer that question either.
Okay.
And just for my last point, Coutts, right?
The arrests that were made at Coutts, those were done solely by the local, contracted by the province, Alberta RCMP.
They weren't done at a national level.
Is that fair?
That's my understanding, that it was the RCMP.
Right.
And those arrests at Coutts and the operations that they were carrying out in arresting those individuals for conspiracy to commit murder, etc., you didn't know about that, and Cabinet didn't know about that until after the Act was invoked.
Isn't that true?
I can't speak to what others would have known.
And who would have known what before the operation was executed.
I myself, in the conversations that I was witness to, was aware that there were threats of violence to persons and a worry about the safety of officers.
And that was all we knew.
Like, I have to say in the conversations that I was party to, the commissioner of the RCMP was very careful about operational security.
So it's fair to say that the things that you were party to, you didn't know about the undercover operation in Cootes or the individuals there, what they were up to?
No, I was aware that there was a threat of violence.
That there was thought to be firearms involved.
And there were threats to the safety of the officers there.
And they were proceeding cautiously.
And that's the extent of what I would have known about that situation.
But no one advised you that it was such a threat as to be serious violence or terrorism or violent extremism that would meet the threshold in the CSIS Act.
Is that fair?
I think I've already clarified what I knew.
I can't speak to what others knew about the situation.
So I think I need to leave it there.
Thank you.
Those are my questions.
And sir, I think I have quite a bit of time left.
I would like to cede that time to the province of Alberta.
Okay.
Again, assuming that's doable, I will call on the...
Well, maybe we'll take the morning break.
Maybe the appointment.
appropriate time and we can come back in 15 minutes.
The commission is in recess for 15 minutes.
The commission is in recess.
The commission is in recess.
The commission is in recess.
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you order
out order out Thank you.
Order.
The Commission has reconvened.
La Commissione le plan.
La Commissione le plan.
Okay, so if we could move to the next, which is the City of Ottawa, please.
The City has no questions for this witness.
All of the areas were covered by Commission Council.
Thank you.
Alyssa Tomkinsil for the record, sorry.
Okay, thank you.
Next, the Ottawa Police Service, please.
Good morning.
Hi, Ms. Bogdan, Mr. Hutchinson.
My name is David Michikowski.
I'm a lawyer for the Ottawa Police Service.
I just have a couple of questions for you.
Ms. Bogdan, I'll direct these to you.
You were taken to a document on February 9th dealing with the assessment of the request from the City of Ottawa to the governments of Ontario and Quebec for the 1800 resources.
Do you recall that?
Yeah, that was an initial assessment, yep.
Right, and a passage was read out to you indicating that there was strong reluctance to commit without some details as to how the resources were going to be used.
Do you recall that?
If that's what the record says, then yes.
My understanding is that apart from that meeting, that comment was made on several other occasions as well in the days.
Leading up to the Emergency Act.
Is that fair?
I believe so.
Like, that's my understanding of what I heard.
Yep.
Right.
And in particular, I know that you may or may not be aware of it.
It came up in a conversation between Minister Blair and Deputy Minister Stewart on February 7th.
I don't know if you were made aware of that call or meeting.
I don't, I'm sorry, I'm not sure I know which meeting that you're referring to, like it could be the tripartite meeting, no?
No, it wasn't, and it wasn't a meeting I don't think that you were at, so I wasn't certain if you were aware.
Okay, no, I'm not aware of that.
And I think the comment was also in a document, I don't think you were taken to that specific passage.
But I believe the comment also appeared in the February 9th email in which you specifically noted to your colleague a need for more information on the outline of the OPS enforcement plans.
Do you recall that?
That was in the document that the Commission Council took you to this morning, an email on February 9th.
Okay, that was right.
So what was shown to me this morning was the information that I got either from Public Safety or the RCMP.
So that's not my text, right?
That's what others have provided to me.
Right.
And so you were just made aware of that, correct?
Correct.
And were you aware on February 13th?
That there was an operational plan that had been prepared by the integrated planning cell, which included representatives from OPS, OPP and RCMP and others?
I was aware that a plan was being developed and was awaiting approval.
Thanks.
And just one other area.
I just wanted to touch on was you talked about the issue of the engagement with the protesters as something that had been considered.
And Ms. Bogdan, you referenced it being unsuccessful in Windsor, correct?
If I could just ask you, please, to turn up pbnsc.can.402963.
three.
Okay.
And if you just look at the first bullet in that email, Ontario sent a letter to the OPP commissioner last night, which was physically shared with protesters.
The letter was signed by Minister Jones and committed to a meeting with protesters at a time and place of her choosing.
There were no other conditions.
Owing to the late hour, the letter did not have much effect, and enforcement is proceeding today.
So that's what happened in Windsor, correct?
I don't have first-hand knowledge of this conversation.
This is Deputy Minister Stewart, who's relating, having spoken to his Ontario counterpart in OPP, and this is information that he's got and or summarized.
So I don't feel equipped.
My understanding is that an offer was made to...
You know, separate and apart from this email that an offer was made to the organizers of the different protests in Windsor and it was not accepted.
Right.
That's what I meant when I said...
You know, the effort was not successful.
It wasn't productive.
It didn't result in a resolution.
But there was an offer made.
That was by the provincial government, do you understand?
Correct.
Not by the federal.
Correct.
There had been a request by Chief Slowly to have an interlocutor appointed by the federal government, but that was not pursued, correct?
I believe that.
I really can't say.
I can't remember what Chief Slowly would have asked for.
It would be probably better to put that question to Deputy Minister Stewart.
Sure.
And sorry, the one final question, and I'll just show you the document, is SSM.CAN400148.
is a And so it starts on January 14th.
It's a timeline.
And you'll see there's a column, significant developments, federal decisions, then meetings.
And so it goes all the way down to page 21, takes us to the Prime Minister invoking the Emergencies Act on February 14th.
And I will not see in the column.
Of federal decisions, any engagement by the federal government with the protesters.
Is that fair?
Correct.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I have no additional questions.
Thanks, sir.
Okay.
The next is the OPP, please.
Good morning, Commissioner.
I have no questions.
It's Janine Cabrucci for the OPP.
Thanks.
Okay, next is Council for former Chief Slowly.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
Nicholas DeStefano for former Chief Slowly.
We have no questions.
Okay, next is the city of Windsor.
Good morning.
I had to check the time.
To see if it was still a morning.
Good morning, Ms. Bogdan and Mr. Hutchinson.
My name is Jennifer King.
I'm legal counsel to the City of Windsor.
I may take a little bit more than five minutes, but I understand that Windsor Police Service has provided their time to the City, and it might not take the full 10 minutes, but we'll see.
So I thank my friend and Commissioner.
Are you content with that?
No problem.
Okay.
Yes, Tom McRae for Windsor Police Service.
We will have no questions and we ask that all our time go to Ms. King for the City of Windsor.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right.
So, Mr. Hutchinson, at page 12 of your witness summary, you stated that even when the blockade was cleared in Windsor, police resources were required to hold it open or something to that effect.
Do you recall that?
I guess that sounds right.
Okay.
And were you aware at the time that there were police plans to harden the route to the bridge and those plans were in place on February the 13th at the same time as the bridge was being cleared?
I don't recall that specifically.
Okay.
And you've discussed today that there's a risk that the protesters would reassert a presence on the roadways.
Yes, this was a pattern that we had observed across the country that when a demonstration We could never take it off the list.
You might have a demonstration in downtown Toronto on one day and then you might have nothing for a few days and then you might have it again.
So we monitored a lot of locations and we also noted from time to time the need for police resources to not only clear but hold.
Now that's information that I received.
Obviously, second or third hand.
That was my understanding.
In fact, I tried never to use the words "resolved" or "cleared" because it didn't seem to describe the situation very accurately.
Right.
So, I'd ask Mr. Clerk to please pull up Wynn 50932.
Mr. Hutchinson, you are aware that the injunction respecting the Ambassador Bridge...
That was granted by the Chief Justice of the Superior Court on February the 11th was continued on February 18th.
I'll take your word for it.
Okay, I'll note that there is a note of this in IRG meeting minutes from February the 18th.
I won't bring it up, but I'll just note that for you if that assists your recollection.
Okay, so these are the Chief Justice's reasons and Mr. Clerk, if you could go to page eight, please.
Paragraph 47. And you'll see here that the Chief Justice heard evidence and made findings with respect to the efforts to hold the bridge open and the risk that the blockade would be re-established.
And I do wanted to take some time to take a look at the Chief Justice's findings here.
So the Chief Justice found...
That the city has established a strong prima facie case on a balance of probabilities, that the protesters have breached multiple municipal bylaws, and that there is a risk they will continue to do so based on the following uncontroverted evidence.
And you'll see, I won't read it all out, but you will see that there's a number of sub points here, but the Chief Justice found.
That the protesters continued to breach multiple municipal bylaws, as was evidenced by multiple tickets issued for bylaw infractions.
He found that there's evidence that the protesters expressed intent to continue their blockade despite the February 11th order.
He found that there was evidence that the protesters planned to continue to protest on roadways approaching the bridge.
And cites some evidence that the police provided, the Windsor police provided, who were monitoring social media, including messages of it's not over, we are not done, and civil war time.
And as a result of the continued threat of a new blockade, police continued to control traffic flow onto Huron Church Road, which we've heard is a municipal roadway, to protect access to the bridge.
So the Chief Justice made these findings.
And found that the evidence clearly established that the protestors chose to ignore the order and continue to impede and obstruct access to the bridge after the order was granted.
So were you aware of these findings at the time?
I think I would have been aware of the injunction, but I didn't read the order at the time, nor do I recall being in any discussion of the specifics per se.
Okay.
Well, I wanted to show that the Chief Justice of the Superior Court of Ontario made these findings on February 18th when he decided to continue the injunction permanently in Windsor.
We've also been having some discussion during this hearing about the distinction between lawful and unlawful protests.
And I just wanted to show you page 10, paragraph 59. And you'll see here the Chief Justice refers to the rule of law and states that the rule of law requires that everyone obey the law.
Significant, organized, deliberate, and persistent defiance of the law and court orders is a serious threat to the rule of law, which is one of the foundations of a functioning democracy.
The protesters are obliged, as is every Canadian citizen, to follow the law and not breach municipal bylaws or court orders that prohibit unlawful conduct.
So, you know, I wanted to, I'm not sure if you have any comments on that, or if you were asked any questions about the distinction between lawful and unlawful protests, but again, the Chief Justice did make findings that the protests were unlawful in Windsor.
Nothing that you've raised contradicts the information that I was privy to at the time.
Thank you.
So I do have some questions at the end of your witness summary.
You do make some recommendations or you point out gaps in the legislation and recommend that critical infrastructure protection legislation will require collaboration across federal, provincial, municipal and private sectors.
Do you recall that?
Yes, I do.
Okay.
Do you have anything further that you could add to that?
I know we've talked about perhaps some gaps in the legislation.
You know, we've been asking some questions about the need for emergency management and planning.
Is that something that you would also recommend?
Some changes or updates to emergency planning?
So, in the PCO Secretariat, we get involved, as Ms. Bogdan said, in All types of different hazards and discussions about all types of different hazards and our perception of emergency legislation is as much about what are the tools to help and what enables help.
That's kind of our focus more than anything else.
I was pretty struck during the summer when the UK could declare a national emergency over heat.
And take steps to protect their citizens under national legislation.
And to my knowledge, and I'm learning on the job, as Deputy Stewart referred to the other day, to my knowledge, we don't have that kind of a framework.
We have a little bit more of a patchwork.
Now, you can say that that's due to confederation versus a unitary system of government.
But I do think that there's room.
I would take it one step further and say that if we could strengthen the tools and the frameworks around protecting critical infrastructure, we could actually, by doing that, we'd be protecting the space for legal and safe demonstration in our democracy because the rules would be clearer and the protection of what impacts people the most would be well protected.
Thank you for that.
I think, you know, as representing the City of Windsor, I think we've seen, and if you'll agree with me, that these protests in...
Genuine February have also emphasized the need for collaboration with the local authorities and the first responders who are responding to these on the ground.
As you're aware, municipalities respond to the vast majority of emergencies in Canada.
Would you agree with me that it's important to have the local level engaged in this planning?
Discussion around updating legislation and frameworks around emergency planning.
Yes, so taking the comment in a very general sense, like not commenting on this situation specifically, we're well aware from all of the situations that we manage that municipalities tend to be, and communities tend to be the first responders.
We have to have the systems of support in place.
Not that I'm suggesting in any way, shape or form that the federal government should be out of its lane.
That's not what I'm suggesting.
But the lines of support, the lines of communication, the shared planning where necessary, the collaborative planning, those would all support each level or order of government being able to fulfill its function to the fullest.
Thank you.
Those are my questions.
Thank you.
Next, I'd like to call on the NPF, National Police Federation.
Thank you.
Lauren Pierce for the National Police Federation.
We have no further questions for these witnesses.
Thank you.
Okay, next for the government of Saskatchewan, please.
Good morning.
Morning.
I'm Mitch McAdam, one of the lawyers for the Government of Saskatchewan, and I have a few questions for you this morning, Ms. Bogdan.
During your testimony this morning, you mentioned a meeting that was called by the Clerk of the Privy Council on the morning of February the 9th, at which she directed Deputy Ministers and staff at the Privy Council Office.
To examine all possible options for resolution of the blockades and protests.
Do you recall that?
Yes.
And then later this morning you talked to Commission Council at some length about a document that emanated out of that meeting dealing with things like the enforcement plan and the engagement plan.
And those things were all based on existing legal authorities, correct?
Correct, yeah.
And Ms. Bogdan, when the incident response group began meeting on February the 10th, is it fair to say that that document and what was contained in it really became the genesis for what was referred to as Track 1?
Yes, that's correct.
I think we confirmed that with Commission Council this morning.
Okay, thank you.
Now, Ms. Bogdan, when the Clerk of the Privy Council was discussing with Deputy Ministers and staff from your office on the morning of February 9th about all possible options to resolve the blockades and protests, one of those options would have been the invocation of the Emergencies Act or what came to be referred to as Track 2. Is that correct?
That would be an option, yes.
The Emergency Act or Special Purpose Emergency Legislation, right?
Like, there's a couple of different ways you could do that.
Yeah.
Okay.
And so those things were discussed at that meeting on the morning of February the 9th.
Uh...
Uh...
Yeah, to a certain extent, yeah.
Okay.
And then they were certainly on the table when the incident response group met on February 10th.
Isn't that correct?
Yep, the record will show that.
If you look at the tracker that is attached to the minutes of the incident response group meeting on the 12th of February, you know, the document that's appended there shows the things that we were working on, as you say, in Track 1, which is within existing authorities, and Track 2, you know, what if Track 1 isn't successful or the situation escalates quickly?
And we need to be in a position to do something different.
I won't call it out, but I believe that the minutes of the incident response group meeting from February 10th also refer to a discussion of those Track 2 items.
Isn't that correct?
Yeah, so I guess what I was trying to...
You're absolutely right.
The minutes do refer to that.
They refer to a discussion of, you know, the action that could be taken within existing authority and then what might be the process of invoking the Emergency Act.
That was the second part of the conversation.
Okay, thank you.
And Ms. Bogdan, you said this morning something along the lines of...
A good civil servant does their homework in advance.
Did I have that correct?
Yeah, probably something like that.
Yep.
Okay.
So do I take it that officials within the Privy Council Office would have been at least looking at the Emergencies Act as a potential option or scoping out the potential for using the Emergencies Act by that first week of February?
Not the first week of February, no.
We were not there yet, no.
Okay, so when we look at the minutes of the SSE committee meeting on February 3rd, and it talked about creative options, was that referring to the Emergencies Act, or was that referring to something else?
That's referring to something else.
Do you recall when Commission Council put up...
The document that was circulated for the SSE meeting on February 3rd, it's like a placemat, and there's a whole range of options.
In the right column, it was creative options, so things like Le Grand Débat and things like that.
That's what that refers to.
Okay, so when would the Privy Council Office have started to do its homework on the Emergencies Act?
When would you or somebody in your office have first started to look at it as a potential option?
-Um...
It would have probably been on or around the 9th.
Okay, so it would have been only a day before the first meeting of the incident response group when it was being discussed there?
Yep, I think that's right.
And no work was done on the Emergencies Act before that?
So I can't say that definitively.
You know, work would have been being done by a lot of different people on an anticipatory basis that, you know, making sure, as I said, that we've done our homework and we would be in a position to answer questions, right?
Like, if the government turned to the public servants and said, what's involved with invocation of the Act, you need to be able to answer all kinds of first-order questions, right?
Everything from the threshold that's to be met to what's the parliamentary process?
You know, what kinds of considerations do you want to be thinking about?
So I can't say definitively who was working on what.
I wasn't directing that work.
So I'm not being evasive.
I'm just trying to understand it was all hands on deck at that point.
And I can't speak to every part of the public service.
Do you know if that work was being done within the Privy Council or was it in...
Within the Privy Council Office or was it in a different department?
I can't say definitively.
I know there was work being done in the Privy Council Office as to how other departments would have been implicated.
I can't speak to that.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Those are all of my questions.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, if I can call on the Government of Alberta, please.
Good morning.
My name is Stephanie Bose.
I'm counsel for the province of Alberta.
Just a couple of quick questions about the RFA process.
Whose responsibility is it generally to send a formal response to an RFA received from a province?
The normal process would be for the response to be sent from Public Safety.
And we usually speak about the official side or the political side or MINO, which is an acronym for Minister's Office.
Normally, the signed letter from the Minister would be sent by officials in Public Safety.
Okay, thank you.
Are you aware that a response was drafted and approved by Minister Blair to Alberta's RFA but does not appear to have been sent to Alberta prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
That's my understanding.
Okay, do you know why it was not sent?
I can't answer that question definitively.
What I can tell you is that I have been...
Personally involved in trying to determine where the letter ended up, and I have all indications to me at this point are that it didn't get sent simply due to human error.
There was a belief on the public service side that this was being done exceptionally from the minister's office, but the minister's office had no reason to believe it wasn't being done through the usual process on the public service side.
So there were people who had the letter.
Signed letter, but to my knowledge, I can't find any record of it having been sent.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Those are my only questions today.
Okay, thank you.
I guess nobody's taken up the offer.
This is okay.
So we're finishing a lot sooner so far.
Government of Canada, please.
Thank you.
Good morning.
The document I'd first like to take you to is one...
Could you just, for the record, identify yourself, please?
Robert McKinnon, Government of Canada.
If I take you to a document that the Council for Democracy Fund took you to SSMNSC.can, number of zeros, 242.
It was the NSIA remarks.
At that time, can you just confirm that Ottawa wasn't cleared, the enforcement action hadn't even been taken at the time of the invocation, is that correct?
That's correct.
And you've also heard concerning the Ambassador Bridge, if you go down a little bit further.
That enforcement actions were still continuing on the 3rd and that the airspace was still restricted on February 14th.
So that was still in effect over the protest area and you've just heard that the injunction in Windsor was continued because of the fear of returning.
You heard that today?
evidence of that.
So, in your mind, or those with whom you're consulting, was there a fear that the protesters would return to the Windsor site?
Yeah, that was definitely something that we were alive to, that possibility that you would continue to need resources to keep that open.
If you keep scrolling down under page 5, or top of page 5. That's it.
So it also mentions policing issues of note.
In the remarks, RCMP is assisting in various impacted areas across the country and is focused on areas where enforcement or the risk of escalation is most acute.
Do you see that?
Yes, that's correct.
So is it true to say that by no means had the escalation events subsided to a calm?
Correct.
How would you describe?
Either of you, your perspective as of February 14th when invocation happened concerning the events?
Well, I mean, I think I would describe the situation as highly concerning, unpredictable, still a lot of uncertainty.
You know, no clarity on what the plan was for resolution in Ottawa.
Concerns about, you know, the border point at Ambassador Bridge.
I had referred in my earlier testimony to the escalation of violence towards law enforcement that we saw in BC, and I think towards RCMP officers in Coutts.
You know, the prospect that, you know, this situation could continue to get worse if left unintended and if nothing was done to change the trajectory of the situation.
And Mr. Hutchison, do you have any comment?
I concur with that description.
As I said earlier, my perspective was very much that That a momentary pause in a demonstration had not up to that point or after, frankly, proven to be an end of a demonstration.
So my view that weekend was that there continued to be a national crisis, that it was impacting communities in almost every province, that we continue to see injunctions, emergency legislation being used.
Sort of extraordinary actions and evidence throughout this inquiry has talked about how unique this situation was.
But then the conversation has tended, with all due respect, has tended to be about specific locations.
I think on the 12th or 13th, stepping back and looking at it nationally, it continued to be a unique situation with a lot of tools in play, but not a sense of resolution.
To the threat that continued, particularly to my way of thinking, particularly around the economic threat, which I understand would be a threat to property.
So if you scroll down a little bit further where it has Ottawa on page five.
So you'll see on the last bullet point on the The day, well, on February 12th, it mentions police say protesters overwhelmed officers on Friday night.
So there are still lots of events, especially happening in Ottawa during that time.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's correct.
Like at each of the places, you know, over that weekend, like if you review, for example.
You know, the IRG minutes from that weekend, you'll see reports from the Commissioner of the RCMP and others about continued and growing protest activity across the country.
And I've already referred to a few of them, and the same was happening here in Ottawa.
And, you know, here this reference to police say protesters overwhelmed officers, you know, that's also the point I made earlier, you know, what we were seeing in BC and Coutts.
You don't have infinite resources to enforce the law, and you do need to be concerned about threats of violence against the people that you're asking to enforce the law.
So there was a lot here to be worried about at this particular point in time.
I'd like to take you to one of the IRG reports that is after the invocation on February 19th.
So let's look at...
document SSM NSC CAN number of zeros 404.
So this is a day after enforcement action had begun in Ottawa.
This is February 19th and if you could go to page 5. Just below the middle.
So, yes.
So, the last line says there are indications of additional convoys en route to Ottawa, including from San Jerome and Peterborough, and checkpoints are being monitored as are areas outside the city, such as Emberm and Arnprior, where some protesters who are leaving are beginning to congregate.
So does...
Does that suggest to you that the protests are calming?
No, not at all.
Like, there's volatility and uncertainty in this situation.
Yeah.
And while we're on this one, just over the page to the next page at the top, on the usefulness of this, of some of the measures, you'll see it's noted that the minister reported That he has heard from local law enforcement agencies that the Emergencies Act has been a successful tool, particularly around the ability to have clarity and leveraging no-go zones, as well as seizing assets, rapidly deploying officers in financial control measures.
Do you see that?
Yes.
And that was as of February 19th.
Yes.
And I'll just take you to one other influence here of the measures.
It's the IRG meeting of February 23rd, page 5. And that's SSM NSC CAN, The number of zeros, 408.
Oh, okay there.
There you go.
So it's about the middle paragraph across the country.
Yes.
So across the country yesterday evening, and this is February 23rd, the day it's revoked, Winnipeg Police issued a notice to protesters gathered near the provincial legislature advising them that I had 24 hours to leave and providing a pamphlet.
it, outlining potential consequences of not doing so.
The pamphlet mentioned enforcement under the Federal Emergencies Act as one of the possible measures that police would use if protesters did not vacate the premise by a certain time You see that?
Yep.
This is the...
Yep.
Using it as a deterrence and...
Yep.
Okay.
So...
I'll take you back to another document that has been referred to concerning the engagement strategy, just to make sure we understand the evolution of it.
So SSM.can.8757.
All right, and if you scroll down just a little bit, okay.
So, as I understand it, this is the second sort of cut on this draft, correct?
Correct.
And it's just showing the evolution of you're trying to put everything together to get people to focus on some options under existing authorities, correct?
Correct.
And you've got Plan A and Plan B, correct, in the third paragraph you referred to?
Yeah.
Plan A, providing resources to local law enforcement to address the unlawful demonstrations, and Plan B, where we need to unpack our other options in terms of legal authorities and feasibility of executing these options for what would be needed to make them a reality, correct?
If you go to the attachment, which is the next number, which is 8758.
So if you scroll down a little bit, then you have Plan A and Plan B for different cities.
And you'll see.
Was it your intention here to put as much before the ministers and officials for consideration as possible?
Because this is an evolving situation and you're thinking ahead.
Is that right?
Yeah, I think that's right.
As I was explaining when we were talking about this with Commission Council, first and foremost, Like, at this moment in time, and as we have been for a number of days now, right, really focused on how do we bring to bear a range of options within existing authorities in order to help bring this matter to a peaceful and timely kind of resolution.
But at the same time, you also have to be prepared that Plan A or Track 1 isn't going to be successful.
Or, not just that, I think you also need to be ready for the possibility, and it was not a theoretical risk, that the situation could escalate quickly or deteriorate, and that the government would need to be prepared to intervene and respond in some way.
Yeah, it's important.
And if you look at Plan A and Plan B here, you'll see...
And a second option, could the government make use of the Emergencies Act, correct?
Yep.
So, this was all putting together everything you could think of that would be useful for those who have to make a decision, make the right decision.
Yep.
It's a culmination of conversations over the days leading up, the 9th.
Additional meetings over the course of the 9th and just trying to put this together in a way that would help support a conversation.
And this evolved into what's been referred to as Track 1 and Track 2 that is appended to the IRG minutes of February 12th.
Correct.
Which was discussed at the first incident response group.
You know, what you find in the minutes of the meeting of the 12th is actually a reflection of what was discussed on the 10th, which is, yeah.
So just so I can make sure, I'm not going to go over your testimony from before, but just to confirm that your role in your position is to ask the questions, what if, and figure out scenarios looking ahead.
Is that correct?
Yeah, is to encourage that.
It's a collective responsibility, right?
That PCO would have and actually departments would have in this instance is to make sure, as I said, that we're ready to advise the government in a range of different scenarios that might materialize.
Like remembering where we are.
We're in an unprecedented situation that is vacillating day by day, hour by hour with new information, imperfect information.
And so we need to be ready.
And you said that from early on, even before the convoy.
Reached Ottawa.
You were asking these questions.
Is that correct?
Absolutely.
It's part of emergency preparedness is that, you know, you have to maximize the time you have before it turns from Being a situation into actually an emergency.
And like, you know, that kind of philosophy is very acute when you're looking at saving lives in terms of, you know, we have a hurricane that's coming, like the first 24, 48 hours really matter.
So in emergency preparedness, you're trying to maximize the time you have to get ready and think about a couple potential outcomes that might happen and make sure that we've done our analysis and that we're ready to support the government.
And is it your responsibility and others at PCO to make sure to convene the right committees or groups in order to deal with these situations?
Correct.
Correct.
And so you mentioned that you first started with these questions that you asked after the first weekend and you got together with, there were certain ministers, you mentioned four?
Yes.
Ministers to discuss on a daily basis, is that right?
We were organizing situational updates on the situation so they had the latest information because of course ministers are having their own discussion with provincial colleagues.
They need the latest information and talking about actions that are being taken.
And then that moved into another phase of the SSE meetings, is that right?
Correct, where we're convening a larger group of ministers.
And it moved there because of what reason?
Well, like I think as I said in my testimony earlier, when we convened the first Cabinet Committee meeting on safety, security and emergencies, we're midway through the next week after the weekend in Ottawa.
We have a situation, a blockade in Coots and an occupation in Ottawa.
And we have no fidelity over how this situation is going to get resolved.
So, you know, there's a need to support ministers in coming together and having a conversation about that and what, you know, are the range of things that the government might want to do or to think about to help bring this situation to a resolution.
All right.
So it went from late January from...
Looking ahead with scenarios to meetings with foreign ministers to February 3rd to the 8th with SSE meetings.
Correct.
And then what was the reason to move from the SSE meetings to the IRG meetings on the 10th, 12th, and 13th?
Well, I think...
There we are in the middle of the second week.
Like the 9th, the 10th, we're in the middle of the second week.
You know, the situation has gotten worse.
