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Nov. 24, 2022 - Viva & Barnes
11:38:55
Emergencies Act Inquiry - Nov. 24, 2022 - SECOND TO LAST DAY! Live with Chat
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Time Text
Order a lot.
The Public Order Emergency Commission is now in session.
Bonjour, good morning.
Sorry for the short delay and I thank you for your patience.
But I think we're ready to go.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Shantona Shodhury for the commission.
Our witness this morning is Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance, Christy Freeland.
Good morning, Minister Freeland.
Good morning, Ms. Shodhury.
Will the witness be sworn or affirmed?
Madam Deputy Prime Minister, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
On a religious document.
We have the Bible, the Quran or the Torah available?
I have my Bible.
For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
My name is Chrystia Freeland, C-H-R-Y-S-T-I-A, Freeland, F-R-E-E-L-A-N-D.
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.
Good morning again, Minister Freeland.
So we'll just start with a little bit of the usual housekeeping, which is...
You recall sitting for an interview with Commission Council on September 5th?
I do.
And you'll recall that after that interview, Commission Council prepared a summary of the interview?
I do.
And you've reviewed that summary and confirmed that it's accurate?
Yes.
Okay, thank you.
Mr. Clerk, for the record, that's WTS 6078.
No need to pull it up.
So, Minister Freeland, I'll just ask you by...
I ask you to start by describing your dual role as, on the one hand, Minister of Finance, on the second hand, Deputy Prime Minister.
The first is probably fairly well understood.
The Deputy Prime Minister aspect may be less so.
Okay.
So, as Minister of Finance, I'm responsible for Canada's federal finances.
I think that role does also include A broader responsibility for the economy as a whole.
One of the principal jobs which is relevant to our discussion today, one of the principal jobs, obviously, of the Department of Finance is preparing a budget every year.
That budget is presented in the spring.
My second role is as Deputy Prime Minister.
That is a more loosely defined role.
I would say it means I'm available to do whatever the Prime Minister needs me to do.
I maybe am especially involved in areas where I have a particular background or knowledge or expertise.
Today and during the period that this covers, that would certainly involve Ukraine and Russia.
And I think it does often involve my past as a trade minister and my involvement in the negotiation of the new NAFTA.
And then maybe the final thing worth mentioning is, you know, largely, you know, Being the finance minister is a big and consuming role, particularly when a budget is being prepared.
Being deputy prime minister as well, I feel a particular responsibility when an issue emerges as being of sort of overwhelming national significance, even if it's not specifically in my lane, to start getting involved.
To lean in, essentially?
Yeah.
Well, that leads fairly nicely into my next question, actually, because that dual role you had as Minister of Finance and as Deputy Prime Minister puts you in a unique position to tell us a little bit about the context in which the events that are before the commission of the Freedom Convoy and the protests occurred.
So we spoke about this a bit in your interview, and I'm hoping you can put...
Situate in context from your unique perspective what was going on.
Okay.
Well, I'll try.
And I'll mostly focus on the economic and financial perspective because that was largely my focus.
So all of this started to happen at the end of January.
And it's worth...
Bearing in mind, as I said, we were preparing the budget at that point.
We were sort of deep, deep in budget preparation mode.
And that means that the Department of Finance, I personally, Michael Sabia, we were all really focused on where is the Canadian economy right now and what is our path forward?
And I think it's worth reminding people that...
It was a really challenging time for the Canadian economy.
COVID was still very much with us in January.
In Ontario, there had been lockdowns.
There was virtual school.
So we still had COVID with us.
We could see beyond it.
And we could see that the time was coming to go from a COVID lockdown.
Really emergency government support for the economy situation to reopening the economy and doing everything we could to achieve a soft landing for the Canadian economy after the trauma of COVID, the COVID lockdowns, the COVID recession, the economic trauma.
That meant that we were particularly focused in the economy on two things.
One was supply chains.
By now, I think it's sort of become part of the common discourse that supply chains were strained by COVID.
It was maybe less apparent to regular Canadians in January of this year, but it was really apparent to us that...