There's uncertainty about how it will be resolved and need to begin engaging.
And providing advice to the Prime Minister and others about the range of options that the government could consider at that point in time.
I'll just take you to one last document, and that's the IRG meeting of February 12th, and your tracker is attached to that.
that's ssmnsc.can number of zeros 214.
So is it at this point on the 12th that the Option 1 and Option 2, Tracker 1 and Tracker 2, are being fully considered as an agenda on this committee?
So I think it's actually in the meeting on the 10th, if I may.
Yeah, but does it continue on the 12th?
Correct.
And if you...
It describes in these minutes on the first page, if you scroll down to the page 5, it talks about the situations that exist here with tactics being used to take children to the site, police activity as well as schools walking out to join the protest.
It mentions the concern about some extremists within the group and the concern about lone wolf attacks.
Yeah.
Do you see all that?
Yes.
And is that accurate?
Yes.
And then if you go down close to the bottom of that one, it mentions the escalation in activity in Ottawa and the role of social media.
And in that its role in the communication and organizers of protesters across the country.
Was that a very much of a concern at this point on the 12th?
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
And I won't both take you read them through all but in in the minutes it mentions Windsor, Cornwall, Ottawa.
Emerson, among other areas that were of concern.
I was just going to say that actually, if you scroll down, you will see that the commissioner of the RCMP that weekend, this is the 12th that we're talking about.
Right.
You know, she's describing in that meeting, you know, new and different, either situations that have gotten worse or additional situations like Cornwall.
I think, is there a reference to North Bay and the situations that we're seeing over that weekend?
Yeah.
And there's also a reference on page 9 to an update on the potential engagement with the leaders of the blockades, right?
And there was consideration given to a potential engagement strategy at one point that was never pursued, right?
Correct.
And do you know the kind of questions that were asked in order to decide that issue or not decide that issue?
Are there any questions that weren't answered concerning whether to engage with the protesters or not?
I don't know that I can answer that.
Okay.
All right.
Those are all my questions.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any re-examination?
No re-examination.
Okay.
I just have one question, and it goes back towards the beginning of your evidence.
And this is before the...
I can't remember the exact date, but it would be before the first weekend.
Yes.
And you said that you were...
Preparing for what you knew and what you didn't know.
Correct.
But you also, you said you were preparing for what if it doesn't go well.
Yeah.
And I just wonder what you do to prepare for what would happen if it did not go well.
Right.
So I sort of described kind of the ways in which it could not go well.
Right?
You know, we had this large group of people in that.
And so what were the kinds of things we did?
So, you know, we are, for example, preparing to be able to bring ministers together very quickly and organize an ad hoc cabinet committee meeting, whether that would have been safety, security and emergencies or the incident response group, right?
So there's some very practical things that you're doing to make sure that you have the ability to reach ministers.
In short order and bring that group together, you know, if there's a need to do something.
So you're kind of thinking along those lines.
But at that point, I think the scenario that I was most worried about was the potential for, you know, violence or, you know, a clash with law enforcement and that there might be, somebody might get hurt or a loss of life.
And in that case, that's a public order situation and law enforcement would deal with the first line of...
But it's happening in the nation's capital.
There might be a need for, you know, a government or several government ministers to say something about that.
And so just thinking about if that situation materializes, who's on first?
Who's on second?
Is everybody clear about roles and responsibilities?
How would we get ministers together?
Now, there's a theoretical risk that it could be worse than that, but we just need to know what the machinery is and what we would do.
And, you know, kind of what happens in the first four hours, first 12 hours.
And that's the kinds of things that you're thinking about.
So to try and summarize, it's to be able to kick in the decision-making process.
Correct.
But it isn't something concrete such as preparing physically.
No, there's nothing to do.
So this kind of situation could arise at any time, right?
And so we do have existing structures that kick in.
But, you know, it is COVID.
People are working remotely.
Ministers are not all necessarily located in Ottawa.
Do we know where everybody is?
Can we get the ministers, prime ministers together quickly if that need arises?
Thank you.
So thank you very much for coming and providing your testimony.
It's very helpful and appreciated.
So you're free to go.
Thank you, sir.
Yes, I can give you the option.
We can have lunch early and come back at 1:30 or we can proceed with the next panel.
What would you prefer?
If I get to state my preference, I'd prefer to take lunch now, Commissioner.
Okay, unless there's any objection, we'll take a long lunch again today, an hour and five minutes.
We'll come back at 1:30.
The commission is in races until 1.30.
La Commissarie Levis has got tres aritantes.
La Commissarie Levis has got tres aritantes.
La Commissarie Levis has got tres aritantes.
Thank you.
Orgadot.
The Commission is reconvening.
Good afternoon.
We have a panel of witnesses.
Okay, Commission Council please.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
For the record, Shantona Chaudhary.
For the commission and the witnesses this afternoon are Ms. Janice Charette and Ms. Nathalie Troin.
Ms. Charette, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
A religious document, please.
We have the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah available.
the bible please For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
My name is Janice Charette.
J-A-N-I-C-E-C-H-A-R-E-T-T-E.
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.
I do.
Thank you.
Ms. Roy, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
I'll make an affirmation, Solendale, please.
Yes, an oath.
An oath.
For the purposes of the public record, will you give us your name?
Nathalie Durin, N-A-T-H-A-L-I-E-D-R-O-U-I-N.
Do you solemnly swear that the testimony you give before the Commission will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I so swear.
Good afternoon, Ms. Charette, Ms. Trouin.
Thank you for being here.
We'll just start with some housekeeping, introducing your witness summary.
So you'll recall having sat for an interview with Commission Council on September 29, 2022?
I do.
Ms. Trouin?
I do.
Okay.
And after that interview, Commission Council prepared a summary of that interview, which you have reviewed.
Can you confirm that that summary was accurate?
I can.
I confirm.
Okay.
And for the record, that is...
Mr. Clerk, WTS.6074, but no need to pull it up right now.
Okay, Ms. Jarrett, I understand that you are the Clerk of the Privy Council.
I am.
How long have you held that role?
I was named as the Interim Clerk of the Privy Council in March of 2021, so that is about 18 months or so ago, and I was confirmed in the role as the Clerk of the Privy Council in May of 2022.
And what was your background before that?
I've been a senior public servant for, gosh, I think I've been a deputy minister for almost 20 years.
Before being named as the interim clerk of the Privy Council, I was the High Commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
And previous to that, I was actually serving as the clerk of the Privy Council.
I've held roles as the...
Associate Clerk of the Privy Council, Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental, the Deputy Minister of then Human Resources and Skills Development, of Immigration, Refugees, Citizenship, Associate Deputy Minister of Health, and as you can tell, a number of roles over my career.
It's a long list.
Okay.
And Mitz Roy, you were the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council.
Exactly.
And how long have you held that role?
I was appointed in August.
Well, 2021.
And before that, I was Deputy Minister of Justice, Justice Canada.
And 2016, I was Minister of Justice in Quebec.
Are you wishing to testify in French?
I'm going to do the same thing.
Sometimes I will answer in English.
Sometimes I will answer in French.
So, question?
Perfect.
Question.
It's well understood by you, but maybe not by everyone here.
If I can just pipe in, you have a tendency to speak very quickly, which I'm sure comes handy when you're delivering messages to the government.
But for here, it's useful to slow down.
I actually wrote the word slow down just so that I would try to remember that.
Thank you, Commissioner.
So the Clerk of the Preview Council and Secretary of the Cabinet is the full title of the position.
And I would say that...
That basically encompasses three roles.
The Privy Council Office is the Department of the Prime Minister.
And so I serve as the Deputy Minister of the Privy Council Office and the Deputy Minister, therefore, to the Prime Minister.
I am the most senior public service advisor.
To the Prime Minister and to his office.
I'm responsible for the overall management of the Privy Council office and the discharge of all of our functions and responsibilities.
And making sure that, so it's kind of the administration side, but I'm also the advisor on all matters that would be before the Prime Minister for his consideration and decision.
Second part of the role is the Secretary to the Cabinet.
And in that respect, I'm responsible for helping to organize Cabinet meetings, make sure that the agendas are set, the attendance is set, the information is available for ministers to deliberate on, that the meetings are supported with things like translation, all of the kind of staff support.
That the decisions of the Cabinet are faithfully recorded and therefore communicated out as necessary and kind of responsible for overseeing the implementation then of those decisions.
So anything to do with how Cabinet operates its decision-making structure, I'm responsible for.
Obviously working with the team in the Privy Council Office, both in the advisory function and the Secretary of the Cabinet function.
And then finally...
In our system, the clerk of the Privy Council has a third role, which is the head of the public service.
And I think if you look at the institutional summary for the Privy Council office, we've tried to describe that.
In the Canadian version of the Westminster system, the public service is a professional, non-partisan public service, and I'm responsible as the head of the public service for, amongst other things, providing an annual report to the Prime Minister on the state of the public service.
In this respect, I also provide advice to the Prime Minister on the appointment and performance of deputy ministers and other senior officials, and basically for making sure that The public service is ready to be able to serve the needs of the government and of the country today and also a stewardship role into the future.
So those are kind of the three roles.
And I would say the other thing that might be relevant as we get into this conversation is the Clerk of the Privy Council is one of a community of deputy ministers.
The expression would be primus interperius.
You are one amongst others, and I very much work with the community of deputies in order to be able to discharge those functions.
First among equals?
That's it.
Okay.
Madame Troye, we're going to go back to some of that, Ms. Charette, but before we do that, can you explain the role of the Deputy Clerk, Ms. Troye, and then maybe how the two of you work together?
Perfect.
So let me start with that.
So my first role is really to support the clerk in her role, a little bit like what we call a two-in-the-box model.
So on a day-to-day basis, it means...
That I have to assume leadership within the department, that is the department of the Privy Council, and assume leadership on horizontal files in the area of policies, ensure that there is consistency and uniformity.
Another power I have is to deal with the Deputy Ministers on issues, and I do that regularly.
I also do crisis management, issue management, as we say.
And it is in that case where I was playing a role in the convoy.
And that's why I'm here today.
And I have leadership also in the area of other matters.
So my mantra is I go where the needs are in order to support the clerk.
You know, more instinctively, I go where I have strength, competencies and capacities to support her in her main role, advising the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.
So this is, you know, how we work.
On a weekly basis, we will reassign, you know, where I should put my attention and efforts and what file I should keep under my radar.
Can I just add a little bit to that, if that's all right?
Of course.
So perhaps I'll just add two things.
I think one of the operating styles that Madame Denoy and I have tried to follow is that if I'm not there, Natalie is briefed up enough to be able to handle it, to be able to deal with any issue, and vice versa, so that we are not completely interchangeable, but that there is leadership at any point in time.
Because people have holidays or whatever else to do.
And secondly, I don't think either one of us mentioned that we also have a number of ministers within the Privy Council office portfolio.
And I might forget one here, but I'll try not to.
So the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who are supported by the PCO.
And that's Minister Leblanc?
Minister Leblanc, that's right.
The Government House Leader, that's Minister Holland.
The Quebec Lieutenant, which is an intergovernmental type of function, that's Minister Rodriguez.
The Minister of Emergency Preparedness, that's Minister Blair.
And I have now forgotten.
And the DPM.
And of course, the Deputy Prime Minister, that's right.
In her role as the Deputy Prime Minister, she also gets support, of course, from the Department of Finance.
But in her role as the DPM, we do provide her some support as well.
Okay.
So as the senior advisor, as you said, within the public service to the Prime Minister, can you explain a little bit?
The interaction between PCO and PMO.
And just explain how those lines of communication work, how the Prime Minister is briefed, how you communicate with him, those general things.
Sure.
I think the term that Madame de Royne used, organic, maybe applies here.
There are many, many routes in terms of the flow of information and advice between...
Myself and team in the Privy Council office and the Prime Minister's office and the team that support him there.
When it comes to the Prime Minister himself, it gets more structured, and I'll come back to that in a moment.
There would be daily conversations going on between PMO and PCO staff, whether it's around information exchange, trying to think about how to manage an issue, surface...
A problem we're trying to solve, exchange information, any number of things in the course of a day would take place.
In terms of the advice to the Prime Minister...
When it comes to the exchange of information with the Prime Minister, in some cases you will see, I think even in evidence of documents that have been submitted to the Commission, that if it's for the purpose of just sheer information, you would see a briefing note perhaps prepared by one of the Deputy Secretaries to the Cabinet.
But if it contains advice, it contains a recommendation, if we write to the Prime Minister for the purpose of decision, that would come through me.
In some cases, some of those briefing notes may also go through Madame de Roy.
And if I'm not around Madame de Roy, I can't sign off on briefing notes, decision notes for my.
signature.
So would it be correct to say that all formal advice to the Prime Minister from the Privy Council office goes through one of you?
I think that would be fair to say yes.
As well, We have a number of opportunities to provide oral information, oral briefings to the Prime Minister as well.
I have a regular bilateral meeting with him every week, which is joined by the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister.
That is Katie Telford.
And sometimes other members of the Prime Minister's staff will join us.
And that's a session where sometimes the Prime Minister has items.
I might have items.
The Prime Minister's office may have items.
But it's kind of our regular once-a-week touch base, traffic management, advisory, decision, kind of whatever is on the issue of late of the day.
Every second week.
The Deputy Prime Minister will be joining into that meeting as well.
So that's our regular structure.
We may have issue-based meetings or briefings with the Prime Minister.
We've done...
For a very long time, we were doing frequent three times a week briefings of the Prime Minister and his office, sometimes with ministers on the COVID situation, for example.
That might involve senior officials from other departments, Dr. Theresa Tam, the Chief Public Health Officer, officials from Public Health Agency and Health, and so on and so on.
You get the picture.
When there is a Cabinet meeting that the Prime Minister is involved in, We almost always have a pre-brief session with the Prime Minister where we'll go over the agenda, the kind of the run of show, who's going to say what, the key issues to be deliberated.
So he has a focus on, in addition to the written briefing material we would have provided, kind of what are the key issues he's trying to adjudicate at the session, what are some of the perspectives he may want to be listening for, where's the area or the zone for a possible decision.
And we would be doing that before a cabinet meeting, for instance.
And certainly, I think, which will be relevant to the work of the Commission before an incident response group.
Thank you.
That's helpful.
We're now going to move to the...
I'll say the meat, but the early days of the convoy, the Freedom Convoy, the events that the inquiry is concerned with.
But just picking up on the last point you made in terms of the communication lines and briefings, could you set the stage for us in terms of what was going on in government at the time at a very practical level as well as a sort of ideas level?
So were things happening virtually?
Where were people working?
Where were you?
Where was the Prime Minister?
Right.
So, cast your mind back, we were in January of 2022.
We, the country, like many other countries around the world, was dealing with the Omicron variant of COVID.
We actually had, I believe, in mid-January, record levels of hospitalizations, even higher than previous peaks of the COVID outbreak.
And so, the...
The vast majority of the public service was working remotely, although there were some people by dint of their function who had the need to come into the office to access secure materials or so on.
But the public health advice was to be working remote by default, and that's where the bulk of the public service was.
The same thing for, I think it's fair to say, for the prime minister, ministers, and political staff.
So we were all working remotely.
I remember this well because there was a cabinet retreat that was held in the week of January the 24th.
That would have been the first cabinet retreat that had taken place since the government was formed after the 2021 election.
Everybody was hoping that that was going to be an opportunity for a face-to-face and unfortunately ended up being a virtual.
We are very fortunate to have secure video communications so we can actually have cabinet meetings held virtually and so we were able to do that in the week.
There was a lot of other issues that were before the government.
I think you would have heard from other witnesses as well that we were monitoring the potential for an emerging situation in In Ukraine, and trying to prepare for what possibly could happen at that point in time.
And so as we came out of the cabinet retreat, I believe was two or three days, and that's when we started to hear the early signals that there might be a protest or a series of protests happening in Ottawa and potentially other locations.
Now, I should say...
That as of January the 15th, there was a change in the public health measures related to COVID that affected truckers in the country.
It affected cross-border traffic.
And that change was for truckers that were unvaccinated coming back into the country.
They had been previously exempt and they were now going to be subject to public health measures.
And so we were monitoring very closely both the implementation of that measure as well as talking to the...
The Trucking Association and monitoring because it was clear that at that point in time, despite the very serious record levels of COVID we were facing, that Canadians were kind of getting a bit fed up at that point in time with the restrictions and the measures and what they were having to deal with.
And so that was very much on our minds.
We were getting ready for the return of the House of Commons.
They had been on a parliamentary break coming out of the holiday season, and the House was due to resume on the 31st of January.
And so as we went into what I think others have described as weekend one, the weekend starting Friday, the 28th of January, we were monitoring and waiting for the protest that we had understood was going to be arriving.
And that's kind of the context at the very beginning, if that's helpful.
Yes, that's helpful.
That's perfect.
So that takes us to my next question, which is, when did you first brief the Prime Minister on what was happening with the convoy?
The first briefing I had with the Prime Minister was an oral briefing on the 30th of January.
I think you've heard testimony from other Privy Council Office colleagues that there were...
PCO, PMO briefings that have been going on in the week before that.
There have been daily ministerial briefings going on starting, I think, on the Thursday before that.
So on the Sunday, the 30th, there was a...
We had a telephone call, an oral briefing with the Prime Minister, including members of his staff, other members of the Privy Council office, to basically kind of give him a situation report.
At that point in time, it was Sunday, I believe it was evening, and it was pretty clear that the protesters weren't leaving.
So we had a situation in Ottawa, and our thoughts were turning immediately to the House return the next day.
And whether there was any issues we had to be thinking our way through in terms of the safe conduct of parliamentarians actually accessing the parliament buildings.
As you may recall, Wellington Street was a bit of a challenging area.
As the head of the public service and responsible for a department, I also had to think about what instructions we were giving to public servants, some of whom were still required to be going into the office, about...
Well, we were closing buildings or leaving those open.
So that was really the first briefing with the Prime Minister, kind of a situation report, what was happening, giving him information.
We were able to tell him that there had been ministerial briefings, that there was lots of outreach going on by deputy ministers across...
We call it the town across Ottawa, across departments and agencies.
And so that was, and I wouldn't say that we sought any decisions from him at that point in time, other than to have a conversation about were we well connected, for example, were the right people talking to parliamentary officials, to the Sergeant at Arms, the Parliamentary Protective Service, were they connected up to the law enforcement and security agencies to make sure that, you know, Parliament.
The epicenter of our democracy could function well starting the next day.
We've spent a lot of time.
I don't know if you had a chance to see the testimony of Ms. Bogdan this morning and Mr. Hutchison and /or the NSIA yesterday.
We've heard from many of your Deputy Minister colleagues and we've spent a lot of time on the lead up to the convoy and the early days.
So I think with you this afternoon we're going to be focusing mostly now on The beginning of sort of February 9th on, let's put it that way.
Can I just take you back?
Yes, you can.
I thought that might happen.
When you referred to other Deputy Minister colleagues, I know that yesterday as well you heard from colleagues from the Department of Finance.
And so another big preoccupation as we were kind of starting up our work at the end of January was we were in the beginnings of budget preparation for Budget 2022.
So the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, myself, the Deputy Minister of Finance and our teams, both the political teams and the public service teams were thinking our way through.
What was going to be the economic strategy for the country at a time when we had hoped to be through the worst of the economic impacts of COVID.
And frankly, we weren't as a result of the fact that we were kind of facing another wave.
So that was also kind of a contextual factor that I think might be helpful and relevant as we get later on into the discussion.
Yeah, that's fair enough.
I think that will probably arise.
So I'll just set the...
Paraphrasing very briefly the kinds of evidence that we've heard from your colleagues over the first week or two, let's put it that way, after the convoy arrived.
So the convoy arrived.
It was not expected to stay as long as it did.
It did stay.
At that point, the federal government was meeting to try and understand what was going on.
There were regular DMOCs happening.
And I'll just ask then, actually, were either of you in attendance at the DMOCs that were happening?
Starting on the 9th?
Yes.
Starting on the 9th there.
Okay.
Which is why we're soon going to be skipping to the 9th.
I don't know that I attended every DMOC.
I attended some of them.
So Deputy Minister Operational Committee for the acronyms.
I know you've been through them all now.
You're an expert, actually, I've heard.
But I don't think I was at all of them.
I would have...
Those were chaired by the National Security Intelligence Advisor.
I would have been at some key ones where I thought I either needed to give direction or to hear, particularly at points in time, but I wasn't involved in the day-to-day.
Okay.
My first DMOC was, like Madame de Royce, the 9th of February.
The 9th.
Okay.
So we're sort of at all roads lead to the 9th here.
So we heard about the three SSE.
Committee meetings that were at, Ms. Bogdan took us through those, February 3rd, February 6th, February 8th, and we more or less left it off.
At the end of the day, on the 8th, it was decided, essentially, that maybe it's time for the federal government to consider more intervention in the situation.
Would that be fair to say?
I would say that I was at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Safety, Security and Emergencies, the SSE Committee, on the Sunday.
That's the only one of the three meetings that you described that I was at.
So I was trying to get a sense.
That was at the end of weekend two, trying to get a sense from ministers and from my colleagues, kind of what the situation was and what the sense was about how this was all going.
I got a readout, a debrief, from the Cabinet Committee meeting on the 8th of February from my colleagues who were there.
And it was certainly clear to me that the level of concern, anxiety, and the situation itself was escalating.
And so that was the reason I chose to go to the DMOC meeting on the 9th and to hear out my colleagues in terms of and to give direction at that point in time.
And it was through the course of that day listening to them.
And other meetings that took place during that day, I'm happy to tell you about, if you'd like, that I formed the view as we went into the 10th that it was time for me to provide the advice for the Prime Minister to decide as to whether or not he wanted to convene an incident response group meeting.
Okay.
We're definitely going to come to that.
Just before we do, I actually want to take you back to the 8th before we get to the 9th.
mr clerk can you can you pull up pb nsc can four zeros eight zero seven three This is a document you may not have seen before, so I'll just explain to you what it is.
These are the notes of Deputy Commissioner Mike Dupain.
And if we scroll down, Mr. Clerk, to page 41. You'll see a notation there.
So these are Mr. Duhain's notes from Deputy Commissioner Duhain for, I believe it's the 8th, could be the 9th, but it looks like it's the 8th.
And you'll see 8 a.m. there, 7 a.m. in office, 8 a.m., call with clerk.
Flesh out the financial, something financial compensation.
I'm not sure what that says.
Employee business, maybe?
Then public safety feels organized.
Ambassador Bridge stretches OPP, incremental success OPS, working in incremental way.
And then we just scroll down a little bit more to what I'm actually looking for.
Clerk, we need to take this over.
Do they know what this means?
So I understand that during this time you were having regular calls with various colleagues within the federal government.
Can you explain to us, do you recall this conversation?
So, I don't know whether Michel Duhem himself was at the DMOC meeting.
I was not speaking to RCMP colleagues or a broad selection of colleagues working in the National Security and Intelligence Public Safety space on the 8th.
That really started on the morning of the 9th for me after I heard the readout.
So, I think maybe the date.
If I'm not wrong.
Maybe it's the 9th?
I think it might be the 9th.
Okay.
I certainly was at a meeting at 9 o 'clock in the morning.
Sorry, 8 o 'clock in the morning on the 9th, which was a DMOC.
So it's not unreasonable to think that the commissioner of the RCMP, either she was there and brought Mr. Duhaime with her, or he was attending for her.
Either one of those two things is possible.
So these are probably Mr. Duhaime's notes from the DMOC call.
I never had a one-on-one call with...
Okay.
So it would have been in the context of a broader meeting and it looks like from what you have read that if PS is in fact the public safety that was others there as well.
Let's talk about what the meeting was about.
So having heard the readout from the SSE meeting on the 8th, I should add as well there was a debate in the House of Commons on the 7th.
of February, if I'm not wrong, on the convoy situation.
Parliamentarians, House of Commons, members of Parliament can trigger a debate if they wish, and I gather the Speaker sent it to that, and so there was a debate.
So there was rising levels of concern, that was obvious, and we heard this from the SSE Committee as well, and so I went to the DMOC meeting, which was taking place at 8 o 'clock in the morning on the 9th, and my purpose there was really to...
Do a couple of things.
I was there to make sure that I was hearing firsthand from deputy ministers and agency heads who have responsibilities in this area, who had been meeting with the National Security Intelligence Advisor.
Through the days previous to that, on their assessment of the situation.
And I wanted to provide my direction to them as the senior public servants, that in my view, this was a very serious situation, that we had rising levels of questions from federal ministers who were asking, how is this going to end?
What can we do?
And so my commentary at the meeting, I think I was at two DMOCs on this day, as a matter of fact.
Certainly at the first meeting in the morning, my objective, my intention was to try to say to my Deputy Minister colleagues, we have to leave no stone unturned.
We have to make sure that we are looking at every power.
Duty, every authority we have, every resource we have, to make sure we are bringing the full power of the federal government and its resources to try to help those who are frontline responsible to manage this situation.
I'm not an expert in any of these domains.
I would be conveying, like, we've got to get on this, and we've got to use, like, this.
I think you heard the expression this morning, you know, this is an all-hands-on-deck.
I don't know why we use naval references, but all hands on deck situation.
And I would have been saying all hands on deck, no idea too crazy.
Let's look at absolutely everything.
Let's look at every law we have, every resource we have.
And including in that, what would it mean?
You know, how does law enforcement actually, like, how do the structures work?
Who's responsible for what?
You know, if it gets beyond the capability of one particular, like a local police force, like the Ottawa Police Service or the RCMP acting in its local capacity, say, in Coutts, you know, what happens then?
Where does it go from there?
Who takes over from that?
How does that all work?
How does the jurisdiction work?
Where do the responsibilities work?
So my direction to the sense that there was any direction was to let's get on this work.
We need to get this work done.
I think you heard a lot from Ms. Bogdan this morning about what she was doing the whole day long to try and collect up this information.
But that would have been my intention.
I didn't tell people what to do.
I was asking, we've got to get this work done.
Okay, so if I understand correctly, when you say...
What Mr. Duhame writes down here is we need to take this over.
Do they know what this means?
You're talking in a general sense about it's time for some federal intervention in this.
Let's talk about what that might look like or what the options are.
I'm not sure I had reached the conclusion it was time for some federal action.
It was certainly the case.
It was time to consider, to be ready to respond.
I think the other thing is, cast your mind back to...
Kind of the public environment at that point in time.
This was all happening in Ottawa.
A lot of it on Wellington Street.
You're looking at the coverage in the media.
You were seeing the parliament buildings behind it.
So there was a lot of questions being asked of federal ministers.
What are you doing?
And so certainly we had the sense coming out of the meeting on the 8th.
They were impatient to know what they could do.
And that was my...
That was my direction to the town at this meeting, is go and figure this out.
What can we do?
Be as creative as you can.
Really think outside the box.
Okay.
And we saw this morning...
Mr. Clark, you can take those notes, Dan.
Thank you.
We saw this morning that Ms. Bogdan put together sort of a list that pretty much wrapped up a lot of the discussions that had been had over the previous two weeks about...
Strategic enforcement strategies, financial options, etc., etc.
That's something she sent off a draft of at some point on the 9th, and then I think at 3 o 'clock in the morning on the 10th.
So we've looked at that, and you mentioned, I'm just going to take you back to your conclusion before, that at some point in all of this, you formed the conclusion or gave the advice to the Prime Minister that it was time to convene an incident response group.
So perhaps I can say, in addition to that meeting with deputies, there was another meeting with deputies later in the day.
I think you'll hear from...
The Prime Minister, excuse me, and ministers next week.
But in addition to what the public service was doing, and outside of these official kind of cabinet committee meetings and daily ministerial briefings, the Prime Minister was also speaking to his ministers, either one at a time or in small groups, in more informal conversations, getting his own direct kind of what's happening, brief me on this, talking to his own team.
He'd been talking to mayors, he'd been talking to other stakeholders.