The peculiar nature of the global economy during COVID had placed some very significant strains on supply chains.
That was jeopardizing Canada's recovery from the COVID recession in areas like the lack of semiconductors putting real stress on our car sector.
To give just one example of...
The second area we were really focused on, which again has moved more into what everyday people are talking about, but we were focused on it already in January, was we could see partly because of those strained supply chains that inflation was elevated and rising.
It was apparent, I think, to us that we were going to be moving from the COVID recession situation where the challenge was, you know, prevent the greatest downturn since the Great Depression in Canada from really taking hold and scarring the Canadian economy.
That had been the preoccupation during COVID.
We knew that we were moving into an environment where the challenge was reopening and elevated inflation.
And how do you deal with that?
And that made us particularly concerned again about the supply chains because they posed a challenge to elevated inflation.
So I would say that was kind of my finance minister budget-related set of concerns.
The second economic issue that I was very focused on In December, January, November, December, January, was the U.S. Build Back Better legislation.
And in particular, their proposal on EV incentives.
And, you know, I realized to an Ottawa kind of maybe legal community type audience, that might seem a little bit esoteric.
The reality is, and it might seem a little bit esoteric and a little bit specific, the EV incentives as proposed by the U.S., and that legislation made its way through the House in the fall in the U.S., I believe in November.
That legislation as proposed would have been completely devastating to the future of the Canadian car sector.
The incentives would have done, had they been passed into law as initially proposed, is create very strong incentives for buying electric vehicles that were made in the U.S., not North America, just the U.S. And EVs, that's a national industry, right?
We're just shifting to the production of EVs.
Imagine if you are a car company.
And all the car companies that produce cars in Canada operate on both sides of the border.
Imagine these powerful U.S. incentives are put in place, but they only apply to EVs and batteries made in the U.S. Are you going to build anything in Canada?
Are you going to put any of those production lines in Canada?
And the answer is you wouldn't have.
And these incentives, frankly...
We're quite intentionally designed to drive all of the building of the new fledgling EV industry into the US only and to create a powerful economic disincentive to build any of that in Canada.
That would have been a disaster for us because EVs are the cars of the future.
And to just give you a final...
Kind of sense of how significant this was.
At the end of 2021, marrying the trade minister and I sent a letter which we made public to the U.S. warning that Canada was prepared to retaliate at scale were this measure to be passed into law.
In December, in finance, we We're looking at and putting the final touches on a retaliation list because whenever there is trade retaliation, the first step is you publish the list of things you might retaliate against.
We did that during the 232 challenge, shall we say, the 232 tariff challenge.
The initial retaliation list that we were looking at Was going to include up to $100 billion of U.S. imports into Canada.
So that's to give you a sense of the scale that we judged this challenge to be at.
Now, we didn't want to do that.
We really didn't want a trade war.
That would have been terrible for Canada.
And so we were also negotiating.
We were talking, all of us, the Prime Minister with President Biden, Mary Ng with the USTR.
I was speaking about it with Janet Yellen at the Treasury.
And really, the key person emerged as a guy called Brian Deese, who is in the White House.
He is the President's economic advisor.
And what we were trying to persuade...
Brian Deese of is the idea that, look, we understand that you want incentives for electric vehicles.
We believe in that too.
We also believe in the green transition.
We understand that you want U.S. workers to benefit from these incentives.
But our car sector is very, very closely interconnected.
A favorite line that you'll hear every single Canadian trade negotiator who ever has negotiated mentioned to the Americans on this is, a single car part can cross the border six times on the way to becoming part of a car.
So we say that all the time to the Americans.
And so what I said to Brian is, our sectors are totally integrated.
We're not asking for a free ride from the U.S. Why don't we match your incentives?
And you guys have incentives?
We'll have incentives too, and both of us have incentives for North American-made EVs, thus creating a level playing field between Canada and the U.S., and frankly, a strong incentive for investment into Canada, because in that kind of an environment, Canadian-made EVs would be uniquely able to be sold into the U.S. market.
So that was what we were talking about precisely at that time.
And in the month of December and January, we were drafting these ideas.
My department was working on it, and I was sharing them with the Treasury and with Brian Deese.
And actually, at the very end of January, my department prepared for me a sort of yet another iteration.
Of this sort of D's note on how can we coordinate?
So that was sort of a second direction of economic concern.
I would even say anxiety.
We knew we had to make this work coming at exactly that time.
And then the final thing, which was more maybe a deputy prime minister area of focus.
Was Russia and Ukraine.
The war hadn't started yet, but we and our allies started to get intelligence in December and in January that Russia could well be preparing to invade Ukraine.
I was briefed directly at the beginning of January that the judgment was this could really happen.
And again, it's happened now, so we might not fully remember how astonishing and horrifying that thought was before it actually happened.
It's horrifying now, too, of course.
So that was a very big deal.
I learned about it at the beginning of January, and the threat just kept getting greater and greater and greater.
I believe NATO troops were put on alert.
At the end of January.
And then I think the US took this extraordinary step of declassifying its intelligence about Russia's plans in early February to kind of alert everyone.
And I was also involved at the finance minister level, working with other finance ministers, talking to the Ukrainians about putting together sort of preemptive sanctions.
If you think back to that time, the idea was we would be very explicit with Russia about the sanctions that would snap in in the event of an invasion.
So we were working on that.
So that was kind of a third area I was very aware of.
I thought then, and I think today, that Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which of course did ultimately happen, is the biggest challenge to Canada's national security since the Second World War.
I think it's a very serious attack on Western democracies, on the rules-based international order.
I took it seriously then, and I believed it was really important for Canada to be...
In a strong position to be able to respond.
Okay.
There's a lot to unpack there.
There was a lot going on.
Fair enough.
In the interest of time, I'm just going to go over a couple of points and then move on.
So the last point you raised was what was going on.
On in Ukraine, you saw a link to that in Canada's national security.
So that link may not be obvious.
It's something that's going on in the other end of the world.
So what do you mean by that?
That would be a risk to Canada's national security.
Well, Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine is the first time that one internationally recognized state has tried to Conquer or seize the territory of another since the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait.
It's a very grave violation of what I think is one of the greatest accomplishments of the post-World War II international order, which was, you know, a basic, basic understanding that international.
Internationally recognized countries don't invade each other and seize each other's territory.
Now, that has not been perfectly honored, but if you compare the entire post-World War II period with all of human history prior to that, it's a huge change.
And that has hugely enhanced the security of every country in the world.
So that's number one.
Number two way that Canada's security was threatened, is threatened, but I think the allied response has been strong and has strengthened Canada, is I absolutely believe that one of Vladimir Putin's war aims, you know, his principal objective is to crush Ukraine, to take it over.
To crush Ukrainians as a people and to replace the democratically elected government, to make it a puppet satrapy.
But he has another objective, which is to show that dictatorships work and democracies don't.
There is a broader goal he has in mind, and that is, I believe, in his view, Because he wants that demonstration effect.
He wants to show Russians, you know, you might not like that much how things work here, but we're better than those, you know, weak, feeble, pathetic Western democracies.
That's sort of the message he wants to communicate with what he proceeds to be his own strength.
And his success, were he to be successful, I absolutely What do you believe would weaken Western democracies writ large, including our own?
Okay.
That's, I think, helpful context for, if you'll agree with me, for what was in your mind, essentially, as the convoy arrived in late January.
You've said that that dovetailed, basically, with your negotiations on the electric vehicle incentives.
And in the chronology, you can appreciate this is the second last day of the Commission's testimony.
So we've been through a lot of the chronology of what happened in those early days.
And I want to focus with you this morning on your specific involvement.
And I think you've expressed to us in the interview, and you may agree or you may not, but you started to become very actively engaged in this file and this matter around February 6th, around the second SSE meeting.
Does that ring a bell?
That's the second weekend, right?
Is that the Saturday or the Sunday?
That would be the Sunday.
Okay.
Yes, that's true.
And that's kind of consistent with how I was describing my role.
So I would sort of say up until that point, I was pretty much heads down.
We have the budget.