And through the day on the 9th, as he was talking to his ministers, a number of which of those interactions I was party to, I'm not always, but a number of those certainly conversations with the Minister of Public Safety, Minister Mendicino, and the Minister of Emergency Management.
Fairness Management?
I can never remember.
Minister Blair.
Thank you.
It felt to me like we were moving to a place that we had to be ready in case ministers and the Prime Minister actually wanted to look at what our options are to be able to act.
And so as the day turned over from 9 to 10, I certainly formed the view that I believed it was time for the Prime Minister.
To convene the incident response group.
There was another informal call amongst Prime Minister and Ministers that morning and after that I gave my advice and the Prime Minister accepted it and chose to have a meeting, an in-person meeting, which was unusual at the time because of course we were still working remotely but given the stakes of what we were talking about and the...
The nature of the situation we were dealing with, my advice was I thought it would be important to have an in-person meeting, and we did that at an off-site.
Okay.
Maybe I should have asked you this, or to put it this way to begin with, but to the extent you can, can you walk us through the chronology then of what happened on the 9th and how we got to the 10th?
I guess I can try.
Certainly what I saw, the parts that I would be part of, I was part of a deputy's minister's meeting in the morning.
I would have had various conversations.
Either individually or in small groups with Privy Council office officials or other deputy ministers and senior officials through the course of the day.
I may have spoken to, I can't remember exactly, the Prime Minister's office.
I certainly was part of a meeting that the Prime Minister had, as I said, with Ministers Mendicino and Blair.
As well as other members of the PCO and the Prime Minister's office, and I believe their staff.
I don't know whether there were any other senior officials from outside of PCO in attendance.
There was a second meeting of the Deputy Minister's Operational Committee on the 9th.
When I came to work, broke it up for work on the 10th, one of the first things I had was...
Email from Ms. Bogdan with the results of her overnight work.
Not a practice we like to encourage in the PCO, but very dedicated.
And came up with, kind of pulled together everything.
Basically, I had all the product of the work that I had tasked on the 9th, and we were on the morning of the 10th.
It was another informal conversation, and then there was an IRG in the afternoon.
Okay.
And can you tell us, so the Prime Minister accepted your advice to convene the IRG and then did so?
Can you tell us about that first IRG meeting?
And I'll just, oh, sorry, was there something to add?
Did you want to add something, Madame Douai?
Well, maybe in the floor, we can talk about that.
I think also the Prime Minister had a call with Premier Ford on the 9th.
I can't remember whether it was the 9th or the 10th.
I'm sorry.
I will defer to Madame Douai's memory on this one.
So maybe to check that and maybe just to go back to the takeover conversation.
I think the clerk talked a little bit about the fact that, you know, a lot of images from, you know, the parliament, but it was also an international bridge.
It was also port of entries.
It was also the federal vaccine mandate.
So all the indicators.
The federal government is owning the situation.
And yet, on the ground, RCMP, for example, didn't have jurisdiction on Wellington Street.
We don't have jurisdiction on routes that brings you to the bridge.
So it feels that we owned it publicly, but we didn't have jurisdiction to address the situation.
So asking ourselves, What can we do to have jurisdiction and really to support on top of, you know, supporting municipalities, supporting provinces?
But that was also the type of questions we were asking ourselves.
We knew that there had been a lot of conversations going on between our colleagues in other departments, transport, public safety, RCMP.
CBSA with their provincial territorial counterparts, in some cases with local and municipal counterparts.
There have been meetings going on with the city officials in Ottawa all around to try and understand the situation.
There was this, what could we do?
That was the, I mean, I think as we were going into now the third weekend, we were really feeling...
Kind of a crescendo, escalation.
Although the situation changed from day to day and the sites changed from day to day.
That's fair.
And yet we've heard a lot of evidence this week about exactly that, sort of what the conversations that have been going on between counterparts in various levels of government, etc.
So we're pretty well caught up on that.
And that then takes us to the February 10th IRG.
And we've heard that...
From Ms. Bogdan, what started off on her February 19th email as Plan A and Plan B, existing authorities or new authorities of some sort, then evolved into Track 1 and Track 2 in the IRG tracker.
So can you just take us through that a little bit?
What was discussed, to the extent that you can say, at the...
The February 10th IRG, how that evolved into the IRG tracker that we then see in the February 12th IRG.
And at that point, we'll ask the clerk to bring that up so you can take us through it.
Okay.
Would it be helpful for me to just, I don't know whether you talked about what the incident response group is with Ms. Bogdan this morning.
Always helpful to have a reminder.
Okay, I'm happy to do that.
So the Incident Response Group is a committee of cabinet.
It is usually chaired by the Prime Minister, although it can happen without the Prime Minister.
These ones did not.
They were all chaired by the Prime Minister.
They include a collection of ministers that are necessary to deal with either a national crisis, an emergency that could happen in Canada, could happen outside of Canada, but affect either Canadian interests or Canadians.
And so I think you did hear testimony this morning, perhaps from Mr. Hutchison, that...
The IRGs have been used, for example, with wildfires in British Columbia for dealing with Hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada.
It was also used subsequently to deal with the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and dealing with Canadian interests and Canadians as a result of that.
It could be a crisis that emerges domestically that affects Canada or a Canadian crisis.
It is unlike other cabinet committees, and I think you did talk about this a bit this morning with Ms. Bogdan, the structure of cabinet is the decision-making structure.
Cabinet committees make recommendations which are ultimately ratified by cabinet.
So it's kind of how the work gets divvied up.
Amongst cabinet ministers, because there's a lot of decisions that get taken, kind of more thorough deliberation, and then they come to cabinet for final deliberation and decision-making.
The incident response group, the IRG, is unlike those other cabinet committees.
Because it is about the management of a crisis or an emergency, it has decision-making powers with the prime minister and the chair.
Okay, that's helpful.
So it's such a long explanation now I've forgotten your question.
So have I. No, no, that's helpful.
Okay, so what kinds of, actually, I just want to explore that a little bit.
What kinds of decisions can the IRG take?
Oh, the IRG can make decisions like, okay, we think we need to ask a minister to do something, to make a telephone call, to go on a visit.
It could be we need to make sure that these resources are actually being allocated to a particular situation.
It could be tasking further work, like going away and looking at whether there's a regulatory authority that needs to be triggered.
So it's anything to do with federal jurisdiction, to use a good term.
Anything that's in federal jurisdiction, but an existing power, an authority, a resource that could be deployed either two.
Help to resolve the situation or to deal with a Canadian in need.
But the IRG wouldn't have had the power, for instance, to invoke the Emergencies Act?
The only ability to invoke the Emergencies Act, the decision-maker there, is the Governor and Council.
So that's the Prime Minister and Cabinet with the approval of the Governor General.
And then, of course, there was an approval process requiring a vote by Parliament, and I'm sure we'll get into that.
Yeah, we will.
Okay, I just wanted to clarify that right now.
Okay, so then can we pull up, Mr. Clerk, ssm.nsc.can60214.
This reminds me of your question, actually.
What was the question?
What did we do at the IRG on the 10th of February, I think?
Apparently, you came up with a lot of what ended up in the IRG tracker on the 12th.
That's the truth, yeah.
we just flip down please mr clark to where the tracker starts There we go.
Okay, so Ms. Charette or Ms. Glenn, can I ask you to explain sort of what is going on under Track 1 and then Track 2 of the IRG tracker?
So I'll start, perhaps, and then you can add if you want, Madame.
This goes back to the kind of track one, track two, goes back to the conclusions of the IRG meeting on the 10th of February, where the Prime Minister heard from a variety of senior officials on what the situation was, their kind of overview of the situation, the threat and risk assessment from the NSIA, from agency heads.
Then he turned to his ministers for their view of the situation, who they'd been speaking to, what was happening, what they thought needed to be done.
And coming out of the meeting on the 10th, in the way the conclusions of the meeting and the task in coming at that meeting was, there was two tracks of work to be done.
Track one was...
Everything that could be done within existing authorities, existing jurisdiction, although it may take new resources to do those things.
What's everything that we could do within the existing set of powers, duties, and functions under the law?
And then track two was, are there new instruments that we might need?
Are there new legal authorities that we might need?
So this looks to me like what we would have tabled.
I think this is true.
This is what we would have tabled as a supporting document and input to the deliberations of the IRG as the results of the work that had been done since the meeting on the 10th.
And so it goes item by item and it describes, well, what were we doing under item one?
And a bit more description of it.
Who was the lead on that?
If any supporting departments?
What the status of it was?
If there were any documents?
And if you know the number three, you'll see that there are some supporting documents and any other notes.
So we were able to, on an ongoing basis, be in a position to provide ministers with an update on all the work that was underway across all the departments across both Track 1 and Track 2. Okay, that's perfect.
Maybe just one thing to add, and I think Jackie covered that a little bit this morning, but those options or suggestions or work of area of work, sorry, were a different stage of their analysis.
You know, some were at the really early stage and then we found out that You know, for example, blocking the cell towers.
I think you see that elsewhere in the IRG.
That was something that we looked at, was just not feasible.
We stopped that initiative.
So we look at many things, but here you don't really see how in-depth...
Okay, so it's not clear from looking at this document what stage the analysis is for these various steps.
It can be an idea or it can be something that is very fruitful.
Yeah, and they're all of different sizes.
I mean, establish a clear leadership table.
That's a relatively simple thing to do.
And you see daily DMOC schedules.
Some of the others are a lot more complex, complicated, and involve a lot more parties to do.
Mr. Kroker, if we can scroll down a little bit, see what else is on this.
Okay, we see the famous action.
The tow truck strategy.
We've heard a lot about tow trucks.
We've heard a lot about tow trucks.
More about tow trucks than we ever thought we'd know.
We also see there, and I'll just get you to comment on this briefly because we did canvass it with Ms. Thomas, but...
Item number four there says, identify immediate measures to close the intelligence gap.
Is there anything you'd like to, well, I suppose you didn't necessarily hear all of the NSIA's evidence, but she spoke at some length of the social media intelligence gap and the difficulty of the federal government in...
Collecting the kind of information that may have been of assistance in this situation to it.
Is that something that you personally observed as well?
Would that apply to you as well?
I would say that, again, context matters here.
12th of February, as this tracker was being put together, we had a situation that was moving very quickly.
There was a lot of inputs of information.
We had very organized ways to get information through some of the agencies, and a lot of that fed in through the National Security Intelligence Advisor, through organizations like the Integrated Threat Assessment Center, which operates as part of CSIS.
What it felt to us at the time, and I think as the time went on, we both found out some things that told us we didn't have a gap.
Some people knew things, it's just we didn't have necessarily a way of sharing all the information.
So I would say, as you read here, the intelligence gap, and it goes on to specify open source, non-criminal, non-terrorist.
So we thought we had, we knew law enforcement was collecting up intelligence, wasn't necessarily sharing it.
With us, nor necessarily should they have, because it was operational information.
Terrorists, that would have been specific agencies that were collecting that.
But it felt to us when it came to open source and that there were things happening, particularly in the online space and through earned media, that perhaps we didn't really have a full 360-degree view on.
And I would comment here that one of my observations is that on the public service side, we don't tend to be as skilled and as literate.
I'm making a huge generalization here, but stick with me.
We don't tend to be as skilled or as literate in the use of social media as the team that supports ministers and the prime minister on the political side.
That's very much kind of in their wheel.
And so even going back before convoys and back to kind of through the election and afterwards, I would find myself on occasion hearing the Prime Minister's office staff, Ms. Telford and others, talking about things that they were seeing on social media that I just...
I wasn't seeing and I wasn't necessarily hearing or picking up.
Those wouldn't have been the same places I would get information.
They would be the normal kind of inputs that I would receive.
And so as we sat, and this is one of the interesting things about the incident response group, unlike other cabinet committees, ministers, the prime minister at the table, but senior officials are also at the table, able to participate in the conversation.
Normally in cabinet or cabinet committees, officials are there.
And we're called on to speak.
We don't kind of participate in the conversation.
But given the situation we were faced with, everybody was kind of trying to workshop this together.
What could we do?
And it became clear in the conversation, which is why you see this in the tracker, that there were There was things happening in the open source, in the social media environment that we just didn't have a very good handle on.
And so that was one of the things, like, how could we close that gap?
How could we figure that out better?
And I think you see products later that we have attempted to actually try to figure this out.
Okay, thanks.
That's helpful.
Now, if we can just scroll down, Mr. Clerk, to track two.
I think we can sort of put track one away.
We've heard quite a bit about what was going on under track one.
Track two.
You'll see that the first sort of item there is assessing utility of other tools that do not require invoking the Emergencies Act, e.g.
the National Defence Act.
Now, I appreciate that the rest of that is solicitor-client privilege redacted, but is it fair to say that there were options other than the Emergencies Act being considered in some ways?
Yes, we were looking at standalone legislation, we were looking at authorities under other legislation, standalone legislation that Could have been done in the financial area, I think, for example.
You may have heard some of that yesterday from the Department of Finance, Mr. Sabia, and the Department of Finance colleagues, or the Emergency Act, which is really a legislation of last resort.
So were there other things that could be done, other legislative steps that could have been taken?
But I'd say that we were trying to do this, not so much inventing legislation, but trying to understand the nature of the gaps.
And therefore, what would be the solutions to try to fill those gaps, as opposed to kind of think of, you know, new legislative solutions on the spot.
Okay, so the gaps drove the solution.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
We can give you maybe another example.
I'm sure you have seen in our documents that at some point we were looking at the definition of trade corridor.
Yes.
So that's one of the things we were looking at.
Do we have regulation powers somewhere where we can come and define what is a trading corridor and then have jurisdiction and trying to do something?
So those were the type of things we were looking at.
And I think it was found that there was nothing available, is that right, that could allow sort of the designation of a trade corridor?
In Windsor, you know, we had Bridges and Tunnels Act allowed us to actually control or have jurisdiction over the bridge, but the plaza, the roads going into it, well, that's a bit more complex of a story.
So was there a way to look at that piece of critical infrastructure and say, okay, this whole trade corridor, the roads leading into it, the plaza?
Is there a way for us to get jurisdiction over that so that we could manage?
It wasn't just the blockade, as you recall.
The film footage on this is fabulous in a not very good way.
But it shows you just like it wasn't just the bridge, right?
There was 10 kilometers, sorry, of trucks backed way up.
So the problem wasn't just what was happening on the bridge.
It was the entire trade corridor.
And the Ambassador Bridge is a pretty important piece of our trade infrastructure.
Okay.
Sorry, I'm trying to figure out how to bring us to the next topic without going too far into it.
At the end of the February 12th IRG, so we'll put away this document for now.
That sort of brings us to what is a critical time in the chronology of all of what was transpiring, February 13th.
And what I'd like you to do, if you can, is walk us through.
I understand that was a very packed day.
DMOC, IRG, cabinet, maybe another DMOC somewhere in there.
How did you get from...
Just walk us through the day.
But before we go there, a slight parenthesis, which is...
The Emergencies Act appears on the IRG tracker, and it sort of appears out of nowhere when you look at the documents.
But I understand from our interview that the Emergencies Act was something that had sort of been in the background of the consciousness of the federal government since the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020.
So I wonder if you could give us a little bit of that background before we get into the chronology of what happened on February 13th.
So maybe we'll do this as a tag team because Madame Doroyan was there in March of 2020 and I wasn't.
And then when I could kind of pick it back up in February 2022.
So go back to 2020 with COVID and maybe we will come to that later.
But we did some talk about the Emergency Act and whether or not the conditions were there to trigger.
The Emergency Act for health purposes and not for public order purposes, of course.
And this is where I think, and I was at Justice at that time, we developed.
A little bit better understanding of the Act, an Act that has never been used since its adoption in 1988.
So we developed a little bit better understanding on how it operates, what is the oversight mechanisms, the House, the Joint Committee inquiry, the consultation with the PT, so all the necessary steps.
To invoke.
So this is where I think we develop a little bit more agility with the act.
But coming back to the convoy, from my perspective, the real first time where we start thinking about that was really after the DMOC of February 9. When, you know, as a group, we said we need to look at all potential options.
And this is why we start looking at what kind of tools the Emergency Act can give us.
Are we, you know, meeting the thresholds of the Emergency Act?
So I really think that, for me...
Anyway, it was really on February 9th that we started to seriously look at whether or not it was an option.
So I was right in starting this examination with February 9th.
Would you agree with that?
I would certainly defer to...
Not with what I said, with what Madame Duran said.
Maybe both.
I would defer to Madame Duran on the early stages of the public health, but certainly...
As it came to be February the 9th and we were looking at what could we do, the potential of the Emergency Act, which I'll underline had not been used since 1988, also contributed to, when I thought about my advice to the Prime Minister, ministers were actually going to consider options put before them by officials, including the possibility of treating the Emergency Act that required an incident response group.
I think you've been hearing in the testimony, this is kind of a careful build-up of all the deliberations, but when we're starting to talk about this as one of the potentials, I thought that the Prime Minister and Ministers needed to be sitting in a structured incident response group to understand, to be briefed on, and to deliberate on that serious a matter.
I think that's helpful.
So now I'll just ask you again to walk us through the chronology of the 13th of February.
Okay.
So the chronology of the 13th.
So there was a lot going on.
It was a Sunday.
It was a Sunday.
That's right.
Also day 17 at the end of the third weekend.
I think you've heard testimony from other colleagues and others about...
Kind of what was going on in terms of the protests, what was happening at...
We had all been, when we weren't working and on calls, we'd been watching the law enforcement action that had been taking place in Windsor, for example.
We were watching what was happening in Ottawa on our television screens, but there were calls and meetings that took place that day, which are the focus, I believe, of your question.
I don't recall myself participating in a DMOC.
I may have.
I just can't remember, to be honest with you.
My focus was really on getting ready for the IRG meeting.
At that point, just given the escalation that had taken place, the fact that we were coming to the end of the third weekend.
I think the IRG was in the afternoon on the 13th, if I recall correctly.
So we were getting ready for that, making sure the materials were ready and so on, collecting up all of the latest inputs.
We were at the end of the third weekend.
Ottawa was still a significant site of what I think was generally considered at that point to be an illegal protest.
Make no mistake, there were people who were there for a lawful protest, but at that point, the totality of the situation in Ottawa was an illegal protest and a legal blockade.
And what was going on in Windsor, and we saw the...
The size of the effort that was required to bring Windsor under control and the duration of the effort that was required, that took days to de-escalate and to eliminate, to get to a point where that situation was settled in the port.
And the port of entry was able to open, but we didn't know how long that was going to be sustained.
So all to say, it was a serious set of circumstances.
Other ports of entry were kind of on and off.
The situation was quite volatile.
So at any point in time, there were lots of different inputs.
We went into the incident response group in the afternoon of the 13th of February.
Through conversations that we had had internally, the proposed agenda for the IRG was a bit different than it was on the 10th of the 12th.
And if you look carefully at it, you'll see that we have switched the order of items.
The first item is not what you would normally expect as a situational overview and update.
Ministers and the Prime Minister had been meeting on the 12th.
They'd been meeting on the 10th.
They'd been getting this constant feed of information.
So the advice of the Prime Minister was to turn at that point immediately to, given we were at the end of the third weekend, we still had a very challenging and I believe the conclusions we had were a dangerous situation, complex, volatile situation.
What were the options?
What were the decisions available to ministers?
And then after a long series of deliberations, then there was, is there anything new to add?
And so an upside-down flip of the traditional agenda.
And the conclusion coming out of that incident response group was the Prime Minister was convening the Cabinet.
On the evening of the 13th of February, a virtual cabinet call.
Luckily, we had that secure video capacity to do that, to consult with his cabinet on the overall response.
And at that point, I think I'm allowed to say, of course, including the invocation of the Emergency Act as one of the decisions, the potential decisions to be considered by cabinet.
Okay, so the outcome of the IRG in the afternoon was it's time to convene cabinet to consider options, including potentially invoking the Emergencies Act.
That's correct.
Okay, and then that evening is when that cabinet meeting took place.
That's correct.
There's a few questions we want to ask you about what information Cabinet had at hand at the end of that day, if I can put it that way.
So there's some specific questions, and we'll just go through them one at a time.
They're items that have come up in the last two weeks of hearings or the last maybe more than two weeks of hearings.
mr clerk can you pull up ops three zeros fourteen five uh six six So to situate you a little bit while this is coming up, this is about the law enforcement plan in the City of Ottawa.
So the Commission's heard a lot of evidence about the plan for resolving the Ottawa situation or lack thereof.
From the moment the convoy arrived to where we are in time right now, which is around February 13th.
And the question we have, if you can just scroll down, Mr. Clerk, to where you see Lucky did not get Prime Minister.
It's on page two.
There we go.
Lucky, so that would be Commissioner Lucky, did not.
And these are notes, by the way, I think on the 14th.
Is that correct?
Okay, so this is a meeting between Commissioner Luckey, Commissioner Karik, and what it says there is, Luckey did not get Prime Minister briefed on the plan.
Prime Minister will be enacting the Emergencies Act, advised her legal to review what the measures are, what's the process?
Can you just tell me who's written this or who's supposedly speaking at this?
Like, what's at the top of that?
Sure.
Ten o 'clock meeting with Commissioners Karik and Commissioners Lucky.
My guess is that these are scribe notes.
From Chief Slowly or from?
OPS.
So we got the document from the Ottawa Police Service.
Thank you.
So OPS meeting with the OPP Commissioner and the RCMP Commissioner.
That's right.
It looks like.
Okay.
Thank you.
So the statement there is, lucky to not get Prime Minister briefed on the plan.
Prime Minister will be enacting the Emergencies Act and then advise her legal to review what the measures are, what's the process.
So the question we have for you is, coming out of the 13th of February between the IRG and the Cabinet, Was the Prime Minister, was Cabinet slash the Prime Minister briefed on the state of the plan for law enforcement in Ottawa, specifically that there was a plan coming together?
So, I wasn't at this meeting.
I don't know how accurate these notes are.
And I will tell you for a fact that one of the things that's written here is not accurate because at 10 o 'clock in the morning on the 14th, no decision had been taken about enacting.
The Emergency Measures Act, which is not the name of the legislation anyways.
So, with that out of the way, what happened at the IRG and the Cabinet meeting in terms of the materials, the inputs to the deliberations before the Prime Minister and Cabinet, I think is the essence of your question.
And so, I would differentiate between how IRGs work and Cabinet.
I think I said this a bit earlier.
An IRG meeting, it's really...
Everybody around the table trying to provide a contribution with the Prime Minister and the Chair, kind of deciding who gets to speak what and running the meeting, as you would expect.
And so that's a bit more of an opportunity for senior officials, including the RCMP Commissioner, to contribute.
Whereas Cabinet is a...
It's a different kind of a meeting.
It's a more structured, formal meeting.
The Prime Minister runs it.
It's tradition that ministers speak and officials only speak if they're called on by the Prime Minister.
So a couple of things about this.
Commissioner Luckey was a participant in the IRG and she was an attendee, I would say, at Cabinet.
She was a participant as I was a participant at the IRG.
I think it's fair to say on the evening of the 13th, when these two meetings took place, that we had been hearing various versions of the evolution of a plan for the situation in Ottawa, as we had been hearing about law enforcement at a very high level.
Not at a detailed tactical or operational level, about the planning around what to do about Coutts, what to do about the situation at Emerson, what to do about the situation at Windsor.
And so we've been hearing about the evolution of the Ottawa plan.
We've been hearing about the conversation around the setting up of...
Integrated command center so that RCMP and OPP resources along with OPS resources could be organized and share information and so on.
But we'd heard a lot.
We'd heard often about a plan.
What we hadn't seen at the end of the third weekend was anything happening on the plan.
And so the plan, which there had been various conversations about the Ottawa plan.
There was no, to the best of my recollection, Commissioner did not speak in detail at the IRG about the operational plan, but there were conversations about the fact that police were working together to have a plan to resolve the situation in Ottawa as you would expect them to.
We had a horrific situation in Ottawa going on.
You would have expected law enforcement at all levels were trying to figure out what to do about it.
When we came to Cabinet, as I said, it's a different structure.
The National Security and Intelligence Advisor provided an integrated brief to the Cabinet, which takes as inputs information that is provided through the colleagues who would be represented, for example, on the DMOC.
And that would include the information that would have been fed in by the RCMP.
By Transport, by CBSA, by CSIS, by PCO, by Global Affairs across, again, and then the National Security Intelligence Advisor would provide that integrated view.
The RCMP Commissioner, as any agency head or deputy minister, has a minister who's also a member of the cabinet, and we have obligations as deputies to make sure when our ministers are going to a cabinet meeting, they're briefed and they have our perspectives.
And so...
My expectation would have been she would have also been briefing her minister, Minister Mendicino, if she had things that she thought were relevant to the conversation.
And so there was no explicit conversation either at the IRG, to the best of my memory, in detail about the plan, but there had been many conversations leading up to that, as well as...
At the Cabinet meeting would have been the integrated view from the National Security Advisor, which has been the practice, I would say, without getting beyond the Cabinet confidence waiver that you have from the Prime Minister.
It's fair to say that that has been the practice on other issues on which the Cabinet has been confronted.
The situation in Ukraine, for example, the NSIA.
The National Security Intelligence Advisor provides an integrated brief to the cabinet, pulling together all the information, which is part of its time management, and one integrated brief.
I guess the last thing I would say is that Commissioner Luckey, as the head of the RCMP, I recognized as the Clerk of the Privy Council that as the person who is in charge of the RCMP,
there might be times when the RCMP Commissioner may have information that she did not want to provide in front of our large room of people, whether that's ministers or officials, for whatever reason, sensitive information.
I think it's part of my responsibility to make sure the RCMP Commissioner knows that if there's anything that she thinks that I need to know, that she has an open door to me, and also that if she thought the Prime Minister needed information, that I would facilitate that.
And I don't know whether there...
I don't think there's any case in which the RCMP Commissioner has reached out to me to provide information that I have not.
Had a chance to have that engagement with her.
So we'll come to the conversation about what would have changed, if anything, if we'd known about it.
In my view, just to give you the kind of the Coles Notes version of where we're going, it was one factor, one sight, one moment in a complex situation.
Okay, that's helpful.
And just sort of, if you may, summarize.
Cabinet's state of knowledge as to what was going on in Ottawa, it would have been at the end of the day on the 13th, there is some sort of plan being developed, but nothing particularly earth-shattering about what stage that plan was at.
I'm not sure I would say earth-shattering, but that there had been evolutions of the plan with law enforcement, with OPP and the RCMP working together with the OPS.
I didn't have a detailed level of...
Cabinet was not provided with any detailed level of knowledge about the contents of that plan, how it was going to work, when it was going to work.
Okay.
So no detailed knowledge about the timing of it or the intention at that point?
Or how or what the plan exactly was.
Okay.
So the second question I want to ask about is also to do with the RCMP.
pb.nsc.can40.
Please, Mr. Clerk.
So to situate you, this is an email.
From Commissioner Lucky to Mike Jones, Chief of Staff of the Minister of Public Safety.
The time stamp on it is the Greenwich Mean Time thing, so it's midnight minus five hours, so 7:47 shortly before the Cabinet meeting that took place, I think, at 8:00 or 8:30 on the evening of the 13th.
8:30, I believe.
Okay, and if we just scroll down.
So she's putting together what's called her EM list, emergency measures list.
And then if we scroll down to the very end of the email...
Can you back up for just one moment, please?
Yeah, of course.
Sorry, just to remember.
I want to remember something.
Okay, thank you.
Okay, we scroll down to the very end of it.
Nope, sorry.
Just there, Mr. Clerk.
This said...
I am of the view that we have not yet exhausted all available tools that are already available through the existing legislation.
And then she says there are instances where charges could be laid under existing authorities.
And then the Ontario Provincial Emergencies Act just enacted.
I think that had been enacted on the 11th.
We'll also help in providing additional deterrent tools to our existing toolbox.
My question for you is, was that something that was conveyed at either the IRG or, more importantly, the Cabinet meeting that evening, that the RCMP had flagged that in their view, in Commissioner Luckey's view, there were still available tools?
I think in the conversation around the management of the situation, including the invocation of the Emergency Act, it's fair to say that Cabinet was briefed that there were tools and authorities in...
Many organizations that had not been fully deployed, including in the RCMP.
Think about the situation facing law enforcement on this third weekend.
You know, they'd just been through the situation in the RCMP, along with OPP and Windsor Police Service, managing a significant situation in Windsor.
They had this very difficult situation in front of them in Ottawa.
RCMP was managing Coutts.
There was a lot on the plate of law enforcement.
Very difficult job at the best of times, and these were not the best of times and very difficult conditions.
And so our police said that there were existing authorities.
We knew that there were existing authorities that hadn't been fully used.
There were trucks parked on Wellington Street.
You don't get to park on Wellington Street.
So there were authorities that had not been fully deployed.
From municipal all the way through to criminal code, as the commissioner indicates here.
You would expect that the police were continuing to look at every available tool that they had to be able to deal with the situation.
And so I can tell you that, to the best of my memory and my recollection, Cabinet were informed that, yes, there were tools and authorities, track one.
To go back to the tracker, there were track one that hadn't been fully deployed, but the question was whether or not they were going to be adequate to be able to deal with the totality of the situation.
That, I think, was the matter before ministers.
Can I add something on this?
As the clerk said, yes, some tools were used unsuccessfully, unfortunately.
I haven't been tried, but the situation was still there.
At the same time, I think it's in a way reassuring that a commissioner, head of the biggest law enforcement agency, is still wanting to use her tools, still have confidence in her teens to do something.
Can you imagine if we have waited for the commissioner to say, I'm overwhelmed.
It's over.
I can't do that.
So we wouldn't have been in a situation of threat.
We would have been in a situation where the threat would have materialized.
That's helpful, and I think that will come up a little bit later on when we discuss the eventual decision that was made.
So, Ms. Charette, you pointed out that at the end of the 13th, no decision had been made, you said, to invoke the Emergencies Act.
That's correct.
The decision was for the Prime Minister to convene a First Minister's meetings to consult the leaders of the provinces and territories on the situation, to brief them, and to discuss with them the possible invocation of the Emergency Act.
Okay.
There are actually two more bits of information that I want to ask you about briefly, but I think they will go pretty quickly, and there may be others who take up these points as well.
But the first one is, I don't think I need a reference for this one, but was Cabinet aware that CSIS had assessed that there was no threat to the security of Canada under Section 2 of the CSIS Act coming out of the protests?
Make sure I've got this straight how I explain this.
Cabinet was aware that CSIS had not assessed a threat to the security of Canada necessary to trigger their authorities under the CSIS Act.
To the best of my knowledge, to this day, there was no CSIS investigation of the protest.
Which is what Section 2 of the CSIS Act is about.
It is about triggering CSIS to use their authorities.
They see a threat to national security by a person or a group that would cause them to seek a mandate to actually launch intelligence gathering activities.
Okay.
That was not the case.
Okay, and we'll come back to that in some detail.
Again, I just wanted to make sure that the fact that David Vigneault had expressed that view that you just articulated was before Cabinet.
The CSIS assessment and that legal assessment was before Cabinet.
Okay.
And then maybe just to add, the CSIS assessment in order...
To trigger powers under the CSIS Act.
So their assessment for the purpose of CSIS Act, not their assessment for the purpose of the Emergency Act.
Yes.
Okay, that's fair.
And we'll come to that.
And then the last piece of information is...
We'd heard from some of the deputy ministers and CSIS, I believe, and the RSCMP that there were concerns being expressed that invoking the Emergencies Act could make things worse, not better, in the sense that it could inflame tensions.
I believe one of the lines used by Deputy Minister Keenan was it could backfire.
It was either Deputy Minister Stewart or Deputy Minister Keenan.
Had that sort of hesitancy or reluctance been put before Cabinet?
I can tell you absolutely that that was put before Cabinet.
And that was discussed.
In all of these matters, it was a balance.
You know, when was the right time to act?
What was the right thing to do?
Was it too early?
Was it too late?
Was it too little?
Was it too much?
And so one of the things that Cabinet had to debate was, amongst all the actions to be taken, what was the possibility that there was going to be a reaction?
On the part of those who were engaged in the protest activity, who were not there for illegal purposes, who were not there for peaceful protest, who had other motives.
So, Cabinet very much had to be briefed, and they were briefed by, and they had access to the information from CSIS on this.
Okay, so that brings us to the end of the meeting, and as you say, a decision was made to convene a First Minister's meeting the following day.
How was that convened?
So, I believe there may have been other conversations that happened that night between the Prime Minister and his parliamentary caucus, but public service is not part of that.
So, there we go.
Sometime between the evening of the 6th and the morning of the 7th, my colleagues in the Intergovernmental Affairs Team and the Privy Council Office, which is led by Deputy Minister Michael Vandergrift, would have sent a message out to the offices of provincial and territorial leaders that the Prime Minister was convening a teleconference.
I think it was taking place at 10 o 'clock in the morning, which is a little bit early if you're in British Columbia, I suspect.
But the objective was, I'm not even sure that the subject matter was communicated.
I think it was an FPT conference call.
I don't actually remember whether that happened late in the night of the 13th or whether that happened in the morning of the 14th, but sometime between those things.
As well, I have come to understand, as a result of reading the institutional report of the Prime Minister's office, there was other conversations going on between the Prime Minister's office and the office of other premiers across the country.
So it could have been, but they got a heads-up earlier.
I don't know the answer to that.
But the official communication around convening this call happened sometime between.
When cabinet concluded on the 13th and 10 o 'clock the next morning.
I don't think it was a lot of notice, it's fair to say.
Okay.
And I saw, Madame Trouin, you were shaking your head.
So the subject matter was not conveyed to the premiers that evening.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
So the first minister's meeting was called, but the premiers weren't advised.
This is about potentially invoking the Federal Emergencies Act.
So that was not mentioned in the invite.
It's fair to say there had been a lot of FPT leaders meetings, first ministers meetings going on through COVID, an unprecedented, I would argue, number of FMM meetings that have been going on since the beginning of COVID.
But this was not of the same ilk.
Okay.
And you mentioned that there may have been some conversations happening at the political level that evening that we may get into next week when we hear from the ministers, may or may not.
We also did hear some evidence from Deputy Minister Stewart that he had a call with Deputy Solicitor General Di Tommaso the evening of the 13th, and it was mentioned on that call that the Emergencies Act was being considered.
To your knowledge, was there any other communication at the officials' level?
So to our knowledge, no.
I've checked that with Deputy Minister Michael Vandegrift.
And to our knowledge, no.
What I can add, though, is if you look at that Sunday, Minister Blair did a lot of media relation where he said everything was on the table, including the Emergency Act.
So, the reality is that provinces, when we started the conversation on the 14th, they were not surprised that the conversation was about consultation under the Emergency Act.
Okay.
So, that takes us right to the events of the 14th.
So, the first minister's meeting is convened at what time do you recall when it took place?
I believe it was 10 o 'clock in the morning.
Okay.
We'll hear some detail when I get to the next part about what occurred at that meeting, but maybe I'll just ask you to walk us through the chronology of what happened on the 14th from your recollection.
Okay, another action-packed day.
So my notes remind me that there was the First Minister's meeting, there was an incident response group meeting again on the 14th.
The Privy Council Office was busy working following the First Minister's meeting to pull together a decision note for the Prime Minister in terms of whether or not to actually proceed to invoke the Emergency Act.
That all culminated kind of mid-afternoon, sometime after 3 o 'clock.
So collecting up inputs to be able to pull that together.
And then the Prime Minister and I believe other ministers together made a public announcement that they were proceeding to invoke the Emergency Act.
Meanwhile, kind of in the situation that was still evolving that morning, we had seen the RCMP taking action in Coutts.
And in Coutts, Alberta, the port of entry at the southern part of Alberta.
Coutts has never been so famous.
We had been advised by the Commissioner of the RCMP at IRG meetings previous to that, that without getting into detail, there was a reason to believe that there were weapons at Coutts.
After the First Minister's meeting and before my decision out to the Prime Minister were finalized, actually it might have been before the FMM, we were seeing the results of the law enforcement activity and what was happening at Coutts, and we were seeing the size of the stash of firearms and ammunition that were found in Coutts.
So, this was new and I would say relevant information in terms of just the nature of the threat that we were worried about in terms of the risk for serious violence.
So, FMM, IRG, the invocation decision, I signed the note to the Prime Minister representing the culmination of the advice to the Prime Minister.
That was communicated to him.
He responded to me and indicated that he was approving the invocation.
And the news conference was held.
The Prime Minister made that announcement publicly.
And at the same time, kind of behind the scenes, I think it's fair to say you would have seen kind of gears shifting.
The public service was trying to be ready without getting ahead of the Prime Minister, the Cabinet or the Governor and Council.
Because if we were going to, if the Governor and Council was going to choose to invoke the Emergency Act, there was a need to be able to move quickly.
So we were moving from, like, this is a matter of days, the 10th and the 12th, we were still in Track 1, Track 2, option this, option that.
Could we find tow truck drivers in the public service?
To, you know, the evening of the 13th, we might be invoking, the Governor and Council might be invoking the Emergency Act.
Who's going to do what?
What's it going to mean?
And so we were starting to shift those gears, well, not, as I said, getting ahead of the governor and council, so that if the decision was taken, all of the organizations would understand, okay, what would it mean for them?
And I think if you, as an example, if you look in the notes that we saw from Commissioner Lucky earlier, you will see that she was feeding into, okay, if the emergency act is invoked, here are some of the things that...
Could be done as a result of that.
So the public service behind the scenes, the agencies, the departments were trying to be ready in the event that it was invoked because we knew we wanted to be able to move quickly.
This was a crisis.
This was an urgent situation to be able to use whatever powers and authorities were going to be given through the Act and the orders pursuant to the invocation of the Act because we knew we were in a...
It was urgent.
We had time-limited, targeted powers here.
How do you move very quickly?
And so that was kind of going on behind the scenes.
So as the Prime Minister then made the public announcement, I would say the public service shifted to, okay, so now we're in the business of invoking the Act, and here's what we have to do to make that happen.
At the same time, we talked a little bit about the FMM.
I suspect you may want to come back to that.
I don't know.
Officials continue to talk to their provincial and territorial counterparts, including Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs with his colleagues.
Madame Goodwin, I think, participated in some of those calls.
It was happening by what I would describe as sector deputies kind of talking to their counterparts.
Here's what this is going to mean.
And to maintain that kind of open back and forth communication.
As the invocation was being announced and we were moving into kind of that new phase of with the Emergency Act.
Okay, so just to get the chronology straight then that day, First Minister's meeting happens.
I think you said an IRG happened, but is it possible that that's misremembering?
Yes, it's quite possible.
Okay.
Or miswriting down on my little calendar here.
It may be that there's no 14th.
I think we have gone from 13th pre-Cabinet to the 15th.
Because the 14th was decision day.
That's quite possible.
That's right.
We know that there was an IRG, or there was a cabinet meeting on the 15th, I believe.
That's correct.
Okay, so, first minister's meeting.
Following the first minister's meeting, you provide advice to the prime minister, and you advise, and we're going to look at this in some detail in a moment, you advise that the time has come to invoke the Emergencies Act.
Okay, and then the public announcement happens?
That's correct.
Sorry, I advise, the Prime Minister decides, and then the...
I forgot that step.
I'm kind of fussy about that stuff.
Okay, so can we pull up with the invocation memo, as it's known, ssm.nsc.can403224?
So the first question, Chahad, is when was this memo prepared?
I signed this memo sometime, as I said, after 3 o 'clock in the afternoon of the 14th.
I remember that because we had been...
There was some importance to try and get this moving once it looked like that's the direction things were going to be moving in.
We wanted to be able to move quickly.
And the Prime Minister, he will tell you his own story about this.
He was eager to make the decision and to move forward.
So we were moving on.
We were trying to move quickly.
The actual memorandum, which goes to many pages and has tabs associated with it, was being worked on and pieces were being pulled together, even as we came out of Cabinet the night of the 13th.
And through the day on the 14th, and pieces being added to it, the conclusions of the FMM, for example, there's a paragraph in this decision note.
This is the kind of decision note we would send to the Prime Minister.
I would send to the Prime Minister.
Capturing all of what we thought was necessary, pulling it all together in one spot, the culmination, as I would describe it, of the public service advice to the Prime Minister on the decision as to whether or not to invoke this legislation.
And so just around sometime after 3 o 'clock in the afternoon, I think there's a time stamp somewhere about when my office would have sent it to the Prime Minister.
And then we got a sign.
Which is how the Prime Minister indicates his decision.
We get an initial copy back with an okay.
And following that, the press conference started.
Okay.
And just for a moment, Mr. Clerk, can we pull up SSM.nsc.can403218?
There you go.
Okay, so this would be, this email is from someone at PMO, Jeremy Adler, to a host of people at PMO.
Please find attached a PM note for decision on invoking the Emergencies Act.
And so it's the invocation memo and the timestamp on it is 8.41 PM Greenwich Mean Time.
So that's minus 5. So that's 3.41 PM.
So Jeremy Adler was my chief of staff.
The address is pco-pmo.
So Jeremy, as part of his role at the time, was responsible for when a decision note was finalized, he would transmit that to the prime minister's office.
And then the kind of the catcher's mitt on the other side is a combination of officials in the prime minister's office, including his, I see there, the head of his executive office, somebody from the policy team.
Two members of the Office of the Chief of Staff and the head of the policy team.
Okay, so the important part, which I missed, is that it's actually from PCO.
Yes, from our Chief of Staff.
Your Chief of Staff to GMO.
That's right.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Clerk, you can take that down and pull up the invocation memo again, ssm.nsc.can403224.
We were operating virtually at this time today.
It would be a paper version of that note, which I would physically sign, and then my Chief of Staff would transmit that.
Okay.
So, there's a lot to unpack in the invocation memo.
I see it's three o 'clock.
I may have to borrow back those five minutes with interest that I gave up this morning, Mr. Commissioner.
It's too much trading going on.
Let's see how far we can get.
I think it's worthwhile spending the time, I think.
I think so, too.
So, the summary here.
The overview of this memo essentially gives a wrap-up of what happens next.
We call that the decision box.
The decision box.
Thank you.
The Emergencies Act came into force in 1988 and is meant to be used as a measure of last resort.
And then we'll see you go through the four different types of emergencies or that there are four different types of emergencies.
Go down a little bit.
All measures taken under the Act must be exercised in accordance with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, should be carefully circumscribed.
Then you go through a little bit of the history of the IRGs.
Scrolling down to the next page, this summarizes a bit of what has happened and who attended, and getting down to a slightly more pertinent part here.
While the demonstrations started out relatively peaceful, they have grown more complex and expanded into multiple locations in the country.
The movement is considered to be highly organized, well-financed, and is feeding a general sense of public unrest that could continue to escalate with severe risks to public security, economic stability, and international relations.
The economic impact to date is estimated at approximately 0.1% of Canada's GDP per week.
However, the impact on important trade corridors and the risk to the reputation of Canada as a stable, predictable and reliable location for investment may be jeopardized if this continues.
Just stopping there.
So that's essentially a summary of...
Much of the evidence we've heard coming from the deputy ministers this week before the commission.
One thing I want to ask you about, and it goes back to something that you mentioned a bit earlier, and I realize that when you say while the demonstrations started at relatively peaceful, they've grown more complex, you're talking about everything that was going on in the country.
That's correct.
That kind of totality.
A little earlier, you mentioned that at some point, the Ottawa protest in particular had become illegal.
I've become unlawful.
I'm wondering whether you can put a time stamp on that.
I am not a lawyer.
No, fair enough.
So I will give you my layman's interpretation.
But Wellington Street is a main thoroughfare.
It happens to be right outside my office.
Large trucks being parked.
On Wellington Street for protracted periods of time.
I think, you know, Ottawa is a...
I think it's been described as a protest city.
Protests happen in Ottawa.
It is the seat of government.
People come to Ottawa if they want to lawfully protest.
And so I think there was, you know, there was a...
We don't manage those kind of regular protests, lawful protests.
Those are local authorities that do that.
By the time...
We had gotten to Sunday night, and it was very clear the RCMP commissioner gave us advice at that point in time that the best of her information, at a minimum, the protesters weren't going anywhere that week, although numbers did go up and down a little bit.
Even if you could kind of ignore the fact that there were, from the minute, those trucks parked in the middle of Wellington Street, let's say they were allowed to do that, say that they were sent there.
Or allowed to park there.
There's a point at which the protracted existence or parking of those trucks and the activities going on on those trucks represented illegal activity.
And I think as we got to the end of the first weekend, a reasonable person would say that we had entered, we had gone beyond a legal protest and we were into an illegal protest.
Which isn't to say that everybody involved was...
Involved in illegal activity.
There was illegal activity, including things like bylaw violations.
There may still well have been people who were there to peacefully protest.
But there was a level of illegal activity going on in Ottawa.
I would say, layman's view, at a minimum, some would say from the get-go, but I would say at the end of the first weekend, it's reasonable.
My assessment would have been...
It had become an illegal protest, an occupation almost.
That's what it felt like and was being described by the citizens of Ottawa.
We had some discussion yesterday with the NSIA about that line between lawful and unlawful protest not necessarily being particularly clear or particularly evident to everyone in these positions.
And I understand there's some work being done by her or her office looking into that question.
So taking us back to now the The invocation memo, the next line in it, a more detailed threat assessment is being provided under separate cover.
Right.
Can you tell us about that threat assessment?
So, I think you've heard others in the Privy Council Office describe us as kind of the place that brings all of the information together.
And I think you will have, there was a discussion yesterday with the National Security Intelligence Advisor about, I need information for Janice.
This memo was being pulled together for me to give my final advice to the Prime Minister about the decision to invoke the Act.
And there were inputs coming from all different parts of PCO reaching out to their networks.
And so when we got to this point, it would have been, I think, reasonable to expect that we would have been able to include as part of the package going to the Prime Minister, here's a threat and risk assessment.
That was not ready by the time that this memo was being sent.
And so the line and a more detailed threat assessment is being provided under separate cover.
We have looked to see whether or not we've gone back and searched all our records.
Was this provided under separate cover?
Did it follow?
We have not been able to find that.
To the best of my knowledge, there was no written detailed threat assessment provided under separate cover.
Tell you that at every IRG meeting that followed, including starting the 15th of February, threat assessments were being provided to the Prime Minister and Ministers as a regular part of the IRG proceedings.
So there's no missing note, to the best of my knowledge.
Okay, so this is not actually a threat assessment that was ever produced.
It was an aspirational threat assessment, one that was...
Supposed to be produced but wasn't in the end.
Is that...
I think we hoped for it, but it was not...
To the best of my knowledge, to the best of our records, we don't have a detailed threat assessment written that was provided to the Prime Minister under separate cover.
Okay.
Just to add on this, and you saw Jodie Thomas' request on the 14 regarding that.
The idea was not to have a new threat assessment.
The idea was really to collect in an integrated way everything we have heard, whether it's from GAC, whether it's from transport, CBSA, all those departments that reported what they were seeing on the ground.
So the idea was instead of having a lot of different inputs and often verbally, To try to have something inwritten.
So that was really the purpose, not to develop a new assessment.
Okay, so it was supposed to be a collation, essentially, of existing information.
Exactly.
Okay, just moving on then.
Talks about invoking the legislation, taking a proportional approach with time-limited measures.
These would not displace or replace.
They're authorities.
They wouldn't derogate from the provinces and territories.
Rather, these measures would aim to assist in bringing an end to the illegal activities observed across the country.
Scrolling down now, Mr. Clerk.
On February 14th, that day, you convened a First Minister's meeting to discuss with premiers and seek their views on the scenario and the measures being explored.
The premiers expressed a variety of views.
Those closest to the situation, e.g.
the Premier of Ontario, were completely supportive of invoking the Emergencies Act and moving forward with robust measures.
A large number of other Premiers expressed concern about the need to act carefully to avoid inflaming the underlying sentiment they considered to be.
Why behind the protest?
Okay, just stopping there.
So we didn't go through the first minister's meeting in any detail today for reasons of time.
We will go through it in more detail next week.
But coming out of that meeting, there was a lot of opposition from the premiers to the idea of invoking the Emergencies Act.
The Premier of Ontario was fully supportive, as is recorded here.
And I believe the other, you can correct me if my recollection is faulty, the Premier of Newfoundland expressed support.
So, I guess there's two parts I would say to this.
First is, there was an assurance of confidentiality in the conversation that happened at the First Minister's meeting.
A number of provincial premiers and /or political leaders made public statements afterwards as to their position.
To be honest with you, I can't remember who was public and who was not.
So I'm just, I don't want to go too, too far in terms of saying who said what around the table.
It's fair to say the Premier of Ontario was public.
Other Premiers were public in terms of their opposition.
That's pretty clear.
But I just, Newfoundland, Labrador, British Columbia, I think I know the answer to that.
I just don't want to betray any confidences.
I mean, it is in the consultation report, but I put the provinces and territories in three baskets.
So you have the supporters, strongly or maybe lucky warm, and that's Newfoundland, that's Ontario, and that's BC.
And then you have provinces that, especially the one from the Maritimes, who have expressed...
You know, concerns.
And the same concerns as we've heard from some of our intelligence agencies that there is a risk that invoking the Emergency Act can implement the situation.
And then you have provinces that we're very against.
And those are the Prairies and Quebec.
Okay, thank you.
That's helpful.
So the only thing I wanted to sort of, if we can scroll back up, Mr. Clerk.
I don't know if quibble with, but raise is the wording here, those closest to the situation, e.g.
the Premier of Ontario, were completely supportive.
So if we're talking about support from Ontario, but then from Newfoundland and potentially B.C., neither Newfoundland nor B.C. were particularly close to the situation at all.
It was really just Ontario that was supportive because they were close.
Yeah, I think hindsight is 20-20.
The Prime Minister had been...
Leading the First Minister's conversation that morning.
I had been participating in it.
Others had been participating in it.
I may not have spent enough time focused on these words myself to make sure they were perfect.
There was a lot going on in a short period of time.
We were working virtually.
And so this is on me if it's not sufficiently clear.
Can we just scroll down again to the next page?
It's true, though.
The Premier of Ontario.
When you think about it through the lens of sheer numbers, probably the biggest impact was the combination of what was happening in Windsor and Ottawa, Bluewater, Sarnia, all those parts of entry, slow whirls in and around Pearson versus the rail.
That was a very big hotspot.
It is also fair to say that Newfoundland and Labrador probably didn't feel the same way.
You're absolutely correct.
Just to add, though, that...
B.C. was facing volatile situation in Surrey, however.
Yes, that's right.
There was the developing Pacific Rim blockade in Surrey.
Yes, that's fair.
Okay, the next sentence I want to point out here is, after describing the First Minister's meeting, you advise, Ms. Charette, this First Minister's meeting will meet the requirements for consultation with the provinces under the Emergencies Act.
How did you come to that conclusion?
What was that based on?
So, looking at the Emergency Act, and I had received a range of advice in terms of the conduct of the First Minister's meeting and what the threshold was.
The requirement in the Emergency Act is for consultation, and there had been a consultation with the provincial and territorial leaders through this First Minister's meeting, and that, in my view, met the requirement for consultation.
So it was the First Minister's meeting specifically, not any of the engagement that happened before that?
This sentence does not encompass all of the activity that had been going on.
And so right on its face, my advice here was the FMM met the requirement for consultation.
It does not reflect the fact that there had been.
A lot of consultation going on between officials, between ministers, and given to understand between political officials.
I'm not sure it's fair to say, though, that all of that consultation through all of this was focused on the invocation of the Emergency Act.
The first minister's meeting, when the prime minister spoke to the leaders of the provinces and territories and talked to them about the situation, the considerations around the invocation, that for me was...
The culmination of the consultation with provinces and territories on the invocation of the Act.
That's exactly what I was trying to nail down.
That's helpful.
He also, it's fair to say, which is not, and you go on to read here, that it wasn't the end.
The Prime Minister committed to sending a letter out to First Ministers, which would set out in writing more clearly the assessment of the underlying risks and the measures to be taken to respond, and he left the door open.
Both to himself, to his Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, as well as to his officials or any other minister who wanted to engage, who premiers may have wanted to engage with in terms of input around the evolving situation.
So that was further outreach being done, but that wouldn't affect the conclusion of whether or not the consultation requirement was met.
That's right, but it does speak to, I think, recognizing that that culmination of the, I mean, the decision to move to the First Minister's meeting.
To consult on the invocation, it only happened the night before, so nothing that happened before that really was about the invocation of the Act.
The call was about the invocation of the Act, and therefore, if there were questions, I mean, there was not a lot of notice.
The topic wasn't clear, left the door open if there were further views.
So then we go to your recommendation.
We see PCO recommends you approve declaring a public order emergency under the Emergencies Act.
That one's self-explanatory.
Okay.
There's a lot to unpack in the remainder of this document, so I'm just going to pull out some of the highlights.
On the following page, go down to earlier today, RICMP had made 11 arrests related to the protest at the border in Coots, Alberta.
Where are you?
I'm sorry.
It's sort of mid-page there.
Then the conclusion of that sentence is indicating that there are definitely elements within this movement that have intentions to engage in violence.
So this brings us back to something you had raised a little bit earlier, which is that the enforcement action in Coots had happened early that morning, and it was revealed to you then that there was this cache of weapons.
And I'm just wondering if you can tell us what effect, if any, that really had on your views that day.
The second part of it is, what you've put in the invocation memo is, that indicates there are definitely elements within this movement that have intentions to engage in violence.
And I'm wondering if that, when you say this movement, are you looking at this as a sort of a homogenous movement across the country, as in there's a relationship between what's going on in Coots and what's going on in Ottawa and what's going on everywhere else?
So maybe I'll try and take that in pieces, and if I miss any...
Come back to me.
So I think I mentioned earlier that IRG meetings on the, I'm getting confused on my dates, the 10th and the 12th, the RCMP commissioner had mentioned in her situational update when she touched on activities across the country, she mentioned that there was the possibility that there were weapons at COOTS.
And she certainly left us with the impression both In the IRGs, but as well in the parallel meetings that are going on with deputies, that the situation at Coutts was more complex.
So why couldn't we solve Coutts?
Why couldn't we solve Coutts?
It looked like it was getting fixed, then it was not getting fixed.
It looked like it was getting fixed, not.
And so earlier in the day, we had seen in the media the RCMP having made these arrests, 11 people.
There being weapons in the protest, I can only speak for myself in terms of what my expectations were.
The quantity of weapons and the ammunition that was discovered by the RCMP in conducting that law enforcement activity was more than I would have expected.
So that to me indicated a seriousness and a scale.
Of the illegal activity that was either contemplated at COOTS or people were ready to engage in at COOTS or ready to do at COOTS that was beyond what my prior expectations, based on not a lot of information other than there were weapons.
I think the second part of your question, if I remember correctly, is related to the movement.
I think that what we knew at the time, what we suspected at the time, was that there was some degree of organization and coordination going on between what I would describe as kind of cells of protest activity going on across the country.
But it did not look like a homogeneous, this was one central plan or anything like that.
It did look like there was communication.
We could see it happening even to the extent that we could follow in the social media.
And then some of that open source, open media commentary that was going on, it looked like there were connections between the individuals that were involved.
But I wouldn't say that this movement, beyond what's described here in terms of what was happening in COOTS, And so that would then apply also to the next sentence, which says the movement has moved beyond a peaceful protest and there's significant evidence of illegal activity underway.
So cells of sort of disparate cells as opposed to one organized movement.
And there did seem to be different objectives or maybe I could use the term.
Motivations, maybe it's not the right word, but different objectives.