We have budget is sort of...
90% of the focus.
And then there's electric vehicles over here.
Hope we can get a good outcome.
Otherwise, it's going to be really bad.
And, you know, I've spoken with a lot of conviction a moment ago about the significance of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
But I want to remind us all, at the end of January, beginning of February, it hadn't happened yet.
So that was just out there as a threat.
That I had in mind.
So up until February 6th, 90% budget, EVs on one side, worried about Russia, Ukraine, hoping that we can put forward strong sanction ideas that will prevent it.
But it was really budget, budget, budget.
But then the second weekend of the occupation happened.
And I started hearing particularly from business leaders, That this was starting to be an area of concern.
And so I did attend that committee meeting.
And then as that week went on, I became more and more and more involved.
And just to clarify, you wouldn't normally attend an SSE meeting.
No, not at all.
A standing invitation as Deputy Prime Minister?
The Finance Minister has a stand.
I think they call it an...
The finance minister can attend any cabinet meeting that she or he chooses to attend.
So on February 6th, you sort of invited yourself?
I think my colleagues also thought it would be good to have me there.
Fair enough.
Okay, so soon after that, on February 9th, your department produced an options memo.
And Mr. Clerk, if we can just pull that up quickly, it's SSM.CAN403764.
Okay, so, Minister Freeland, we've talked a little bit about this already, but I'd like you to take us through the options and how this memo came about and the two options that are outlined, which are essentially amendments to...
Sorry, scroll down a bit, please, Mr. Clerk.
The first option that's outlined until you get to...
There we go.
So, it would be potential amendments to the...
PCML TFA Act.
And then if we scroll down beyond that, you'll see amendments to the Bank Act.
So can you tell us how you perceive these options, how the memo came about, and what you did with this information afterwards?
Sure.
And I think, so this was on the 9th, which is the Wednesday.
Believe that.
Right.
So, and that really was the crucial week from my perspective.
And I think the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge began on the Monday of that week.
So from a finance economic perspective, that escalated things exponentially.
That's what made it a hugely significant economic action.
And, you know, I had started to get really worried on the Sunday.
I attended the cabinet committee meeting.
Bridge is occupied on the Monday.
I start talking very urgently with my team, with Michael Sabia and officials.
And we basically go through sort of three thought processes.
Number one.
Is this a really huge problem that has risen to the level that we need to figure out a way to stop this?
And by the beginning of that week, especially with the bridge blockade, we were coming to that conclusion.
We have to figure out something to do.
So then step two is, we're the Department of Finance.
I think you've probably heard from other ministers.
And the instruction was, okay, everyone, take a look in your toolbox and figure out what tools are available to you to act on this.
And so that's what we did.
And we found, looking at what was in the finance toolbox, that there were basically two areas.
Where there could be authority.
One was FinTrack, which is the center that sort of monitors financial transactions, money laundering, terrorist financial activity.
And then the second was the Bank Act.
And would there be authorities under the Bank Act that could be useful in resolving the situation?
So that was the two areas we looked at.
We looked at what the existing tools available as of that moment permitted us to do.
And we came to the conclusion pretty quickly that everything that could be utilized was being utilized.
So then we thought, well, is there a need to legislate?
And that memo Outlines areas where the department said you could legislate to create this authority or, you know, you could legislate to create these various authorities as outlined in the memo.
And did you consider those viable options then?
We definitely looked at them.
As you know, I would say, let me say a couple of things.
So on the FinTrack front, And what we concluded was, you know, to put it in maybe kind of more regular terms, what we concluded,
and this is something that finance officials had been thinking about for a while, is that basically the FinTrack monitoring authorities were appropriate for a 20th century economy, but not for a 21st century.
I know you guys know this because you have been over this for hours and hours and hours, but maybe for people who are tuning in for the first time, FinTrack is not an enforcement agency.
The job of FinTrack is to monitor what's going on.
To both look into reports that it gets and to just kind of have situational awareness and let us know what's happening in terms of illicit financial flows in Canada.
I think that's a summary I would offer you of FinTrack, of FinTrack's job.