Some people were coming to protest because they were opposed to the public health measures, which governments at many levels had put into place.
Vaccination mandates, masking mandates, social restrictions.
There were some that were coming to protest because they had more...
We had different objectives.
There was talk about overthrowing the government and installing a different government with a governor general and that this new government would pass different rules in terms of public health or other rules.
So there was definitely anti-public health measures.
There was some people who just came because it was a protest and they wanted to join and they wanted to say they were opposed to things the government was doing.
But there was this other element and we couldn't just write it off.
We had to take that seriously as well.
Okay, we're going to flip through pretty quickly the next parts of the memo.
So this is just summarizing municipal and provincial responses.
Keep scrolling down, please, Mr. Clerk, until you see...
Actually, keep going.
Mentions no involvement of the Canadian Armed Forces.
And here we get to the crux of, in a sense, the memo.
Test for declaring a public order emergency.
You'll see there, we'll just read it out.
In order to declare a public order emergency, the Emergencies Act requires that there be an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada that is so serious as to be a national emergency.
Threats to the security of Canada does not include lawful advocacy, protest or dissent unless carried out in conjunction with any of the following activities.
And am I right that the...
The following four bullet points are pulled from Section 2 of the CSIS Act?
I believe that's true.
Okay.
And then we'll just scroll down a little bit again.
So those are outlined there.
Incorporated by reference from the Emergency Act, which cross-references to the CSIS Act.
Those four bullets are, I believe, in Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
That's right.
So Section 16, which defines a public order emergency, refers to Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
Threats to the Security of Canada has the meaning.
In Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
So, the next bullet there, a national emergency is an urgent, temporary, and critical situation that seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians that cannot be effectively dealt with uniquely by the provinces or territories.
Or that seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security, and integrity of Canada.
It must be a situation that cannot be effectively dealt with by any other law of Canada.
So that's essentially just language lifted from the Emergencies Act itself.
Scrolling down.
PCO is of the view that the examples of evidence collected to date support a determination that the two criteria required to declare a public order emergency Pursuant to the EA have been met.
Scrolling down again.
Specifically, PCO is of the view that while municipal and provincial authorities have taken decisive action in key affected areas, such as law enforcement and Ambassador Bridge, considerable effort was necessary to restore access to the site and will be required to maintain access.
The situation across the country remains concerning, volatile, and unpredictable.
While there is no current evidence of significant implications by extremist groups or international sponsors, PCO notes that the disturbance and public unrest is being felt across the country and beyond Canadian borders, which may provide further momentum to the movement and lead to irremediable harms, including to social cohesion, national unity, and Canada's international reputation.
In PCO's view, this fits within the statutory parameters defining threats to the security of Canada, though this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.
Can you explain to us what you meant by the last part of that sentence there?
So you explain the threat as you see it, and then you say, in our view, this fits within the statutory parameters of the Emergencies Act, but this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.
So, the Emergency Act had not been used in the 34 years since it had been promulgated.
And so, we were using it for the first time in the case of a public order emergency situation across the country.
You see the kind of deductive reasoning.
I think we go on to explain a bit more of the rationale and the evidence that I relied upon to provide my advice to the Prime Minister.
But the conclusion...
Maybe vulnerable to challenge, i.e.
we could face legal action, judicial review, and other challenges by those who don't agree with our interpretation of the statute.
And we have since seen litigation coming on exactly this matter.
Okay.
So it's essentially expressing some...
My view was that it met the tests.
Others may not share my view.
Okay, so some uncertainty, let's put it that way, as to whether that would be universally accepted.
Not by me.
Not by you, not by you, but the act had never been invoked before.
There was no sort of case law saying this is what this means.
There's some uncertainty.
Is that a fair way to put it?
Yeah.
Okay.
Uncertainty that others will share my view.
Pardon me?
There may be uncertainty that others will share that view.
Okay, so your view is firm.
There may be some uncertainty as to whether everyone agrees with it.
Fair enough.
In addition, PCO is of review discontinuing that this is a national emergency situation that is urgent, critical, temporary, and seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians that cannot be effectively dealt with uniquely by the provinces or territories.
So some of the evidence that we've heard before the Commission is that there were tools that provinces could have used.
There was an Alberta Critical Infrastructure Act and emergency...
Management Act in Alberta that could have allowed for some of the things that ended up happening under the Federal Emergencies Act, for instance, the compelling tow trucks.
Given that, and as you mentioned, even Commissioner Luckey was expressing that the tools she had available to her had not yet been exhausted.
So can you just square that circle for us in the sense of measure of last resort?
Cannot be dealt with uniquely by provinces or territories, but there are all of these tools available.
Right.
So we had seen, as you indicated, the Alberta legislation, we had seen the state of emergency locally in Ottawa and Windsor.
The province of Ontario had moved forward with emergency legislation of its own.
And we had, if you remember back to the long time ago, the Track 1 work, The sectoral deputies were trying to work with their provincial and territorial colleagues to see whether or not if we saw some power that was possible under some provincial legislation, could other provinces or territories pick that up and use that in their jurisdiction?
By the time this memo was written on the 14th of February, the view that I came to was that...
Whether there were still authorities that had not been fully used, that the situation overall was a national emergency.
It was urgent.
It was critical.
There was the threat of serious violence that put at risk the lives, the health and safety, the security of Canadians, our economic fortunes, and that taken together.
That was beyond the capacity of any individual province or territory to deal with.
We were seeing this on a national scale, breakouts or incidents from coast to coast to coast, including cross-border traffic even between, I think it was Alberta and one of the territories.
This was a situation which had been escalating.
I think we were on day 18 of what was happening in Ottawa.
This was a scale.
This was an escalation.
This was a series of volatility.
It didn't seem that there was any province or territory that had the power to deal with this uniquely on their own.
But there may have been individual agencies that could have dealt with a piece of it.
There were individual sites that could have been dealt with through specific tools.
There were potentially individual threats that could have been dealt with by one agency or actor or another.
But if you look at the totality of it all...
That's what lies behind this advice.
Okay.
So just taking you back to the statutory parameters for Minima, you're very firm in your view that the statutory parameters were met.
I am.
Are you able to articulate how they were met in the sense that, and I'll just put it out, there's a bit of an apparent contradiction with...
Section 16, referring to Section 2, threat to the security of Canada.
We have evidence saying that Mr. Vigneault, on behalf of CSIS, assesses that the protests do not constitute a threat to the security of Canada under Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
So how do you come to the conclusion, then, that the statutory parameter is met?
So I'm going to give you the layman's interpretation.
Absolutely.
and my colleague may have things to add, being more skilled in the dark arts of the law.
Section 2 of the CSIS Act is about CSIS being able to exercise its authorities to launch intelligence-gathering activities against a person or group because they represent a threat to the security of Canada.
The decision-maker there is CSIS.
The nature of the threat, and they recommend the activity be taken.
Now let's go over to the Emergency Act.
The decision maker in the Emergency Act is not CSIS.
There's nothing in Section 16 which says the governor and council, who is the decision maker, who's being asked to make the decision, has to ask CSIS if it's okay.
The governor and council is asked to assess whether, on reasonable grounds, There is a, I want to make sure I've got my words right here, that there are reasonable grounds to think that there is an urgent,
critical, national situation where the health, safety of Canadians, their lives, their livelihoods, the national security of the country is at threat.
Of serious violence.
That goes back to the CSIS definition and the threat to security of Canada.
Look under, I think it is, this is dangerous, 2C of the CSIS Act that we rely on.
It is either serious violence or the threat of serious violence.
And so the Governor and Council is asked to see if they have reasonable grounds to believe that there is.
All of the other criteria, urgent, critical, national, beyond the scope of an individual province or territory to deal with, that is of a nature that would be a threat to national security, which is the threat or existence of serious violence.
So the Governor and Council is asked to make that, and in my view, given the totality of the evidence that we'd seen about the fact that we had protests happening in Ottawa, Windsor, Coutts, Emerson, Manitoba, we talked about probably a dozen other ports of entry.
We'd had risks and threats of blockades of railways, of slow rolls around airports, disturbing that and other critical infrastructure.
We had the nature of activity, including we had reported to us that there were IMVE, an ideologically motivated extreme...
Violent extremists, individuals who were seen amongst the protest activities, that there was the risk that they or lone actors inspired by them could, there was the threat from them that they could move to serious violence.
We had evidence through both what was being said in an online of incredibly violent rhetoric.
Of hate speech, anti-Semitic, anti-gay, transphobia, misogynistic, death threats, death threats to elected officials, to senior officials, some of which we didn't even know at the time, we found out afterwards, or even worse than we had known at the time of this note being written.
We had the threat of weapons.
Which we had heard about before the 14th and then we'd seen at Coutts and the size of that cache of weapons and ammunition.
We'd heard that there were kids and vulnerable people in some of the trucks that perhaps were being used to try and keep law enforcement away.
All of that, and we had a sense that...
This wasn't a single-headed hydra.
There was a sense that there was organization, there was coordination, there was a degree of coordination, I think, amongst this set of activities that was very well financed.
And so not only did we have what we had, but we had the risk of, and we'd seen this kind of, it would peter out and then it would escalate and peter out and escalate.
But if you look over the trend, since the beginning of the protests arriving on that beautiful day in Ottawa on the 28th of January, we had seen a trend of it getting worse and escalating and escalating.
Taking together the culmination of all of that, it was my view that we met the test of the definition in the CSIS Act.
That was to be put before the Governor and Council to make a decision on reasonable grounds as to whether or not there was a national emergency that met the threat to the security of Canada involving the threat of serious violence to people's lives, to their health and safety, and to their security.
Madame Troye, I don't know if you have anything to add to that from the perspective of, as your colleague put it, the dark arts of the law.
I think I've got it very well.
But just to summarize, it's not because CSIS concludes that within the convoy, however, we know that within the convoy, they had individuals of interest for them, and they have also seen some IMV that they were following.
It's not because they conclude.
That no other individuals or groups met the trigger that the convoy as a whole doesn't represent a serious threat to Canada.
So I think we really have to make the difference.
They do their assessment to determine under the act, the purpose of the act, whether or not some individual or groups represent that.
We did an assessment based on what CSIS was telling us in terms of the presence and all the other examples, what GAC was telling us, what finance was telling us, what CBS, I'm sorry for all the acronyms, but I think you got used to them.
And so we made the recommendation and the government made its decision based on The cumulative effect, if I may say.
Okay, so I'm going to try and articulate this, and correct me if I'm wrong, as I'm attempting to wrap my mind around this, but would it be fair to say that we know that there was no specific threat of serious violence identified by CESIS, as in there was no bomb plot.
There was no plot to bomb Parliament Hill, or there was no specific January 6th.
Insurrection planned.
But is the position that you're articulating essentially that there can be a threat of serious violence without a specific identified threat having been identified?
The word threat here, I think, is used in many different ways.
There's no specific site.
There's no specific event.
There's no specific action.
As you said, a bomb threat.
An event like, God help us, January 6th kind of an event.
There was a series of indicators which, in our view, were the threats of serious violence for all the reasons that I think Madame Duran and I have tried to explain.
Individual IMVE extremists who were seen in the crowd targets subjects of interest.
So it's the combination of all of these things and the escalation of all these things which, taken together, were enough for me in my advice to the Prime Minister, relying, as I do, in everything I do on the inputs from the community of deputy ministers, the product of my interactions with my PCO colleagues and almost 40 years of experience now as a public servant, that together represented my advice.
Maybe another way to articulate it or maybe to frame an example in our head.
Not all potential criminal offenses will be followed by CSIS.
So let's say we are in face of potential family violence.
This is serious violence, but that doesn't mean that it is a threshold for CSIS to investigate.
So we were in face of a lot of potential.
Criminal offenses, but that doesn't mean that one individual or a group of individuals were meeting the threshold of CSIS.
Okay.
Can I try the inverse of that?
I know.
CSIS does use Section 2 of the CSIS Act to trigger the gathering of intelligence about a person or group of people that they think are...
National Security Risk.
We don't trigger the Emergency Act every time CSIS triggers Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
So there's a definition in the CSIS Act.
It isn't necessarily the fact that CSIS is not the decision maker in the invocation of the Emergency Act.
That's a separate process by the Governor and Council, which relies on the definition that has a different construct.
That's the total layman's attempt.
Okay, well, that was a helpful layman's attempt, certainly.
From there, I just want to bring in another piece of what was relied on in this sense to invoke the act.
So we're skipping ahead now, leaving the invocation memo and going to, and I'm just going to, I don't know that we need to turn it up, but this eventually results in, once the decision is made, what we've come to know is the Section 58. So this is a report to Parliament explaining the justification for having invoked the emergencies that made the declaration of a public order emergency.
And I understand that that report was prepared by PCO in conjunction with the Department of Justice and a few others.
Is that right?
It was a collective.
It was a collective effort.
Collective effort, right.
There's not a lot of time between, I think we had seven days under the legislation to actually produce and table this document and it was tabled.
Two days after the invocation because we were trying to move as expeditiously as possible.
So it was a team product.
But ultimately, I think it's fair to say PCO would have been involved as the pen holder.
You'll be relieved to know I'm not going to any specifics unless...
No correction of our grammar.
Yeah, no typos.
Not picking on typos.
What I do want to raise is that...
A large part of that Section 58 explanation relies on something other than serious violence.
It talks about the threat to Canada's economic security.
And I think there are at least three or four points, and we can bring it up if you'd like to see it in front of you, but the talk about the threat to economics.
Canada's economic security has arisen as a result of these various border blockades and everything that we've been talking about over the last couple of weeks, everything Mr. Sabio and his colleagues were discussing with us yesterday.
So how does that factor in, in this sense?
Economic security is, again, not something that is articulated within the Section 2. CSIS Act definition that is the trigger of a public order emergency.
So how does that work?
So to my way of thinking about this, there was what was necessary to meet the threshold.
There were other considerations.
The term national interest, for me, takes a step back and says, okay, so what is in the national interest of the country?
So safety, security, ability to protect lives, that's core to national interest.
But also what's core to national interest is economic viability, the ability to maintain an economy, to have jobs, to have businesses operating so that people have livelihoods, so they can earn an income to support themselves and their families.
So the economic risk, particularly at a time, and I think I tried to set the seed for this when I was talking about the fact that we were just starting budget.
As this was all happening, I think Mr. Sabia spoke of other relevant considerations related to United States potential legislation that was being deliberated at the time, which had big impacts on Canada, our competitiveness, our ability to continue to attract investment.
So when I think about...
Our national interest, our economic security is absolutely part of that.
And that is about the ability to maintain and operate secure borders, to see to the free movement of people, goods and services across our borders.
We do $2 billion of trade a day between Canada and the United States, the single most integrated, I think, economy in the world.
And that was being put at risk, you know, foods, medicine, fuel, supplies, at a time when supply chains were already pretty fragile as a result of two plus years, almost two years of COVID.
We were kind of shaky, and this was putting that at risk with big border points.
If you look at Ambassador Bridge, Emerson, and Coutts, it's just those three.
That adds up to about $500 million a day, and we do about $2 billion a day in trade between the two countries.
So it's a big number.
It's about a quarter of the trade that was impacted just those three sites.
So economic security in terms of being able to access those things.
Our ability to...
Be a trusted trading partner.
Canada is an export-dependent economy and we are in the business of trying to attract investment to be able to open new businesses, expand businesses here.
There was lots of conversations going on about trying to attract big company names to locate in Canada.
That's about jobs.
That's an important part of our national interest is being able to do that.
And investors don't like uncertainty.
They don't like volatility.
They like the rule of law.
They like stability.
They like predictability.
And this whole situation was putting that at risk.
And I guess finally, which is a little less on the economic, but I think also reflected in the Section 58 piece that was put before Parliament, is Canada's international reputation.
We are a G7 country.
We are committed to the rule of law.
What was being seen in some other parts of the world were protests.
I think we saw them at a minimum in France, in the Netherlands, in New Zealand, if I remember my media coverage right, with trucks with Canadian flags on them.
The Prime Minister was getting questions from...
From international leaders about just what was going on in Canada.
So the culmination of all these things are about our national interest.
And so in pulling together Section 58, it was about a threshold, but it was also about the other factors that went into the deliberations around the invocation of the Act.
And if I could, while I'm talking about Section 58, just for a minute.
I mean, part of, because we kind of got out of the invocation memo.
Part of what I relied upon in my advice to invoke the Act was the nature of the Emergency Act itself, temporary, time-limited, targeted measures that would supplement provincial and territorial and not displace, that were compliant with the Charter.
So it was not just about invoking the Act, it was what the Act was allowing.
Government to authorize to have happen.
So it was about the nature of those measures, but also the accountability framework that is built into the Emergency Act that had not been used before, including things like tabling before Parliament, a justification on why the Act was invoked, an explanation about the consultation with provinces and territories, a requirement for a vote to be held, and the House of Commons to approve and the Senate.
We know the Senate vote didn't happen because the act was revoked, but the House of Commons approved the invocation of the Emergency Act.
There is a process to establish a joint House-Senate committee.
There's this process, the Commission of Inquiry around what happened and transparency around what happened.
There's a very robust accountability framework.
So the test was met.
I had a level of comfort in terms of the nature of the measures, as extraordinary as they were, as last resort as they were, and an accountability framework.
Just to complete the thought.
So if I understand correctly, then the economic security piece is less related to the actual threshold in terms of Section 2 of the CSIS Act and more the threshold, the aspect of the threshold or the aspect of the Emergencies Act that goes to.
This is in the national interest.
It is in the national interest to invoke the Emergencies Act here because Canada's economic security is being threatened.
I'll say both, really.
I mean, when we talk about threat to economy, the way we measure economy is one thing, but the impact is on workers, is on jobs, is on day-to-day lives of people.
I didn't say that at the beginning about my credential, but my background is really on enforcement and white collar crime enforcement.
I can tell you that when people are facing financial issues, this is a lot of stress and this is violent in terms of stress.
So I think our point here was...
When we were receiving calls from unions, receiving calls from auto plans, receiving calls from trade partners, the impact on the economy was impact on people.
Like we talked those days about food security, economy security is also an important component.
Well, I think you heard about this from the National Security Intelligence Advisor yesterday.
There's a legal threshold, but there's also a policy context within which the Emergency Act was existing.
So we were looking at a range of factors, including trust and confidence in our institutions.
Institutions like law enforcement, institutions like government to actually be able to resolve the situation.
And we were seeing a level of public unrest in the country where citizens were thinking about taking matters into their own hands.
Doing counter-protests.
They were going to the Billings Bridge infamous counter-protest to try and show that they were not supportive.
This is a pretty risky, this is a volatile, risky situation.
So I think there's a legal threshold with all of the additions that Madame Duran made and a broader policy context around all of this.
Is there anything else you'd like to add on that point?
Or should we leave invocation and leave the threshold?
And very, very briefly, I am way out of time.
The last area that I would just ask you to address briefly, if there's nothing else to say on invocation, is revocation.
And I know that there was a lengthy memo you prepared.
The flip side of the invocation memo is the revocation memo.
In the interest of time, I don't think we have time to go through it in any detail.
But can you explain the thinking around When the Emergencies Act was revoked, why you advised when you did that now is the time?
So the discussion about when was the time to revoke the Emergency Act started relatively quickly after it had been invoked.
The threshold was, was it necessary to deal with the situation, the totality of the situation facing us?
We started to see the impact.
We saw Windsor holding.
Coots was holding.
Now, we started to see pop-ups in other parts of the country, but one of the biggest situations we were looking at was the situation in Ottawa.
We were going into the fourth weekend.
There were daily IRGs happening starting on the 15th.
Thank you for correcting me about the 14th.
Starting on the 15th, where there was a daily sense of what's happening.
What measures are being used?
What else?
It wasn't just like the Emergency Act was invoked and then everything else went out the window.
What else can and should we be doing to try to help to address and resolve the situation?
And day by day, ministers and officials were looking at whether or not the situation, that some total of the situation still was of a size and a criticality that That we needed to continue.
Now, the early days, it's fair to say we were mostly focused on implementation of the Act after invocation and who was doing what and what effect it was having.
But I would say as we saw the law enforcement activity really starting to take hold in Ottawa on the fourth weekend, the days of the 18th, 19th, More pointy questions were coming back from the Prime Minister and from ministers.
How much longer do we need the Emergency Act?
It had been made, I think, that the view at the invocation is no longer than necessary.
And if we could get...
Move out of it as quickly as possible.
And so we started to work on, okay, so what were the criteria for invocation?
What are the criteria for revocation?
I believe you had some discussion with Mr. Hutchinson in particular about that earlier in the day, maybe with Ms. Bogdan as well.
But there started to be deliberate conversations at the incident response group around were we in a position to revoke?
Were we in a position to revoke?
And finally, that culminated in a discussion that took place.
On the 23rd of February at the Incident Response Group, in which the Prime Minister asked everyone in attendance, were you ready to revoke the act?
And following that, he had taken his counsel from his ministers and officials.
Again, the group production of a note was done.
That was provided to the Prime Minister he chose at that point.
The decision was to proceed to a revocation, and that was announced on the 23rd.
Okay, so just to close the loop on that, I'll bring it up very briefly to situate everyone in what that looked like, the revocation memo.
That's SSM.nsc.can403227.
There we go.
Overall, the situation has evolved significantly since February 14th.
It's no longer considered urgent and critical or a threat to the security of Canada.
If we can just flip down, Mr. Clerk, until page 7. No, I'm sorry.
Page 6. Okay, so there's a section here starting.
Since the EA was invoked, the regulations resulted in.
And it proceeds to list a number of factors, or a number of occurrences, let's say.
Rapid assembly of large police presence, signaling to protesters that trucks would no longer be treated as violations of parking bylaws, but would actually be treated as potentially serious penalties.
Say there's been a significant decrease in the number of minors, and it goes on.
We don't have time to review them in detail, but essentially there's a link being drawn here between these indicators that have occurred and the invocation of the Act.
So since the Act was invoked, regulations resulted in, or in any event, these things have happened.
And then if we go on to the next page.
Page 7. That describes the operational status.
And so as we see, all the ports of entry are currently open, operating normally.
Movement of truck convoys continues to be monitored.
Just scrolling down a little bit there, Mr. Clerk.
An operational plan is in place, has been established to main security in Ottawa.
Then it says, to date, approximately 30 individuals have attempted to enter Canada for the purpose of participating in illegal protests and blockades.
I think we know now from, and it says there from Mr. Soski, two individuals were turned back using the Emergencies Act authorities.
The remainder were turned back because they didn't meet entry requirements one way or the other, vaccination requirements that are under the Quarantine Act.
It then refers to An unknown number of protesters remaining in Ottawa.
It's difficult to assess the potential of that group to engage in illegal protests, but then it refers also to, since the end of the occupation, small numbers, and it says here 20 to 30, have gathered at the War Museum to protest.
So far, these gatherings have been orderly, non-violent, and legal.
So there was some lawful protest continuing, at least at the War Museum.
Going on.
Freezing of counts has been assessed as having had a deterrent effect.
And I'm losing my own place now.
Okay.
And then we go down a little bit more.
Let's go to page 10. This all culminates in PCO comment.
PCO is of the view that the public order...
Public emergency order pursuant to the EA, invoked on February 14th, is no longer required.
And so you advise the Prime Minister that the time has come then to revoke the Emergencies Act?
Correct.
Okay.
I did.
That brings us to way past the time that we were supposed to go.
But I will ask, before I sit down and turn this over, is there anything else that...
Any key points that haven't been raised today that you want to raise?
I don't think so.
I just wonder if you have covered the fact that we consider trust in institution as one of our criteria as part of the threat and what can be the consequences if...
You know, population is really losing confidence in our public institutions.
So we can do it.
So one of the reasons why it was an important factor.
So first of all, we were seeing citizens, you know, doing some counter-protests, asking the court for an injunction.
So when you see the population trying to surround justice because they are not comfortable that Law enforcement or government will do.
That is for us like a beginning of a symptom that something worse can happen.
We know what's going on in countries when the populations do not have confidence in our public institutions.
That brings some energy and a lot of uncivilities.
So this is why it was an important element for us.
Taking into account the erosion in public institutions and making sure that we can address that as soon as possible to avoid the worst, if I may say.
Can I go back to revocation for just a moment, then?
Yes.
I think when we arrived at the 23rd of February, it wasn't like it was peace and calm across the land, totally.
The assessment, which is represented in this note, is that we had arrived at a point where the Emergency Act was no longer necessary.
Those extraordinary powers that came with the Emergency Act were no longer necessary, that we could rely on the existing tools, resources, and authorities to be able to deal with, to the degree that there was any illegal activity going on.
As the protest was being taken down, the blockade was being taken down, occupation in Ottawa, that some trucks were going to other sites.
They were going to Van Cleek Hill, amongst other places.
And maybe there was other activity going on, but it wasn't of a scale, of an intensity, with a threat of serious violence that we faced at the time of the invocation of the Act.
So it's not like everything was...
Unicorns and rainbows is my expression, but probably not appropriate here.
We had not arrived at...
There was still a level of activity, including some lawful protest activity, which is reflected in this note.
There was still some level of illegality going on, but we were confident at that point that it could be dealt with without the extraordinary measures of the Emergency Act.
Mr. Commissioner, those are my questions.
Okay, well, schedule has gone out the window, which is probably bad news for our panel.
We're used to staying late.
I'm sure you're also used to working late.
But what I'm going to do is take the afternoon break for 15 minutes.
And given the time, I will come back and I'll be a little more flexible with the Questioning and cross-examination because we have a rule here.
What goes indirect goes in cross.
So I think we have to be fair, but I will be reasonable only modest, not the degree requested by some.
I'm sure, sir, you're not talking about a little old me.
No, I wouldn't want to single anyone out.
So I'll take the...
break for the afternoon 15 minutes uh please the commission is in recess for 15 minutes
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you
Thank you.
Order a lot.
The Commission is reconvened.
Okay, so we're ready to proceed.
Of course, yes.
Okay.
The convoy organizers, please.
Good afternoon and soon to be good evening.
My name is Brendan Miller and I am legal counsel to Freedom Corp, which is the entity that represents the protesters that were in Ottawa in January and February 2022.
I have 20 minutes to question you so that would bring us to 4:48 when I'm done and hopefully I don't have to ask for a little more time.
So I'm gonna...
Begin with yourself, Assistant Deputy Clerk, Ms. Druin.
If you'd like to answer in French, I can get one of the things from my friend, but I'll ask these, and if you're going to answer in French, please let me know, and I will put on the translation equipment, because unfortunately, I am sans bilingual at this time, but I'm working on it.
Thank you.
So, Ms. Druin, prior to becoming the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, You are the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada, is that correct?
Correct.
And you're a lawyer?
Yes.
And you've been a member of the Quebec Bar since 1992?
That's correct.
And in fact, would you agree you're an award-winning lawyer?
Well, I won a prize, yes, à l 'avocat de l 'entreprise de l 'année.
Right, and so I'm not trying to pump your ego, but...
In 2009, you were named the Business Legal Advisor of the Year by Le Monde Jorique.
Is that correct?
That's correct.
And did I pronounce it correctly?
C 'est parfait, oui.
Okay, good.
And in 2012, I understand you were awarded the Lawyer Erasmus, which is hyphenated AD.E, by the Quebec Bar, right?
Yeah, that's the Advocatus Emeritus.
Right.
And from 2012 to 2016...
You were the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General for the Government of Quebec.
That's right.
And then from 2016 to 2017, you were the Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Justice for the Government of Canada.
That's correct.
And then from 2017 to 2021, you were the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada.
So for four years.
That's correct.
And you can agree with me that that position...
The Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada is the highest ranking position within the Department of Justice.
Within the Department of Justice, yes.
Right.
You answer to the Attorney General of Canada.
I answer or I serve the Attorney General.
I also respond to the Clerk of the time and to the Prime Minister.
Thank you.
And now...
While you were in that office, you publicly described your role of the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada as follows, and I just want to know if you agree with this.
I'd like to begin by describing my due role as the Deputy Minister of Justice and Deputy Attorney General of Canada.
I've been in this position since June 2017.
In both these roles, I support the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada in fulfilling his or her responsibilities.
My duties include giving legal advice and coordinating the legal advice given by the Department of Justice and supporting the development of legislation.
That's true.
There's also the part of managing litigations.
Right.
So in your role as the Deputy Minister of Justice, Deputy Attorney General of Canada, you advised on how to draft legislation for four years.
That's correct.
Right.
And you know...
From that former role, that when you're drafting definitions in legislation, they're very important.
That's correct.
Okay.
And would you agree with the following statement, which full disclosure I took from the drafting policy from DOJ?
Deliminating definition.
A deliminating definition is exhaustive.
It is intended to set limits on otherwise ordinary meanings of terms.
These definitions normally begin with the word means.
Would you agree with that?
I agree with that.
I just want to say that there is different drafting procedure, if I may say, or techniques.
And for example, when I was head of the Justice Department in Quebec, we have eliminated definition.
So just to say that there is different ways of drafting legislations.
Right.
You can agree with me that in legislative drafting, that where there's a definition, and that definition states this means, and then is followed by a set of factors or what it includes, you're aware that that is intended to be exhaustive.
That's Parliament's intention.
You know that.
I know that.
If I may, just for the benefit of this commission, we also use a lot in federal legislation the technique of incorporating by reference.
Right.
So we do that a lot.
When I was at Justice, we did a report on how many times we use that technique, and I must say that it's, you know, numbers, numbers of times.
We also know that when we put a definition within a legislation, it has to be read in the context of this legislation.
And for the purpose of the legislation we're talking about.
So I'm just saying that because meaning can have different meanings at the end, depending In the context in which you are looking at the courts.
But you know, and you can agree, that the purpose when you're drafting is to try and carry out the intent of Parliament.
That's the objective of drafting, yes.
Okay.
And you know that Section 2 of the CSIS Act...
Prior to listing what constitutes a threat to the security of Canada, states threats to the security of Canada means and is then followed by the four threats.
Fair?
You know that.
Yeah.
And you know that under Section 12 of the CSIS Act, that in order for CSIS to open an investigation, CSIS has to conclude reasonable grounds to suspect that a person or group It's carrying out activities constituting a threat to the security of Canada, as defined in Section 2. Yeah, that's how the CCS Act operates, yeah.
All right.
And you know, and we talked about this, that the Emergencies Act, it states that threats to the security of Canada has the meaning assigned by Section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, right?
You know that?
That's in the EA, yeah.
And you know that...
Under the doctrine of consistent expression, that where there is an adoption by reference, it's to mean the same thing as the primary legislation.
You know that.
I think what I've said is that when we are incorporating by reference, now remember, I guess, when you did your bar, we were always talking about mutandis, mutandis.
And that was...
The idea was to make sure that we interpret, avec les adaptations nécessaires, the incorporation by reference.
So the idea here, and as I said before, is really to interpret within the context, the purpose, also the decision maker that have to look at similar words.
Okay.
And to your knowledge, from what you know, What do you know about Parliament's intention for a threat to the security of Canada in the Emergencies Act to mean something different from a threat to the security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act?
I guess what I'm seeing here is when the legislator adopted the Emergency Act.
Versus when the legislator adopted CSIS Act.
It was for different purposes.
The purpose of doing an investigation under the CSIS Act is not the same purpose as triggering or invoking the Emergency Act for public order emergency.
And I understand.
But you are aware that both the CSIS Act as well as the Emergencies Act We're passed within just a few years of one another in the 80s.
Well, I'm pleased to be corrected.
Yeah, maybe four years.
I thought the CSIS was 1984, if I'm not mistaken.
And I take it that you know that one of the reasons that they adopted Section 2 of the CSIS Act, Parliament did, was to limit the executive branch of government from declaring public order emergencies.
You're aware of that?
I wouldn't use limit.
I think that the Emergency Act was craft to make sure that there's a lot of safeguards in terms of how we invoke.
The role of Parliament to confirm or deny the invocation of the Emergency Act, the role of the Joint Committee to supervise the implementation of the measures, and the role of an inquiry like this one.
Okay.
And if I can add, a very important component is making sure that doing so, I mean invoking the Emergency Act, It was compliance with the Charter, which was a new instrument following the previous act.
And in the Emergencies Act, it requires the Governor and Council to have reasonable grounds, you know this, that there is a public order emergency.
Is that right?
Sorry, I missed your question.
So you know that...
In the Emergencies Act, it actually states that a public order emergency arises from a threat to the security of Canada that is so serious to be a national emergency.
You know that?
I agree.
And so, you also know that in order to invoke the Act, there has to be reasonable grounds.
And that includes a threat to the security of Canada, right?
And that threat to the security of Canada is as defined in Section 2 of the CSIS Act, right?
Right.
Okay.
So, let's talk about that.
Can you agree with me that there was not reasonable grounds of a threat?
To the Security of Canada as defined in the CSIS Act and adopted by reference.
I don't agree.
I don't agree with that.
Okay, so let's go through those grounds.
Okay, so...
I can help.
I know your time is...
Yes, and let me...
It's really...
What we use, it's really 2C.
Right, so then we can throw out...
Any other grounds, it's fair to say, other than 2C?
The main, like the real ground was 2C.
All right.
So foreign, or sorry, I apologize.
Activities within or relating to Canada directed towards or in support of a threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, and ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state.
So that is the ground.
And that is the single ground, from your understanding, of why the Emergencies Act was invoked.
That's the main ground.
Some can say that there's other one, but that's the main ground we used.
Okay, so let's talk about threats of acts of serious violence and acts of serious violence.
Can you summarize for me the threats of acts of serious violence?
That the invocation was based upon.
I'll do that.
I think the clerk will probably add.
So if you just look at what you went through this week, who you heard.
So we heard from, not CSIS, but we've heard from some players, for example, that IMV were present in some of the protests.
We've heard also that ex-militaries and ex-law police agents were present.
We heard the presence of firearms.
We heard also threat to our economy, threat to and impacts on workers.
We just talked about that before.
We heard impact on our trade relationship from GAC.
We've heard from CBSA that our port of entry was affected, disrupted, and other port of entries, even, you know, after the main war were clear.
Okay.
So we heard from transport also that some rails can be affected by blockades.
So we've heard from not only, I mean, you're going to hear from CSIS Monday, but...
You know, when you look at the composition of DMOC, you've heard about that many, many times over the week.
Many departments are part of that DM's committee.
Why?
Because national security is not the result of the assessment of one agency, but the result of...
As Janice said before, the town.
I don't mean to interrupt.
I only have so much time.
Sorry about that.
Yeah.
So I just want to talk to you about first, you mentioned the IMVEs, right?
Yep.
And you can agree with me that an IMVE, it's not just somebody who's radical or whatever.
There has to be an element of violence.
So a couple of things here.
And when you look at C, you know, we want to talk about that.
Careful about its threat or serious violence.
Okay.
I guess the horror can be an end.
It's a threat of or...
I understand.
So these IMVs that the government went on about, first, we've already established that the government wasn't aware of the individuals and coots at the time of the invocation that were arrested by the local...
I think what we were aware in Coutts was, first of all, they were about to do enforcement, and then I think it was around the 10th or the 11th of February, we heard that they were slowing down enforcement because of the presence of risk of violence and guns.
That's the only thing we knew at our level, because we're not privy to all the operational risk.
Right.
But of course, Commissioner Lucky and her people, they were aware of what was going on.
They just couldn't tell you.
Exactly.
Right.
And you're now aware, I'm sure you've heard the evidence, that they, in fact, as of the February 9th, had two undercover officers embedded with these gentlemen.
Are you aware of that?
I was not aware at that time.
You know, when they do uncover operations, this is...
Yeah.
We don't know those things.
And these gentlemen that they were going after, they were actually local to the Coutts area.
You know that?
I can say I didn't know at that time, no.
Can you agree with me that the facts of that were that that issue was dealt with locally by police under provincial mandate via the agreement that Alberta has with the RCMP?
You mean the contractual policing arrangement?
Correct.
It was carried out under that, right?
Yep.
Yeah, so it was provincially dealt with?
You agree it was dealt with well?
So, I don't know at the end when, you know, they put an end to the blockade who was doing what, you know, and whether, you know, I'm sure you have heard about that, that the police of jurisdiction can ask more resources from the centre using the section 9.2 of their arrangement.
So, I don't know.
Okay.
And so, let's move to Ottawa.
Ottawa.
IMVs in Ottawa.
I understand that CSIS advised that they had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa, and that's what's in evidence.
Is that correct?
Well, this is not how I portrayed that.
I understood and I've heard that some IMVE and subject of interest of CSIS were present.
What I understand from their assessment is that they didn't conclude that they need or they have to open new investigations.
Right.
And so CSIS did a threat assessment of the convoy.
We saw it yesterday.
They did.
Not of the convoy as a whole, again.
Of Ottawa.
Of Ottawa.
And let me bring that up.
And it is...
The document ending ts.nsc.can.001.0000159 _REL _0001.
Now, we've all reviewed this.
I've put it to folks.
And I don't want to have to read it to you.
But in this assessment, and also in the statement from Director Vignon, they concluded that there was no CSIS threat, reasonable suspicion, of a CSIS threat in downtown Ottawa.
Is that fair?
They concluded looking at who was there.
That they didn't have enough to open investigations on specific individuals or groups.
Right.
And you know that CSIS only needs to have a suspicion, a reasonable suspicion, to open an investigation.
Well, I think the test is reasonable ground, yep.
Reasonable grounds to suspect.
Reasonable grounds to suspect.
That's what it says.
You know that.
Yep.
And the difference between that and the grounds to invoke a national emergency is that you know under the Emergencies Act, it requires reasonable grounds.
You know that.
That a public order emergency exists.
And you know, as the former highest-ranking lawyer and legal officer within the Government of Canada, that Reasonable grounds to suspect is a lesser threshold than reasonable grounds or referred to as reasonable and probable grounds.
You are aware of that.
Again, I'm sorry.
I think we are mixing here.
Reasonable grounds to suspect what?
And this is the purpose of CSIS Act.
Right.
A movement, a movement can represent threat to security to Canada.
Right.
A movement, a situation.
An activity.
An activity.
Without having individuals or groups into it that do meet the threshold of CSIS.
I think we need to make the difference between what the movement represented at that time for Canada versus the composition of the movement, whether or not we had individuals that...
I understand what you're saying, but you're saying that you want to look at the group as a whole.
All right.
And so I've asked you about COOTS.
That was taken care of.
I've asked you about Ottawa.
All right.
You knew that the group, the assessment was, that it did not meet that.
And now Windsor, can you agree with me that there was no section to CSIS Act threat with respect to Windsor?
You've mischaracterized the witness's evidence.
She didn't agree with you that CSIS had assessed the group.
The entire group in Ottawa.
Right.
So let me just move over to Windsor.
Can you agree with me that you are aware of no Section 2 CSIS Act threat with respect to Windsor?
I think I can go again to everything we have heard from all departments and that the clerk, with my advice in particular, considered to determine whether or not we believe that the threat, the test on Let me try and rephrase it this way.
What evidence and what information of violence at Windsor were you aware of when the Act was invoked?
I think it would have been a mistake to do assessment site by site while we were facing a national Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you.
Next, I'd like to call on the province of Saskatchewan, please.
Good afternoon, Commissioner.
I'm trying to get my camera operating.
Thank you.
We won't deduct the time.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
I'm Mitch McAdam.
I'm one of the lawyers for the Government of Saskatchewan.
And I have a few questions this afternoon for you, Madam Charest.
To start with, I understand that one of your responsibilities is that you are the Secretary to the Cabinet, right?
That is correct.
And that one of your responsibilities as the Secretary is to control the flow of paper to Cabinet?
I manage the flow of paper into the Cabinet, that's right.
Okay, so all of the paper that goes to Cabinet has to go through your office?
No, that's not the case.
It goes through the Privy Council office before it will be put in front of Cabinet Minister.
Not my office, not the Clerk's office necessarily, the totality of the Privy Council office.
We have a Cabinet Papers unit that in particular deals with documentation.
So it has to go through the Privy Council Office?
That's correct, sir.
And you're also responsible, I believe you said this morning, for recording the decisions made by Cabinet?
That is correct.
I have a few questions for you about the Cabinet meeting that happened on the evening of February 13th, where the Emergencies Act was considered.
First, can you confirm for me that there were no papers or documents that were provided to Cabinet Ministers?
In connection with that meeting?
That is not correct.
Okay, there was paper provided to them?
There was a document made available to ministers, I believe I referred to it earlier, which had to do with an input.
I believe I can say this.
I'm making sure I can say this.
It was an assessment from CSIS.
Which related to considerations on invoking the Emergency Act.
But there was no, in the usual course of decision-making by Cabinet, ministers would be considering a memorandum to Cabinet, which would frame a decision for them.
There was no such memorandum to Cabinet.
Does that help?
Yes, it does.
So there was no memorandum to Cabinet, and that was an unusual situation.
That is correct.
Not the usual course.
That is correct.
It was an unusual cabinet, an extraordinary cabinet, called on the evening of the 13th of February.
Okay.
And I understand you attended that cabinet meeting, correct?
I did, sir.
Okay.
And I'm not going to ask you about what the deliberations were at that meeting, but you said a moment ago that one of your responsibilities was to record the decisions made by cabinet.
And can you tell me exactly what the decision was made?
At Cabinet that evening, I think you said earlier that the decision was to direct the Prime Minister to have a First Minister's meeting or to have a First Minister's meeting the following day, but I just want to make clear in my mind that I understand exactly what was decided that evening.
The decision was that the Prime Minister would convene a meeting with First Ministers to consider the invocation of the Emergency Act.
And to brief them on the situation and consider any other measures necessary to deal with the totality of the situation facing the country.
Okay, thank you.
Next, I'd like to turn to the events on February the 14th.
Sure.
And you would agree with me that the invitation for the First Minister's meeting, I think we talked about it a little bit earlier today, or you talked about it a little bit earlier today.
It went out...
On Sunday evening after the cabinet meeting, correct?
Yeah, as I said earlier, Mr. McAdam, I wasn't totally sure.
I could check and be happy to, whether it went out Sunday evening or very early Monday morning.
I think we would have endeavored to try and get it out as soon as possible after cabinet.
So that would have been, cabinet was at 8.30.
You know, we would have been into probably 10 o 'clock Ottawa time, which is still pretty early in Saskatchewan.
Yeah, and I believe that you had indicated earlier today that it was a meeting called on short notice, right?
Correct.
And my understanding from your testimony earlier today is that the invitation didn't indicate what that meeting was all about, did it?
I believe between Madame Deroy and myself.
That was the information that we provided earlier, yes, sir.
And you also indicated that at that meeting, a number of the Premier's voiced objections.
What I said was a number of premiers shared their responses.
I wasn't in a position to tell you because the deliberations were to be confidential, but we saw subsequently a number of premiers making public comments that they had made at the First Minister's meeting.
Yes, it's fair to say, I believe Madame de Roya said, there were kind of three groups, three kind of general groups of premiers' reactions, including some that did raise objections.
Okay.
And I understand that that meeting lasted about an hour.
Is that correct?
I think that's plus or minus.
Yes, I think that's probably correct, sir.
So it would have ended about...
If I may, sir, when we developed the FMM, one of the advice that we gave to the Prime Minister was to make sure...
That the timeline was not the issue in terms of the duration of the meeting.
So the Prime Minister let all premiers to express themselves and then check the clock, making sure that they will have all the time they needed to make their point.
And if I could add to that, because of the fact that there was no, you know, this was called at quite the last minute, there was...
Part of the meeting was briefing.
So the Prime Minister, it was suggested to him, and he certainly accepted that the meeting would go as long as the meeting wanted, depending on the wishes of premiers and territorial leaders.
Clerk, can I ask you to call up document pb.nsc.can408485, please?
And Clerk, if you could scroll to the very end of that document, you'll see Madam Charest.
This is an email from Jody Thompson on February 14th at 11.44 a.m.
And she says, I need an assessment for Janice about the threat of these blockades.
And when she's referring to Janice, that's you, correct?
I believe so, yes.
And yesterday, When she testified, Ms. Thomas indicated that this was something that was needed for the invocation package, and that's the memorandum that you prepared for the Prime Minister, right?
I don't know that I caught every moment of her testimony, so whether exactly that's what she said or not, I wouldn't want to say, but I do believe that she was, like many across the Privy Council office, working to gather inputs.
For the invocation note.
Okay, and I just want to make sure I have my time frame correct here.
So the First Minister's meeting would have ended by 11.15, and then by 11.44, Ms. Thomas is writing asking for this threat assessment.
So am I right that in that half an hour, the Prime Minister would have come to you and said...
Let's proceed with the invocation package.
And then you contacted Ms. Thomas and asked about the threat assessment?
No, Mr. McAdam, that would not be an accurate description.
I would say to you, sir, that part of our job in the public service and people who work for me is to get ready.
And so I can tell you that I turned my mind and I was the advisor here.
To the advice to the Prime Minister as to whether or not to invoke, not at 1144.
There were a number of people, including Ms. Thomas and others in front of the Privy Council Office, who were contributing to this decision note, which came to me for my consideration.
And as you saw, I signed off on my advice, I believe we talked about it earlier, sometime about 3 o 'clock in the afternoon.
So yes, work was underway.
But I had not turned my mind to the conclusion of my advice.
Okay, so had the Prime Minister, did he come to you after the First Minister's meeting and before you completed your memorandum and asked you to go ahead and prepare that memorandum?
No, sir.
No.
So you were doing this based on your understanding of what he wanted?
My understanding of what was required in the situation.
That's my job.
Okay, and you knew that a press conference had been called for 4.30 that afternoon, didn't you?
I knew that there was a possibility of a media availability in the afternoon.
Okay, and I think you indicated that you gave the document to the Prime Minister at 3.41 in the afternoon, and then I think you said this morning that he would sign that document to indicate his approval.
But I don't believe that you testified about when you would have got that document back from him.
It was, I can't remember the exact time, Mr. McCann, I apologize, but it was before the media avail.
So between 3.41 and 4.30.
Okay, that's fair.
I don't know exactly what time the media avail started.
There may have been a scheduling.
It may have been a notice that there was going to be an availability.
But I don't know actually what time it started.
I'm sure the records would indicate that.
They don't always run 100% on time.
And at the media availability, it was announced that the Emergencies Act had been invoked?
Was being invoked.
Was being invoked.
Correct.
And so what does was being invoked mean?
When exactly did it come into force?
When the Governor and Council approved the proclamation.
And so that was until the next day?
No, no, no.
It was on the 14th, and you'll see that in the...
Canada Gazette, the 14th of February.
Okay, and so was there another Cabinet meeting on the 14th for Cabinet to consider this?
No, sir.
So Cabinet was never advised of the outcome of the meeting with the First Ministers?
There was not a loop back to Cabinet in an official Cabinet meeting, but did you want to say something, sir?
Yeah, I'm confused because I think you said earlier today that under the Emergencies Act, it's the Governor and Council that invokes the Act.
So if the Cabinet didn't meet again, how did the Act get invoked?
Was the power to do so delegated to the Prime Minister or just how did that happen?
Yeah, the decision in terms of invocation was left with the Prime Minister, was left ad referendum.
To the decision of the Prime Minister, following his consultation with the leaders of the provinces and territories, amongst other deliberations that he might undertake.
Commissioner, I have a couple of questions about the memorandum that was prepared for the Prime Minister that afternoon, so I wonder if I might have your indulgence to take a few extra minutes to ask those questions.
Sure, go ahead.
A couple of minutes, but don't abuse.
Thank you.
Clerk, could you please call up document SSMNSC.CAN403224 and that's the Memorandum to Cabinet.
And you'll be glad to know I'm not going to go through in detail and talk about the test for declaring a public order emergency.
Sharon, I was kind of looking forward to that again.
Are you conceding it?
No, no, not at all.
But I'll leave those arguments for another time.
Mr. McAdam, can I just correct you?
This is not a memorandum to cabinet.
This is a decision note to the Prime Minister, just to be clear, sir.
Thank you for the correction.
Clerk, if you could go to page 8 of that document and about partway through just a little bit farther, that's good.
And this, oh, it says this a couple of times in the document.
I'll read those words at the top.
It says, "In addition, PCO is of the view that this is a national emergency situation that is urgent, critical, temporary." and seriously endangers the health and safety of Canadians and cannot be effectively dealt with uniquely by the provinces or territories.
And I wondered what you meant by the word uniquely in that sentence.
And I know that you had indicated earlier today...
That there was some concern that provinces were not fully using the powers and authorities that they had.
And is that what you were getting at with that word uniquely?
I wouldn't say that there was a concern that provinces and territories were not using all of the authorities available to them.
I think it was an observation.
Going back earlier in the deliberations around whether or not there was still some scope to work with provinces and territories using their existing authorities to do more to deal with the protest separate side.
In terms of the language here, I believe, again, my layman's interpretation is that what we're trying to get at in the invocation of the Emergency Act is that The powers in the Emergency Act are put in place to deal with a situation which is a threat of serious violence,
all of those other criteria that you see there, that can't be dealt with by any province or territory acting individually, uniquely.
Perhaps awkwardly worded out.
I can maybe add, if you allow me, that...
The proposed measures here were not trumping any provincial or territorial jurisdictions.
So while we were adding measures and authorities, we were not displacing provincial jurisdictions.
So they were able, as also law enforcement, to continue to exercise their respective authorities.
But we came to the view.
That separately they were not able to deal with the national situation.
So I'm still a bit confused about the word uniquely and I just want to clarify were you suggesting that the provinces could effectively deal with the situation but there's something unique about what was happening in February that No, I think, sorry, Mr. McCown, I don't believe that was the intention of this language.
It was meant to say that the provinces and territories could not deal with the situation on their own.
And that is why the Governor and Council would invoke the Emergency Act to deal with a situation which provides extraordinary powers.
Which supplement those powers and authorities of provinces and territories to deal with the situation which we, as you see here, we think met the test of a national emergency.
Okay, and one final matter.
Clerk, if I could get you to go back to page four of that document near the top.
And on that page, you indicate that the First Minister's meeting will meet the requirements for consultation with the provinces under the Emergencies Act.
So I take it it wasn't your position that it was necessary to get the consent of the provinces before invoking the Act, was it?
I do not believe that that is the requirement in the Emergency Act.
And it wasn't even necessary to get the support of the majority of the provinces, was it?
That is not, I believe, the requirement in the Emergency Act.
And so really, in order to fulfill that consultation requirement in the Emergencies Act, all you needed to do was meet with the provinces.
It didn't really matter what their views are or what they had to say about the matter, did it?
I don't believe that is a fair representation, Mr. McAdam.
I think it's fair to say that there was a First Minister's meeting in which the Prime Minister...
And his ministers, there were a number of them who were in attendance, set out the situation, set out the proposed course of action, listened and asked questions of provincial and territorial leaders about whether they had plans, intentions, ideas, suggestions, proposals about other things that could be done to address the situation.
So it's not, I think you are mischaracterizing it, sir.
But you agree that there was a lot of opposition from, I believe you said earlier, or perhaps it was Ms. Duran, the Prairie Provinces, the Maritimes.
There was a lot of concerns being raised, right?
I believe, Madame Duran said the Prairie Provinces and the province of Quebec, sir.
And the Government of Canada decided to go ahead anyway, correct?
The Governor and Council, the Government of Canada, chose to invoke the Act.
I think you're now out of time.
That's a perfect place to end, Commissioner.
Thank you very much.
Those are all my questions.
Okay.
Next, I'd like to call on the CCF, please.
Ms. Charette, Ms. Rouen, my name is Sujit Choudhury.
I'm counsel for the CCF.
I know it's been a long day, so I just have a few questions for you.
The Canadian Constitution Foundation.
That's for the record.
Thank you, sir.
Sorry.
So, Mishret, you said in your testimony today that one of your roles is to serve as a secretary to cabinet.
That is correct.
And that in that role, you set or you participate in the setting of agendas for cabinet meetings.
You said you determine attendance and that attendance includes, as we've seen in the cabinet minutes put I oversee that process.
I don't personally necessarily arrange every single meeting, every single agenda.
I have a team that works with me on these things.
But yes, you are correct to say agendas attendance.
The agenda, I would say, just I should clarify, in case I wasn't clear, Mr. Chowdhury, that the agendas are proposed to the chair and approved by the chair.
So we then issue the agenda to ministers who then arrive with the agenda.
Understood.
And you attend those meetings yourself?
Secretary of the Cabinet.
And as you said, you have a responsibility to ensure that if Cabinet is to deliberate or make a decision, that it has all the correct information before it.
That is correct, sir.
And you also said that they are, unlike Cabinet Committee meetings, you said they're run in a very structured fashion where the Prime Minister chairs and officials speak if they're called upon.
That is what I said, sir.
Okay.
So I'd like to take you to the cabinet meeting of February 13th.
So I take it that given the importance of that meeting, you were centrally involved in setting the agenda.
I was advising the Prime Minister on the setting of the agenda for that extraordinary cabinet meeting.
It was not a regularly scheduled cabinet meeting.
And you also then were centrally involved in determining the attendance.
At that meeting.
And in particular, you were involved in ensuring that Commissioner Luckey, Deputy Minister Stewart, and Monsieur Vigneault were at that meeting.
I would say that given the topic, I would have expected those deputies to be invited to support their, and agency heads, to support their minister.
I'm just trying to remember whether I actually looked at the attendance list, but I would have expected, and I would have asked that they be in attendance.
And the invitation would have come from the Privy Council office, correct?
That is correct.
If not from you directly, that's certainly by your ministry.
I have a team that organizes cabinet meetings.
That's correct.
And so we've had testimony.
Excuse me for a second.
Please, please.
Oh.
Yeah, my colleague, Madame Doron, is just correcting me that because of the fact we were dealing with virtual meetings as opposed to, it's a technicality, but, you know, to be clear, important, that because we're dealing with a virtual meeting as opposed to an in-person meeting, it is possible that the invitation may have come through a different channel than our normal.
Cabinet Papers Unit that sends out invitations and organizes meetings.
It may have come through a virtual meeting organizer, which we euphemistically refer to as the Maple Leaf.
And is the Maple Leaf lodged institutionally in the Privy Council office?
For cabinet meetings?
I would think so.
I believe it's between the Privy Council office and the Prime Minister's office.
Okay, fair enough.
But at the center?
Yes, sir.
At the center.
Okay.
And so we've had evidence put to us this week, put to the commissioner, as follows.
And have you read the CSIS interview panel interview summary?
I have not had a chance to do that.
Well, with your permission, and with the commissioner's position, I should say, I'd like to put up on the screen, if we could, witness...
WTS venue 060.
This is the CSIS?
This is the CSIS.
It's Mr. Vigneault's test evidence, and it's been referred to many times this week.
In the interview summary, as opposed to his in-camera evidence.
Yeah, I take it there's no objection?
Yep.
Okay.
No objection.
Okay, go ahead.
So if we could pull it up, please.
And this is just so it's the public version.
Yeah, this is the unclassified version.
So if you could just go to page eight.
You could scroll down to recommendation to cabinet.
Okay, let's stop there, please.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
So just if you could, I'm just going to read this into the record.
And if you could read along with me, please.
It's Monsieur Vigneault learned.
That the Emergencies Act referenced the threat definition set out in Section 2 of the CSIS Act once the federal government began to seriously consider invoking the EA between February 10th and 13th.
He requested that the service prepare a threat assessment on the risks associated with the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
He felt an obligation to clearly convey the service's position That there did not exist a threat to the security of Canada as defined in the services legal mandate.
And then further on, in the bottom paragraph, pardon me, yes, the paragraph that begins, Monsieur Vigneault discussed.
He said he discussed this threat assessment at the IRG on February 13th.
And then he says the document was also available for distribution for the cabinet meeting.
But he does not know if it was distributed by the PCO.
So can you please answer, was this threat assessment distributed to the Cabinet, yes or no?
I believe I've said earlier that it was.
It was.
And this was the only threat assessment provided to the Cabinet or to the Prime Minister prior to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
Can I just take you to the paragraph preceding that, Mr. Chowdhury?
Yes.
The threat assessment was with respect to the invocation of the Emergency Act legislation.
I believe that I have given testimony already that indicates that the invocation of the Emergency Act, as in many things, is a balancing act between are you acting too early, too late,
doing too much, too little, And the threat assessment prepared by the service, which was discussed at the IRG, as Mr. Vigneault indicates, and which was available to ministers, was assessing what the risk was of the invocation of the emergency legislation.
And the CSIS assessment was that there was a risk that the invocation of the Emergency Act risked further inflaming IMVE rhetoric and individuals.
And you can read the rest of it, holding accelerationist or anti-government views.
As we came to see the next day, or am I getting this right?
No, I'm going to stop there.
So, Ms. Charette, was the services assessment that required that there was no threat to national security, was that shared with the cabinet?
That was the nature of the threat assessment prepared by the service as indicated by Mr. Vigneault in this statement.
The threat assessment prepared by the service was that the invocation of emergency legislation risked further inflaming the rhetoric and individuals holding acceleration.
If I may add, what I said earlier is that we knew that CSIS assessment for the purpose of the application of CSIS Act was done and that CSIS concluded.
That for the purpose of their act, the level of threat was not met.
And was that view shared with the cabinet?
Yes or no?
I mean, I can say that I knew.
I think it was shared in previous IRGs, but that was not news for us when we gave the advice.
I'm sorry, just a simple question.
Was that assessment shared with the cabinet, yes or no?
With the full cabinet as opposed to the...
Yes, the February 13th meeting.
Was that assessment shared with the cabinet, yes or no?
The fact that CSIS didn't feel that there was a national security...
that there was a threat.
Yes.
Security of Canada required to invoke the CSIS powers and authorities.
Was that shared with the cabinet, yes or no?
Or do you not know?
I'm just testing my memory, sir, to make sure I'm giving you the very best information.
I believe that...
Mr. Vigneault did not speak at the Cabinet.
I mean, and here, as I said, we knew that it was shared in previous IRG.
And, you know, some of the Cabinet members were not members of the IRG.
So I don't know if that element of CCIS was clearly said during full cabinet, but for sure some minister, But you're not saying that you don't know if that view was shared with the full cabinet at its meeting on February 13th?
I cannot confirm that.
What I can confirm though is that...
The threat, as we defined both the clerk and myself earlier here this afternoon, in terms of the threat coming from, you know, all elements, and I won't go back again, but from Transport, GAC and others, that was discussed.
And can I go on to add one thing, which is in the...
Discussion at Cabinet.
I'm going to be careful here.
In the deliberations at Cabinet, in terms of the considerations related to the invoking of the Act, it's fair to say that there was a discussion about the nature of the threat environment, the legal threshold, the tests for invoking, and the evidence that the thresholds had been met.
But you don't know if Mr. Vigneault's assessment was shared with the Cabinet.
So, just one thing.
Minister Vigneault's assessment on the fact that invoking the Emergency Act can inflame the situation, that was shared, and we've heard that also from provinces.
And I'm not asking you about that.
I'm asking about what he stated in the previous paragraph of his evidence.
Do we know if his views...
So I think we answered it.
We cannot confirm that.
I think I...
Share with the best of my knowledge that I'm sure that some ministers were aware of that, key ministers involved in the management of the convoy, the members of the IRG, that the PM, Prime Minister, sorry, was aware, but I cannot confirm whether or not it was discussed.
Like, you know, that CSIS reports to the Public Safety Minister, what he said, we cannot disclose.
To be honest, I really don't know, so I cannot confirm that.
And so, have you had a chance to review Deputy Minister Stewart's testimony from this week?
Well, I've listened to part of it, yeah.
So, I'll put to you that under cross-examination this week, Deputy Minister Stewart testified on Monday that CSIS was not asked to provide this assessment to Cabinet.
Do you have any reason to disagree with Deputy Minister Stewart's testimony?
I believe I said, Mr. Chowdhury, that Mr. Vigneault did not speak at the cabinet meeting.
Therefore, he did not read that into the record himself.
So, I now would like to turn to the memo.
Commissioner, that you wrote to the Prime Minister.
You're going to have to make it very quick.
You're way over time already, and I'm generous, but there are limits.
There are limits, I know, Commissioner.
So, in the memo in which you recommended to the Prime Minister that the emergency is not to be triggered, you were aware of Mr. Vigneault's view, but nonetheless, you determined...
That there was a threat to national security, correct?
We can go.
I'm happy to take you through my logic again, if you'd like.
I was aware that Mr. Vigneault felt that there was a threshold for CSIS to launch an investigation under the CSIS Act was not met.
And you relied on the National Security and Intelligence Advisor view, who kind of integrated, as she put it in her testimony yesterday, information from across the federal government to arrive at her view.
She was one of the advisors that I relied on, sir.
She was not the only advisor that I relied on.
So I would like to put this point to you, that in a constitutional democracy...
To prevent the abuse of executive powers by an elected government, it is imperative that the views of a professional, nonpartisan, and expert security services be front and center.
And that they not just be a factor, but they be at the core of whether a government decides to invoke emergency powers.
And what you've said today...
Is that you're not sure if Monsieur Vigneault's views were before the full cabinet.
You've distinguished the legal relevance of his views.
And you're suggesting that what the security sector agency says...
Are you coming to a question or making a presentation?
Are you suggesting that what the CSIS says isn't at the core of what makes it reasonable?
To determine if a public order emergency exists.
What makes it reasonable to determine?
I don't understand what your question is.
I think that...
Please.
I'm sorry if you didn't have the opportunity to, you know, the cross-examination that I had with Mr. Miller, but I think that we talked about the difference between who was the decision maker.
Under the Emergency Act versus who is the decision maker under the CSIS Act.
And the purpose of those two acts were different.
And what we were looking at was different.
I think that what you said when you talk about Madame Thomas is that she was integrated views, but views were coming from Minister of Transport.
Views were coming from public safety.
I mean, I can go on and on, as I said before.
We saw threats from port of entry.
We saw threats in terms of presence of guns.
We saw kids being used as shield.
We saw harassment on the streets.
The threats that we were collecting, we saw impacts on our trades.
The threat we were assessing in order to determine was not only coming from CSIS.
CSIS is a very important thing.
And CSIS did or made a decision under the Act to determine whether or not they were able to open new investigation.
But you will hear from CSIS about the views of the director.
And you should ask him that question.
What was the views of the director in terms of the risk of the convoy, even if he didn't open new investigations, as he had to look at the situation also?
So I think we really have to make a difference here between the role of the director in managing his acts versus the role of the director in terms of...
The input and the information he can provide to us.
Commissioner, I think I'm way past my time, so I'll wrap up.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next is the Democracy Fund, GCCF.
Good evening.
My name is Alan Hohner and I am a lawyer at the Democracy Fund.
I'm just going to put on my timer to make sure I don't go too long here.
My friend from the CCF was just asking you about a threat assessment from CSIS.
I think prior to that, he put a statement to you from CSIS, and it is still up here.
And I'll just ask the clerk to leave it up.
And it says here, he requested that the service prepare a threat assessment on the risks associated with the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
He felt an obligation to clearly convey the service's position that there did not exist a threat to the security of Canada.
If I can ask the clerk to please pull up ts.nsc.can.001.50172.
underscore REL dot zero zero one I believe my friend, Mr. Miller, brought this up earlier today.
Okay.
Just while we're waiting for that document, Ms. Thruang, you would agree with me.
Okay, well, let's...
Can we just make it a little bit bigger, please?
And can we scroll down a little bit?
And so in the first paragraph here that's unredacted...
We see a reference to the Emergency Act and how it might galvanize broader anti-government narratives.
Can we scroll down a little bit more?
And we see again that it has the potential to similarly radicalize Canadians.
And in the last paragraph that's above us right now, we see that the Declaration of Emergency...
By the province of Ontario under the Emergency Management and Civil Protections Act has resulted in a significant increase in violent rhetoric towards the Premier of Ontario and other senior elected officials.
If we go down a little bit more.
And what we don't see in this threat assessment is the statement by the CSIS director in which he says that there is no threat to the security of Canada.
We don't see that anywhere in this document.
Is that right?
I haven't read the full document, so I'd have to go back to the top, but I'll...
But I'm going to put it to you that we don't see that because it's redacted.
I'm going to object to that question.
Fine, I'll move on.
And this statement was never put by you to the Cabinet.
I did not address the Cabinet at this moment.
Thank you.
Ms. Drouin, you would agree with me that CSIS does not investigate family violence because...
Family violence does not constitute a threat to the security of Canada.
Agreed?
I guess you are referring to my previous response where I wanted to make the difference that potential criminal offenses can bring serious violence without triggering the role of CSIS.
That's fine.
I'm not asking for an explanation.
I'm just asking you if you agree with that statement.
Sorry, can you repeat the question?
I wanted to give you the context.
CSIS does not investigate family violence because family violence does not constitute a threat to the security of Canada.
Do you agree?
I agree.
Okay, Ms. Charette, you made the point, and just tell me if I'm repeating it correctly, I think you made the point that a CSIS investigation under Section 2 does not always trigger the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Am I repeating that correctly?
I believe that's what I said.
Okay, and you would agree?
Has not ever, given that the Emergence Act had not been invoked until February the 14th, 2022.
Sure, and I think you'll agree with me that there are different types of emergencies under the Emergencies Act, but let's just stick with the public order emergency.
For that type of emergency to exist, there have to be threats to the security of Canada.
But the emergency also has to be so serious as to constitute a national emergency.
Do you agree?
Yes.
And it's possible that there would be threats to the security of Canada that don't rise to the level of a national emergency.
Yes, I believe that's also true.
And that would explain why the Governor of Council doesn't invoke the Emergencies Act every time there are threats to the security of Canada.
Thank you very much.
In your memo to the Prime Minister, I won't pull it up, but on page 11, this is the memorandum dated February 14th.
On invocation then, sir?
Yeah, I think the title is Memo to Canada, but whatever it's called.
At paragraph 11, you say, when you're discussing communications, that the government could lean on like-minded messaging from external stakeholders and partners to support the need.
For the measures at this time.
What are you referring to?
Who are these partners?
Who are these stakeholders?
I'm sorry.
I asked for you to pull it up.
Thank you very much.
What is it you want?
The invocation memo, page 11, I believe.
The memo, I believe it is ssm.nsc.cn403224.
That's correct.
And if we can go to page 11, please.
Apologies, Mr. Connor.
No, please don't apologize.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay, so right at the bottom here, for public communications, further public communications should emphasize the fair and proportioned action taken by government.
And then the last sentence, the government could also lean on like-minded messaging from external stakeholders and partners.
To support the need for the measures at this time?
Who are those partners?
Who are those stakeholders?
I think it's fair to say that we have heard from organizations like some of the business people in Ottawa, as an example.
We have heard from...
Sorry, just give me a minute here to just get my thoughts clear about this.
Is it a reference to the RCMP?
No, sir.
Is it a reference to newspapers?
External stakeholders and partners would not include a government organization, and if it meant the media, that would have been...
As the media know, these would be external organizations.
I believe we had had an ongoing conversation led by my colleague in the Department of Transport and the Minister of Transport with the Trucking Association, as an example.
We had business associations across the country that were calling on the importance of keeping those ports of entry open.
So I think there were a number of stakeholders who were interested in a peaceful resolution of what had become.
A serious national emergency.
Understood.
Thank you.
One last question.
There was a threat assessment referred to in this memo to the Prime Minister.
And my friend from the government of Saskatchewan brought up an email from Jody Thomas.
And that email says, I need an assessment for Janice about the threat of these blockades, the characters involved, the weapons, the motivation.
You recall that, of course.
It was just up before you.
I do, sir.
Okay, and I'll ask the clerk to please pull up pb.nsc.can.403462 _rel0001.
And just while we're waiting for the document to come up, I can tell you that it came up in the examination of Commissioner Brenda Luckey and its correspondence from Mike McDonald to Adriana Polas.
And Mike McDonald is from the PCO, is that right?
Yes, he is.
Okay, and it looks like Adriana Polos is from the RCMP.
Now, from Commissioner Lucky's exam, I think we concluded that Jody Thomas' request for a threat assessment was passed down to Ms. Palaz.
And if we stroll down a little bit here.
A little bit more, please.
Just a little bit more.
I'm sorry, just up a little bit.
Pardon me.
Right there.
If we look at this email, we see that she identifies three groups.
And the first group is a group called the Three Percenters.
The second is called Diaglon, if you scroll down a little bit.
And the last one is called Canadians First.
Canada First.
And I put it to you that these are the only IMVE groups that were identified by the RCMP.
Those are the three groups that are in this email.
That Ms. Pillow sent to the Privy Council Office.
Did the RCMP identify any other IMDE groups to you?
I believe yes.
Okay, but can you tell us who they are?
Maybe I'll do it the inverse way, which is, to be clear, as I said, this is an email between someone in the RCMP and someone in the Privy Council Office.
This information was not contained in the memorandum that went to the Prime Minister, the decision note.
I'm not sure that I turn my mind to the details of who the IMVE extremists.
were, other than to be reported by the RCMP and other security agencies, that there were known IMVE, I think they used the word target subjects of interest.
I'm sorry, I just didn't hear that last part.
Okay.
Just a last sentence, please.
That I believe that I was told that there were IMVE extremists by the RCMP and other security agencies, but I can't, I'm not...
The specific identification of those, I can't give you a comprehensive list.
Okay, and I'm out of time here, so let me just ask you one last question here.
Okay.
You would agree with me that in your memo to the...
To the Prime Minister, dated February 14th, you told him there is no current evidence of significant implications by extremist groups or international sponsors.
I'll take your word for that.
Can I suggest as well, as I said, this is an input, the official record that I would commend to you in terms of the evidence upon which the government based the decision.
To invoke the Emergency Act is contained in the Section 58 justification, which was tabled before the House of Commons, and I think that's the most reliable place to find the evidence that the government used to rely on to invoke.
But the memo contains your advice to the Prime Minister.
That is correct, and this is not in my memo, sir.
Thank you.
Okay, next is the...
UCLA, please.
Thank you.
Good evening, Clerk Charette and Madame Dwayne.
My name is Eva Krajewska and I'm counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
So I know we've spent a lot of time on the CSIS part of the...
There's no threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act.
But with respect to Section 3 of the Emergencies Act itself, there is two categories: 3A or 3B.
And 3A is that there is a national emergency that is urgent and critical.
Of a temporary nature that seriously endangers the lives, health, or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with.
And I understand that that is the part that the government relied upon to invoke the Emergencies Act, correct?
I agree.
And those two parts, capacity and authority, I read those as authority meaning legal authority and legislative.
Tools that were available to the government.
Would that be a fair reading of that?
Is that how you understood that?
Yes.
And capacity.
To me, the word capacity connotes an issue of resources, correct?
Operational capacity.
Madame Charette and Madame Dwayne, from your witness statement, I understand that leading up to February 9th and February 14th, you both expressed frustration, or maybe not frustration, but frustration with the inability of the local police officers in both Ottawa and Windsor of being able to execute on their operational plans.
Do you recall stating that in your witness statements?
So I don't think...
I don't think have used frustration.
No, sorry.
I will read you the part that you said.
You said she, which I think refers to you, Madame Ruin, she recalled losing hope that local police forces in Ottawa and Windsor were capable of executing on their operational plans.
Is that fair?
I think that...
I don't recall talking about losing hope here.
I think that what I've said at the beginning of this is we were facing a situation where all the indicators were towards federal symbols and that we were being asked to do something and yet we didn't have jurisdiction.
To do a lot of things.
So we were asking ourselves, and of course, we were getting worried, if I may use that word, especially on week two and week three, whether or not we were going to see an outcome or a result or that the situation will be resolved.
But I don't think that we lost, you know, I don't think that I've said that we lost hope.
We were worried.
We were really worried.
And we came to the conclusion that maybe the actual resources, tools, and authorities that provinces were having were not being the successes we were looking for or being used and being inefficient.
Okay.
And if I can take you to your witness statement, just so that you can recall, because I want to take you to another passage.
This is WTS 6074.
I think Commissioner Lucky, it says that Commissioner Lucky grew frustrated with the lack of action by police agencies.
And then it states, if you can go to page 11, please, Mr. Registrar.
Thank you.
This frustration was shared by Ms. Drouin and Ms. Charette, who felt that existing authorities, such as municipal bylaws, for instance, were simply not being used to clear protests.
They understand the context, yeah.
Yes.
But at the same time, you appreciated that there was a need to respect police independence and neither the public service nor the politicians could direct police officers directly, correct?
Correct.
And I put that to you in the context that later on coming up to the IRG meeting of February 13th, you were taken to this earlier.
I think the evidence is that by February 13th, the RCMP, the OPS, and the OPP had signed off on a plan to remove the demonstrators from Ottawa.
But I think the evidence we heard from Commissioner Lucky is that she did not express that directly to the IRG on February 13th.
And I think, Madame Charette, you confirmed this today, that that is not something that you...
I believe we heard there was a plan to deal with the protests in Ottawa.
I would not characterize it the way you just did, which is to clear entirely.
There was, as always, and I think is implicit in the paragraph that I'm trying to read very quickly, and I think we've talked about this, there were authorities, there were bylaws that were not being fully enforced.
That was a decision of...
Law enforcement, local law enforcement, as to whether or not they thought they had the resources to do that safely without impairing officer safety.
We saw, for example, that they were trying to enforce restrictions on the movement of fuel.
In and around the convoy in Ottawa.
And we saw cases where police officers who were trying to enforce that were being harassed and intimidated and threatened.
We saw protesters filling those cans with water as opposed to gas.
So there was lots going on.
So when it came to the plan, the plan was about how to, as I understand it, The various iterations of the plan were about two parts of this.
One was about how do you try and get the numbers down to the core and then so that whatever law enforcement resources were going to have to be used in terms of actual enforcement, you could kind of get the size of the problem down.
And the plan, as I believe it had been explained to us, was about Two-phase, but the details of the plan to clear the occupation in Ottawa was not available to us on the 13th of February.
Right.
The details of the plan were not available to you, but I think I also understood that you may not have known that the RCMP and the OPP had signed off on a plan that they had confidence in could remove the protesters in Ottawa as of February 13th, correct?
We had heard.
As I said many times about plans that didn't get turned into action.
Right.
Exactly.
So you had, over the week leading up to February 13th, you had been briefed on various plans that you also did not actually see come to fruition.
So even if you were told about a plan on February 13th, at that point...
Part of you felt like, as you said earlier today, that was one factor, but maybe not a determinative factor in terms of whether to invoke the EA or not, just based on what had been happening for that week.
I don't mean to sound dismissive, and so I worry that what I just said sounds dismissive of the very serious efforts of law enforcement at the...
Local level with the OPP and the RCMP to deal with the various situations.
I think they were working as best they could in an extraordinarily difficult situation to deal with the occupation in Ottawa.
And I do believe they gave serious effort to trying to figure out how best to do that.
We had heard about this a number of times.
The details of any kind of tactical plan would never have been shared with us.
I would say that there was no single plan at any single site that would have necessarily changed my advice to the Prime Minister about the totality of the circumstances which led to the invocation of the Emergency Act.
and uh manager i think you mentioned earlier that and miss i think commissioner like it confirmed this the irg was a A platform where people were at liberty to speak up.
They did not need to feel called upon before they could share their views with the other members of the IRG.
And that's fair.
I believe that is an accurate statement.
Madam Charette, you mentioned earlier in your testimony that you appreciate that there were aspects of the demonstration that were lawful and that there were aspects of the demonstrations that were unlawful, and you were careful to make that distinction.
I think I would, yes, and I would also say that there were individuals involved who were there for the purpose of peaceful protest, and there were individuals who were part of the protest who had other.
Some of which I believe to have been, as I said earlier, around a policy motive like getting rid of mandates or a political objective like overthrowing the government, replacing them with a new form of government.
But once the Emergency Act was invoked and there were restrictions placed on public assembly, including geographical restrictions, that...
I think that's part of the reason, and I...
We didn't have a chance to look in detail at that communications section, but an important part of the rollout and the implementation of the Emergency Act was to make sure that those who were involved in what was becoming covered by the Emergency Act knew and knew to go home.
They'd heard from ministers and the Prime Minister, they'd heard from the Premier, it was time to go home.
And it was clear then that...
It was important to make clear to people who were participating what the consequences were of staying.
And so there was not consideration given to giving them a space to continue to protest at the seat of Parliament in Ottawa?
There was, there were, there's lots of other places to go and protest in Ottawa during the duration of the occupation while the Emergency Act was being invoked.
And we saw people who came back at the end who were protesting as the act was being revoked.
But while the act was in place and in the area that was designated, this was an illegal activity and there were consequences.
So they were subject to the discretionary decisions by a law enforcement about how to proceed.
With the implementation of those powers and authorities.
If I may add also, this is why when we invoke the Emergency Act and the measures we adopt under the Emergency Act have to be time limited.
And this is why we invested a lot of time to monitor the situation to make sure that we don't keep the Emergency Act if it's not necessary.
That is how we balance a little bit the impact of the Emergency Act.
Right.
I have two more questions.
One is a bit technical, and I hope you can educate me on this, Madame Charette.
Your decision memo to the Prime Minister, does that end up forming part of the record of what goes before the Governor and Council?
Does that form part of that record?
No, it does not.
It does not.
So that is a document that only goes to the Prime Minister.
It does not go to Cabinet, and it does not form part of the record before the Governor and Council.
That is correct.
And the last...
The documents before the Governor and Council are different documents.
It was the proposed proclamation and subsequent regulations.
The last part is with respect to the definition of the CSIS Act, and you were taken to this.
And I know that you've disagreed with counsel that who is the decision-maker versus CSIS versus the governor and counsel, but I think you agree that it's the definition in the CSIS Act that applies.
It's not a different definition.
Correct?
It's the same wording that has to be interpreted within the respective acts.
Here we were talking about the Emergency Act.
By a different decision maker.
By a different decision maker, yes.
Thank you.
And you both mentioned the safeguards that exist within the act once the Emergency Act is invoked, including...
The parliamentary process, this commission, the fact that it has to be time limited.
But I think you'd also agree that there are ex-ante thresholds.
There are safeguards in the Act about the thresholds that need to be met that are also very important in order to ensure that we only invoke the Emergencies Act in exceptional circumstances.
You'd agree with that as well.
I agree with you and also add that The measures that a government adopt have to be charter compliance.
Yes.
Which is an important safeguard in terms of the actions that are available to be taken by.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Okay, thank you.
next call on the city of ottawa Good afternoon, almost evening.
My name is Alyssa Tompkins.
I'm one of the lawyers representing the City of Ottawa.
I just have one quick question for you today, and it's to the clerk.
If our clerk could bring up document SSM.
I knew we were going to get in trouble with that at some point.
Switch jobs.
We've had a lot of a lot of commissioners until this point.
So now we're getting multiple clerks.
So SSM dot CIN dot 0000850 08. So if we can just scroll down to the bottom of page two, just so the witness can see what we're talking about.
There's an email from Rob Stewart, and it's attaching the engagement proposal I'm sure you're familiar with.
And if we scroll up, we see Ms. Thomas forwards it to you.
And then if we keep scrolling, we see an email from you to Katie Telford, and it says, I would like to greenlight this today if possible.
So is that, were you wanting to, my question is just, were you wanting to greenlight it?
I wanted the proposal around engagement to be considered by the incident response group of ministers.
Okay, so you were neutral as to the engagement proposal yourself?
Oh, I have a point of view.
However, I probably had to have a point of view at this point in time.
This is about the decision to...
I put the engagement proposal before Ministers and the Prime Minister at the Incident Response Group, which happened on the 12th of February.
Okay.
No, that's the clarification I was looking for.
So, thank you very much, Clerk, and those are my questions.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next is the Ottawa Coalition.
My name is Christine Johnson, and I'm one of the Council for the Ottawa Coalition of Residents and Businesses.
I have some questions for you both and you can answer whoever feels able to answer with regards specifically to your assessment of the threat posed by the situation in Ottawa.
So I'd like to start off by noting that yesterday we heard Jody Thomas discuss the process of determining the distinction between lawful and unlawful protests.
And the difficulty sometimes in determining when peaceful protests become violent protests.
And with regards to determining whether the protest activity involves the threat or use of serious violence, Ms. Thomas stated that the only measure can't be violence of a nature of January 6th.
And I understood her statement to mean...
It's not only violence that rises to the level of an insurrection.
And I would take it from your testimony today that you would agree with that statement?
I want to say two things, if I could, Ms. Johnson.
First is that in the note...
The decision note that I sent to the Prime Minister, I did not do a specific assessment of the threat in Ottawa.
What I was looking at was the national picture.
As for your question about violence, I think was the...
Was that the second part of your question?
Sorry.
I think violence has a lot of different meanings.
I think a punch in the face is violence.
It could also be violent when you feel threatened or intimidated, when your ability to go about your daily life is being thwarted, your ability to get to a medical appointment, your ability to access 911 services, your ability to have an ambulance come to your house if, in fact, you're in need of medical assistance, if your job is threatened because the supplies don't get to your factory and your shift doesn't go in.
There's a number of different manifestations of violence.
Short of the kind of, you know, spectacular, I think, violence that might have been implicit in something like, I think, the events of January the 6th, which I think I can tell you, as a proud Canadian, I hope I never see here.
Thank you for that answer.
And it feeds into my next question, which was...
Is it correct that, to your knowledge, neither the Emergencies Act nor the CSIS Act defines the term serious violence?
I do not believe.
And it's in fact, sorry, I was just going to continue to say it's in fact open to interpretation, as you suggest.
I believe that to be the case.
But I think you have to read the two words together.
I certainly, when I put my mind to this, thought about a test of serious violence.
Right.
And you've testified today that you believed that the definition of a threat of serious violence or acts of serious violence under Section 2C of the CESIS Act, that definition was met and justified the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
Is that fair?
That was my testimony, yes, Ms. Johnson.
Thank you.
And you gave some examples to my friend, Mr. Miller, and this is for Ms. Druin.
You gave some examples to my friend, Mr. Miller, of the types of things that you considered in looking at, you know, from all the inputs you were receiving of what was going on at the ground.
The types of serious violence that occurred.
And you gave examples of threat to the economy, impact on trade, impacts on workers, disruption at courts of entry, as well as, you know, the on-the-ground harassment, intimidation, these sorts of things, assaultive behavior.
So is it fair to say that your understanding and interpretation of serious violence included more than just physical violence, but also economic and psychological violence?
I agree.
Okay.
And just, if I may have just a couple of minutes, Commissioner, just to ask specifically about the situation in Ottawa and how certain things factored into your decision making.
We've heard testimony from both residents and law enforcement about people in Ottawa who experienced harassing and assaultive behavior.
We've heard that not all of this was reported to police.
And in some circumstances when it was reported to police, it wasn't always followed up on, in part because sometimes the nature of these circumstances were difficult to pinpoint perpetrators and follow up and investigate.
Was this something that factored into your consideration of the serious violence that was occurring?
I would say that the...
Total picture in terms of what was happening in Ottawa, including, but certainly not specifically, the fact that law enforcement resources were extraordinarily taxed to be able to deal with both the occupation as well as the regular, if I could call it that, regular policing requirements in Ottawa, was a sign of the magnitude of the threat and how the threat had escalated through the peace.
And I think that...
Both the substance of that as well as the dynamic and the escalation were factors in my consideration.
And would you consider the fact that residents of Ottawa were subjected to the display of hateful symbols?
We've seen messages.
We've seen flags.
Would you accept that people experiencing that kind of conduct, especially in, in particular, minority communities, would consider that sort of conduct a form of violence towards them?
They may well, yes.
And would you consider that a form of violence?
If I was the subject of it, I may well feel that way.
I mean, the groups that you're describing, Ms. Johnson, I think it's fair to say have some form of vulnerability.
And so if you're a 2SLGBTQI plus individual and you are subjected to a threat against your choice of your sexual preference, your sexuality, you may find that quite intimidating.
And similarly...
Misogyny, anti-Semitism, and so on.
So some form of identity being threatened or intimidated or criticized, I think, can be quite jarring.
And was there consideration, again, in your understanding of whether there was serious violence involved in these protests?
What about the situation of swarms of maskless protesters entering into stores and restaurants, you know, posing serious risk potentially of illness to employees, business owners, other patrons?
Would that be a form of violence that you consider?
I think in my...
In my earlier explanation, I indicated kind of public unrest, including the kinds of behavior you describe, with or without the public health dimension, would be a manifestation of a situation which would be part of that broad threat and risk environment.
You're well over your time, so if you could wrap up, please.
I'll leave it there.
That's fine, Commissioner.
Thank you very much, panel, for answering my questions.
Okay, thank you.
Next is the OPP.
Good afternoon.
Thank you, Commissioner.
And good afternoon to you both.
My name is Jananne Cabersi, and I'm one of the counsel for the OPP.
So I have just a few minutes with you today.
So I'd like to ask you just a few short questions and briefly deal about your understanding of What was happening in that weekend leading up to the arrival of the convoy in Ottawa.
So if you cast your mind back to that time period, and we have seen some of the documentation, but I'd just like to ask you, did you have any awareness at that point that there were some indications that this convoy of truckers Which was going to number potentially in the hundreds in terms of vehicles heading towards Ottawa.
Were you aware of that basic fact at that point?
So, Ms. Caversa, you were speaking about the week beginning the 24th of January, the Monday.
Is that what you're referring to?
That's right.
So I think, I can't exactly remember what day.
I believe...
24th or 25th, we heard for the first time in a team meeting that there were reports that there was at least a significant number of protesters coming to Ottawa.
I can't remember whether there were other sites at the time that were mentioned or not, but certainly Ottawa sticks in my mind.
And the exact details of that, I'll tell you, I didn't retain.
Those events were being monitored by other folks in the Privy Council office.
You may recall earlier I said that there was a cabinet retreat underway.
A lot of my attention was focused on supporting the cabinet retreat, but I had others in the organization and in the Privy Council office who were monitoring that and conducting daily briefings with ministers' offices and meetings between the PCO and PMO, which led into the ministers and so on and so forth.
So that was the beginning for sure.
Right.
And understandably, you had other matters that you were dealing with, of course.
So, can I take it, as you're saying, you had some awareness and you have some recollection of hearing that there were going to be a large number of truckers, you know, perhaps not as specific vehicles.
Thank you for that correction.
Vehicles that would include some trucks were on their way to Ottawa.
And did you have any awareness at that time that there was...
Some indication that some members of this protest group, if I call it that, were intending to stay in Ottawa until their demands with respect to vaccine requirements were met.
I would say that I did not know how long they were planning to stay or what they expected.
What they wanted to achieve before they were prepared to leave.
I would think, and I've said this earlier, that a protest was coming to Ottawa.
We got a lot of protests that they were coming for the weekend.
Sunday night arrived.
They had not left.
We were now into a very different situation.
Right.
But would you agree with me that early information That there was at least a group indicating a commitment to staying in Ottawa until certain demands were met and early indications that some vehicles including heavy machinery with the truck that were on the way to Ottawa would All
be indications that would be at least informative for you and your colleagues in terms of what you might expect.
Yes.
Yes, okay.
And so we've heard in this...
Sorry, may I add something now?
Yes, please.
I think what we have heard through the work of this Commission of Inquiry is that there were...
There was more information available that was being shared with law enforcement that we have found out after the fact.
And I think the Hendon reports is an example of the kind of information that was being shared, but that wasn't my focus at the time.
Right.
Not your focus and not within your awareness because you're not direct recipients of these reports.
They are shared within a law enforcement community.
But you'd agree that through your appropriate information channels, including the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, communicating with the RCMP, it's of course helpful to ensure that the communication channels are working effectively so that you have early information that can assist you in your role and then ultimately decision making.
I think it's absolutely true that the more better information we have about what's happening or what's going to happen will inform our actions every single time.
The fact that there may have been information known by some people but not all is, I think, what's known in the business as an intelligence gap.
We've taken a lot of steps to correct that in terms of the international dimension of our work, following up on the events of 9-11 to make sure that the information is shared, that there's an ability to assess and to integrate threat assessment.
I think the National Security Intelligence Advisor may have talked about some of that.
I think earlier I talked about there may have been gaps in what we knew or didn't know in terms of...
OSINT, open source information, social media information, and there may have been domestic sources of intelligence that maybe we need to do a better job of pulling together and looking across.
You're out of time, actually, over time, so you're going to have to wrap up.
Okay, I have one remaining question or two, Commissioner, if you might allow me, in a different area.
I'll allow one.
So pick the best one.
I'll try, Commissioner.
Thank you.
Your witness summary and some of what we've heard from both of you in your evidence acknowledges certain jurisdictional challenges, if I can put it that way, in that a public order event that is being considered As potentially a public order emergency is one that occurs in an area that doesn't engage federal jurisdiction in the sense that it's a
situation that the federal government can apply its resources to resolve.
And sorry for the long introduction, but would you find it helpful in...
Would it be helpful for you to have a more direct line of communication to certain law enforcement leaders, perhaps, with respect to options, tools, status of the police situation generally?
To assist you in being as fully informed as possible.
Well, I do.
I do believe that, you know, a better coordination, an appropriate flow of information is always helpful.
That's for sure.
And also, when it comes to Ottawa, for example, you are probably aware that we are Working on the future of Wellington, what we call the future of Wellington, to make sure that we understand and we have a better protocol on who does what, when, when it comes to the parliamentary precinct, for example.
So yes, I think that this situation that we went through in February...
Will give rise to a lot of lessons learned and I think this is one of the purposes of this Commission.
I would add to that, I think, a more comprehensive look at our critical infrastructure in the country and what the respective responsibilities are of each level of government, authorities and so on and how information is shared so that That could inform,
for example, tabletop exercises or other scenario exercises so that if we have an issue like what happened in Windsor, for instance, we wouldn't have to spend so much time trying to figure out who's got responsibility for the bridge, for the plaza, for the road to the plaza, for the highway off-ramps and all of that.
We would have a plan in a box.
That would have been exercised with respect to particularly critical infrastructure in the country.
So just to add to Madame de Royne's observation around the parliamentary precinct in Ottawa and Wellington Street.
Thank you both very much.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Okay, thank you.
Next is Council for former Chief Slowly.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
It's Nicholas DeStefano for former Chief Slowly.
We have no questions.
Okay, next is the City of Windsor.
Good evening.
My name is Jennifer King.
I'm one of the legal counsel for the City of Windsor.
And in returning my friend's offer of time from earlier today, I'm going to cede my time to Windsor Police Services.
Thank you.
Very equitable arrangement.
So the Windsor Police Service, please.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
My name is Tom McRae.
I am a counsel to the Windsor Police Service.
Yesterday, we heard evidence from Mr. Sabia, the Deputy Minister of Finance, to the fact that a peaceful resolution to the Ambassador Bridge blockade was better than a non-peaceful resolution to that blockade.
Do you agree with that proposition?
I do.
Thank you.
Do you both agree?
That a resolution that respects charter-protected rights, such as the right to protest, would be preferable to one that does not.
Agreed.
Yes.
Thank you.
Can I ask Mr. Clerk to turn up the witness statement?
It's 6074.
And while the Clerk's doing that, can I ask you, do you know when the Windsor Ambassador Bridge blockade started?
Oh, I think there were blockades that started in the week of...
I'll just get my dates here, right?
Excuse me for a moment, Mr. McRae.
Take your time.
Take your time.
I think we were seeing kind of on and off.
In and around the 5th, 6th, there was kind of slowdown, slow rolls, up, down.
And then the kind of the crescendo, if you want to call it that, happened around the 9th, 8th, 9th, 10th.
Is that fair?
I think it was the seventh.
I think it was the seventh, actually, when a truck just stopped in the middle of the road there.
There you go.
If I can take you, please, to the top of page seven of witness statement 74. Sorry, I guess I got it wrong.
Oh, I'm sorry.
It's the top of page eight.
My apologies.
And this has, the time frame of this, and maybe you could scroll off of it just to give the witnesses the proper context.
I apologize for that.
There's a heading at the top of the page.
It's about the invocation of the emergencies act.
If you could go back to the top of page 8. Now, if, and this is really a question from Adam Joanne, because as I read this statement, Ms. Joanne.
recall that PCO considered options as varied as shutting down cell towers, shutting down gas stations, and even deploying federal employees This is the part I want to focus on.
She recalled losing hope that local police forces in Ottawa and Windsor were capable of executing their operational plans as time went on and no concrete police actions materialized.
Madame Douane, when is it that you lost that hope?
Well, first of all, I think that we saw a crescendo in terms of the movements all across Canada.
And when we were approaching what I think the clerk will call the third weekend, so the week of February 9 until the 13th.
I think this is where, and I think we talked about that a lot, we were hearing about we have a plan.
And then the plan was not being executed.
And that was true for the different sites across Canada.
And I guess this is where we started to wonder whether or not provinces, law enforcement agencies were enough equipped to face the situation.
I'm sorry, just so I'm clear, you understood during the week of February 7th that Windsor had a plan and it had not executed on it?
So what I'm saying is that, and I'm not putting a date for Windsor, what I'm saying is that during the week or past February 6th until the following week,
we were hearing very often You know, update from law enforcement agencies that we have a plan to the extent that it was like something that every day we're working, we have a plan, we're working on a plan, but yet we were not seeing any action on that plan.
So I think this is what I mean, but I was losing hope.
And perhaps I can...
Add just contextually, would it be helpful, Mr. McRae, that as we went into that week, the 7th, 8th, 9th, I think you've heard earlier in our testimony on the 9th, for example, that I attended a meeting with the deputy ministers involved in kind of national security and intelligence.
Having heard a growing degree of frustration and concern on the part of ministers with the situation, to make sure that we were looking at all available instruments, all available resources, all available tools, every crazy thing.
Shut down cell towers, as an example.
Find public servants who could drive tow trucks.
Anything to try to help to resolve the situation because the situation facing law enforcement in Ottawa and Windsor were complex and challenging.
Windsor in particular, we had a lot of concern about, as you know, our colleagues from the Canadian Border Service Agency directly involved working with the police of local jurisdiction on the ground.
But what could we do to help?
That was the focus here.
Police alone, without more help, were they going to be able to deal with the size and the intensity of the challenge?
I think that's what our focus was and our attempt to try to bring all of the resources and the might of the federal government that we could to try to help.
We've heard evidence that the OPP...
Came promptly upon a request for help.
The RCMP from London came promptly on a request for help.
Police forces from Waterloo and Hamilton also came promptly on a request for help.
Were you aware of that at the time, around February 9th?
I'd say, Mr. McRae, that I was watching these events kind of unfolding on the television screen.
Okay.
Maybe just to add, and I'm sure...
Nina was saying, I think you would agree that where we saw a positive outcome in Windsor, we also heard that it will require a lot of resources to keep it open.
So it was also time intensive in terms of making sure that the passage will stay open.
And I think if I could add that we saw the complement of law enforcement and the assets and capability that were deployed to deal with the occupation of blockage at Windsor.
I know that some of those measures were left in place even after the Emergency Act was invoked and to try and make sure that the...
Windsor port of entry, the Ambassador Bridge was remained open.
There was also a concern, as I believe we have found out subsequently, about how much resources this could be drawing away from the potential to deal with the situation in Ottawa.
So resources are not finite as If I can turn back to the witness statement, Madam Joanne, you clarify at the bottom of that paragraph.
She clarified that neither she nor the clerk, that's you, Ms. Charette, reviewed police plans because law enforcement agencies operate independently of government.
Will you agree that that is appropriate, that law enforcement agencies operate independently of government?
Absolutely.
Thank you.
If I can take you, please, quickly to a document that I think...
I think the Commission Council took you to, it's Canada, I think four zeros, three, two, five, six.
It is an email I think that you received, even though it's dated the 14th, I think you received, someone received it on the 13th evening before the invocation of the Burns Issues Act.
It's from Brenda Leckie.
In this email, I understand it when it was taken to you, I think it was you, Michelle.
It mentions, if you scroll down a bit, where she talks about, this is from Brenda Leckie, she talks about arrests.
Could you please keep going?
This said, I'm in the view that we have not exhausted all available tools.
And I believe in that context, Mishret, you suggested that there hadn't been enough arrests yet, or any arrests.
Was my recollection of your evidence correct?
I do not believe that would be correct, because we had seen a lot of law enforcement happening in Windsor.
Okay.
But as I said, this was about not just a single site, not just a single threat, not just a single event.
All right.
And in fact, is it...
Is it your recollection that Windsor was cleared up on February 13th and the bridge was reopened just after midnight on the 14th?
I believe that is correct.
And I also know that federal ministers were focused on what it was going to take to keep that trade, that absolutely critical trade corridor open, sir.
Thank you.
We heard from, this is my second last question, we heard from the Deputy Minister, Mr. Sabia, yesterday.
And in questions from my friend, Mr. Aylward for Canada, who asked just how quickly had they had to act?
What timescale did Mr. Sabia have in mind?
Was it an issue of days or weeks?
Or what was the timeframe?
Mr. Sabia's evidence, and this is in the transcript, but I don't know how to call it up, but it's the one that's publicly available, was that they varied.
The length by where they were in the country, but these disruptions had already gone on for a reasonable period of time, so a reasonably lengthy period of time.
So our objective here was we were thinking about this in a period of several days or a week or a bit more than a week.
So do you agree with Mr. Sabia, at least as I read his evidence, that a week to resolve a protest is a reasonable period of time?
I don't.
I think I can really answer that question, Mr. McRae.
How big of a protest?
What kind of a protest?
Where is the protest?
I think that's...
Oh, let's focus on the Ambassador Bridge blockade.
Do you think a week to resolve the Ambassador Bridge blockade is a reasonable period of time?
I think it depends who you are.
If you are a manufacturer operating a large car assembly plant in southern Ontario, depending on just-in-time delivery of critical supplies to run that plant and keep your production line going, I don't think a week is necessarily going to be fast enough.
If you are worried about the transport of food or fuels or medicine, which are coming across that critical supply point.
I think you may have a different measurement, sir.
If you're keeping in mind...
Oh, please continue.
If I can add, after Windsor Bridge was clear, we had also a threat about other port of entries.
And I think, I don't want to put words in Deputy Minister Sabia's mouth, but he was...
Also looking at the whole situation, making sure that, you know, not other supply chain will be affected.
So the timely resolution that Michael Sabia, from what I understood yesterday or the day before, it was yesterday morning, yesterday was a long day for you, I know, I know, was really like a global resolution.
If, and I'm I guess this is focused at you.
I'll rephrase the question.
If you're looking for a peaceful resolution that respects people's charter rights, do you think or do you agree with how I read Mr. Sabia's evidence that one week is a reasonable period for that to happen?
I'm I'm sure everybody would have liked it to happen faster, but I think in terms of making sure that issues of officer safety and so on are taken into consideration, that a peaceful resolution is really the most important criteria, and if it takes a week, it takes a week, sir.
Thank you.
I'm just tying up something you said earlier and then I'll be done.
There is evidence before this commission that, for example, if there's a car crash on the Ambassador Bridge, it is the Windsor Police who respond.
Did you know that?
I did not know that.
Okay.
Those are my questions.
Thank you very much for your time and have a good evening.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Next, call on the province of Alberta, please.
Good evening.
My name is Stephanie Bowes.
I'm counsel for the province of Alberta.
Ms. Charette, I believe that your evidence today was that you learned about the arrests in Coutts sometime on the morning of February 14th.
Is that correct?
That is what I said, ma 'am.
Okay.
And this commission has heard evidence that the arrests and the discovery of the cache of weapons by the RCMP was a trigger for the protesters involved in the Coutts blockade.
To indicate a desire to leave the protest and that their intent to do so was communicated to the RCMP that day.
Did either you or Madame Duran learn that the protesters indicated an intent to leave the protest site?
Well, I was not aware of that.
No, that's not true.
I've heard about potential breakthrough in coups.
And when it comes to your previous question, we were aware of potential presence of firearms in Coutts, but prior to the enforcement action, we didn't know about the cache.
Okay.
But in terms of a breakthrough in Coutts, at least with respect to the protesters clearing the site and no longer blockading the port of entry, when did you learn about that?
So what I do recall during the FMM meeting is Alberta being afraid that invoking the Emergency Act can put potential breakthrough in danger in coups.
So we were aware that it was imminent.
Okay, thank you.
Now, in your decision document for the Prime Minister, which for the record is ssm.nsc.can.403224, we've looked at it a number of times today.
I don't intend to bring it back up, but was invoking the Emergencies Act the only option presented to the Prime Minister in that document?
It was the decision that was sought in this document.
Okay.
Just to be clear, and I think that if you look at the many IRG trackers, many, many other options have been looked at.
And the Prime Minister was present during the conversations when we looked at the different options.
So fair to say then, this was a decision note about a specific decision that was being sought.
And there were other activities underway with the Prime Minister's full knowledge.
Okay, so at that time, the only option was Emergencies Act, yes or no?
No, ma 'am.
That was not what I said.
The option in the note, excuse me, I should be...
Yes, that's what I...
I don't want to clarify.
That's what I mean in the decision document.
The Prime Minister can decide to invoke.
He could decide not to invoke.
He'd decide to ask for more information.
He could call for a meeting.
I mean, he has a number of options available to him.
To invoke, not to invoke would be two very obvious ones, to be fair, I suppose.
But the Prime Minister can write us back and say no, or call and say, there are alternative courses I'd like to pursue here.
And did any of that happen?
We got an affirmative decision to invoke the Emergency Act and to proceed with the implementation.
Alright, thank you.
And Madame Joran, I believe your evidence today was that Canada first started thinking about the Emergencies Act in the context of these protests after the DMOC on February 9th.
Is that correct?
That's what I said, yep.
Okay.
And then the two-track process where the Emergencies Act was identified as Track 2 was started on February 12th?
Well, I think we...
We also talk about, you know, the predecessor of the two tracks document, which was a document developed by Jackie Bogdan, I think, the following night.
So we started the two tracks at the beginning.
I think we were talking about Plan A and Plan B. I think it was before the ROG on the 12th, maybe more the one on the 10th, that we first developed the Track 1 and Track 2 document.
May I add, we were doing our homework on the 9th to feed into deliberations, which became at the Incident Response Group on the 10th.
And then that homework came back on the 12th with work that had been done.
After the IRG on the 10th through the 11th and back into ministers on the 12th.
All right.
And there's nothing in the Emergencies Act that prevented the Government of Canada from beginning consultation with the first ministers on February 9th, correct?
So on February 9th, not the decision, but the path of using the Emergency Act.
Was not sufficiently developed to consult.
Like it was one of the things, one of the options we were working on, but we were not in a position at that time because it was not serious enough as an option to start the consultation.
I'd like also to add something.
I received a question earlier this afternoon about You know, another consultation we did on the Emergency Act in relation with COVID.
And the situation was quite different.
Remember that we also discussed today that the moment we talk about the Emergency Act, that can trigger some reactions.
And that was the CSIS assessment on the risk of triggering or invoking the Emergency Act.
So we were quite aware that the moment we talk publicly about the Emergency Act, the timeline to take a decision is very short.
It can be a go or no go, but you cannot wait.
You cannot put that in the domain without taking a decision.
And what we were afraid happened very rapidly.
The moment we hang off the call on the FMM, it was already out there that we were thinking about the Emergency Act.
So this is why, you know, we were very concerned that talking about the Emergency Act will request a very rapid decision.
A no or a yes, but a rapid decision.
Okay, so there was a concern there, but certainly no limit on the ability of the Government of Canada to start the consultation process.
I think what I've said is that, you know, contrary to the virus, you can talk about publicly that you're thinking about using the Emergency Act.
You can develop, you know, language.
You can put in writing proposals to provinces.
Receive their comment.
And that will not change how the virus behave.
If you engage in a more lengthy process when it comes to protests, that can change how the protests will evolve and how protesters will behave.
So this is why we were conscient that the time limit to make a decision was very, very short.
The moment it was public and out there that we were considering invoking the Emergency Act.
And then you would agree that that concern, which limited the amount of time that you felt could be given to the first ministers before they were consulted, meant that the first ministers weren't able to...
Prepare for that meeting and have briefing from within their public service, from the experts who understand the legislation, the powers that exist in the province, the resources that exist in the province, and what the police of jurisdiction in the province might need if the Emergencies Act were going to be invoked.
I think this is why, you know, after the FMM, well, first of all, All the conversations, all the FPT engagement prior to the formal consultation on the 14 really support and feed also our decision and our assessment on whether or not a single province can deal with the situation.
But this is why after the FMM, we maintained open channel with provinces.
We offered a briefing, and we were also, if I may say, comfortable with the fact that the Emergency Act was time-limited, that we were not displacing any provincial jurisdiction.
That any law enforcement was not also displaced.
They were able to continue to exercise their authority.
So we also find comfort with that.
And also, as I said, we maintain the channel open.
And we were also offering possibility, for example, to amend the two measures that we were proposing.
All right.
Thank you.
Those are my only questions tonight.
Okay.
Next, I'd like to call on the National Police Federation.
Commissioner, they've ceded their time.
They've ceded their time.
Do we know who to?
Just at large, so we can get out of here five minutes earlier.
Thank you.
Okay, well then the Government of Canada doesn't get it, and they are next.
You'll be happy to know, Commissioner, on a Friday evening that I have no questions for these witnesses.
Okay, any re-examination?
No re-examination, Commissioner.
Okay, well I just have a few short questions, and if you tolerate this with me.
Forgive me while I try and find them.
In your drafting of a proposal and the timing for the decision by the Prime Minister, did you consider the appropriateness or...
Desirability of scheduling a debate in Parliament, not a vote, just a debate to consult, because the Emergencies Act is a delegation from the legislative to the executive.
Was that considered and discarded, or was that not considered, and any comments you may have on that?
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
I believe I mentioned earlier that there had been a debate in the House of Commons.
On February the 7th, which would have been, I think, in the form of a take-note debate on the situation overall.
It wasn't specifically, of course, on the Emergency Act.
I think, as with respect to the role of Parliament and the consideration of the role of Parliament, in the invocation note, I think I indicated to the Prime Minister the broad outlines of the role of Parliament, but I haven't gone into detail and there was subsequent advice that was provided to him around that.
I think it does come back to the point that Madame de Royer was making.
The sequence of events from the IRG on the afternoon of the 13th into Cabinet the night of the 13th into the FMM the next day, the Prime Minister's time and space for final deliberations, mine, to give my advice, it sounds like a long time.
It wasn't a lot of time at this point.
And it was also, we were anxious that...
That news getting out there, that information getting out there would have had an effect, cause an effect on the nature of what was happening, and it was already a volatile situation.
And so there was to be a debate.
There was in the House of Commons.
There was to be a vote in the House of Commons, and I would say that we thought that that was the parliamentary process to be followed in this case.
I was going to say something else.
I believe the Prime Minister had a consultation with the leaders of the opposition.
In addition, I believe Ms. Thomas, the National Security Intelligence Advisor, referred to this on the evening of the 10th.
So after the first IRG meeting, I believe the Prime Minister had a conversation with the leaders of the official opposition, including Ms. May at the time.
To talk to them about the situation.
So there was a parliamentary debate on the 7th.
There was that telephone call consultation, not on the EEA against her, to be clear, but on the general situation.
And then we ran to the invocation process.
Okay.
If I can then ask you in this couple of questions, I'm just...
With respect to the national scope of the order, and I think you've addressed it.
I'll cut along one dimension that it was a national issue, but was part of that consideration the use of federal powers such as the Bank Act, which are because of the economic measures, I guess the...
Deputy Minister Sabia said money can move.
Were those considerations on whether you would do national or limited?
I'll try and answer your question if I don't get it right.
Perhaps you can correct me, sir.
But when we thought about both the nature of the situation we were facing was national in terms of how it was manifesting in different parts of the country, but also...
The people who are participating, let's say the truckers in Ottawa, for example, they didn't just come from Ontario.
They came from right across the country.
And so to be able to use a deterrence measure to try and encourage people to go home, a deterrence measure, and that was partly what lay behind the use of the emergency economic measures, we were trying to get people to go home.
And the freezing of the assets was a pretty important, powerful incentive to go home.
Those truckers weren't all from Ontario.
They were from across the country.
So the use of a national tool, national legislation, allowed us to make sure that we were capturing not just, you know, the people who might have been from this particular site that we were dealing with.
That's good.
Perfect.
I just want to add that I don't know if it was during the FMM or the following briefing that I did with provincials and territories when I was asked, you know, why don't we use the Emergency Act for only one province or two provinces?
My answer was what the clerk said, i.e.
the movement of protesters.
And the risk of having pop-ups all across Canada, but also exactly what you said, that in order for the economic measures to be effective, they have to apply Canada-wide.
And I think I have said that also during my interview.
Yeah, the financial institutions, for instance, that would be involved across the country.
Which gets me to an answer you gave, Madame Dubois, and I'm just going to...
Press it a bit.
You said the declaration did not displace provincial jurisdictions, I think you said.
Yeah.
That's not quite correct.
Some of the provincial powers were interfered with.
I don't mean it negatively, but that's one of the aspects of this declaration, is it does override the provincial in certain respects.
With the measure we have adopted, our views was that nothing was displaced.
The provinces could continue to exercise their authorities.
For example, what we did for financial institutions or the power with Fintrac, this is already federal jurisdiction.
And we have already authorities to do that.
So we haven't...
And I think it's...
Sorry to interrupt you.
No, I just wanted to direct, for example, you're dealing with case populaires.
And you're directing case populaires.
That's provincial jurisdiction.
you overrode the way federal police officers could become peace officers in the province.
I would submit, for example, that Desjardins is already subjected to film track.
Yes, but we can have...
Authorities or federal regulators that give orders to financial institutions like Caisse Populaire.
So it's possible for a federal entity to submit to some orders or regulations or it's possible for Desjardins and other Financial cooperatives to be subjected to federal orders.
Yes, but the question is, how do you get there?
And if there is any displacement.
And the other example that I gave is the fact that the RCMP could come without going through the provincial process to become peace officers.
So I don't know, but I'm asking the question.
It's only to understand the scope of the order concerning the sharing of powers.
Well, it may be a matter of wording.
I think when I say displaced, it means that what we are offering was in addition.
Of what provinces and law enforcement agencies can do.
Like, this is what I mean by not displacing.
It was supplementing and not reducing.
I understand the intention, and maybe it's a quibble, but I just wanted to raise it because I think the issue of federal-provincial is simply what I have...
Wanted to raise with you.
Commissioner, can I take up the matter of the RCMP?
Yep.
And no doubt our fantastic legal advisors will correct me if I'm wrong in their eventual information they'll file before you.
But I believe what we were trying to achieve there was a facilitation tool that was available to be taken up, not something that was being forced on.
So it was discretionary as opposed to obligatory.
I'm not trying to quibble either.
I'm trying to help you understand.
No, no, I'm just raising these things because obviously that's part of the exercise.
And it's an odd process, to say the least.
Those are all the questions I had.
Other than to thank you very much for taking the time, especially on a Friday, and to allow us to have extended it beyond what was planned.
So thank you very much, and we will adjourn until 9.30 on Monday morning.
▲
Export Selection