What we were sort of reminded of in looking at this is FinTrack's sort of line of sight was very blinkered.
They could look into what you might call the 20th century financial system, but they didn't have authority over the 21st century financial system.
And by that specifically, I mean over crowdfunding and over payment platforms.
So that was a lacuna.
It was well known that it was a lacuna, but there hadn't been an urgency to act.
And the memo identifies this is an authority that we think FinTrack should have, and you could legislate to create that authority.
Subsequently, as we all became FinTrack experts very quickly, or thought we were becoming FinTrack experts very quickly, we understood that regulatory authority would be sufficient.
To grant FINTRAC these additional powers.
And as you know, that's what we ultimately did.
So FINTRAC, one area.
And then second area, which is outlined in this note, is could the Bank Act be used to allow the banks to effectively freeze accounts?
That's basically what the memo discusses, and it discusses what would be the different authorities which would allow that.
And so those were the options that were developed there.
Maybe the final point worth mentioning with regard to that memo is in terms of a legislative path.
What we understood was it takes a long time.
And look, it's a good thing that it takes a long time for legislation to be passed in Canada, even when we're working really together and urgently and quickly.
And an example, you know, just this fall of Parliament coming together, understanding an urgent necessity and passing legislation was the bill That granted us the authority to double the GST credit, which we proposed as soon as we returned from the summer recess.
It gained all party support and it speeded through.
And, you know, we got, we proposed it in the middle of September and we got the first checks out to Canadians on November 5th.
In parliamentary legislative time, that is a sprint.
And that was good, because we know that Canadians need inflation relief.
But that's really, really fast, from September 19th to November 5th.
And that's just one real-life example where there was urgent action by Parliament and the House and the Senate.
And so while we looked at what the legislative options could be, we quickly understood that They would take a long time.
So skipping way ahead now, but so the conclusion in the end was you did not have time to legislate.
Not that.
I mean, I think the short answer is yes.
You know, basically the legislative timelines and the snowballing, sort of exponentially damaging impact on the economy.
The legislative timeline was not appropriate to the scale and speed with which the damage was mounting.
You mentioned in the course of that that you were having conversations and you were hearing from various stakeholders and business people, etc.
So I want to spend a moment, and also U.S. officials obviously, so I want to spend, not actually a moment, a little while going through some of the conversations that you were having.
And I think the best way to do this is with the assistance of some of the documents that we have that may remind you of the specific conversations.
So we'll start with...
Mr. Clerk, SSM.can.401255.
So this is a summary of your conversation while it's being pulled up with Mr. Deese, Brian Deese, on February 10th.
And you've already explained to us who Mr. Deese is, but just maybe go over that again.
So would you say he's the senior economic policy advisor to the president?
100%.
I would say when it comes...
To U.S. Executive Economic Authority, the most important person is President Biden, obviously.
And his most important advisor is Brian Deese.
And then, of course, Secretary Yellen is a very significant and, you know, frankly, brilliant figure and player in all of this.
And we were maybe just as a quick footnote.
I don't want to offend the Treasury.
In talking about these EV incentives, we were very much in touch with the Treasury, both with Secretary Yellen and with David Lipton, who worked in the Treasury.
They were very aware of our proposals, too, and supportive of them.
Is Mr. Deese someone who talks to you often?
I try to.
What was striking to me...
About the conversation I had with him on the 10th of February.
He is a person who is very hard for Canadians to get a hold of.
And actually in the fall, when we realized how significant the EV issue was, and when in my conversations with the Treasury, I really learned how important the White House and Brian Deese were.
And also our ambassador, Kirsten Hillman, sort of identified to us.
Brian Deese is the guy you have to talk to.
And it was a real effort to develop a relationship and a dialogue with him.
And an effort to get, always an effort to get him on the phone, to get him to answer an email.
And I don't mean that in any way to slight him.
He's an extremely busy person.
In a way, the fact that it's hard for Canada to reach him is a good thing.
It means we're a peace order and good government country, and they're not very worried about us.
And so what was really striking to me was how quickly he got on the phone with me on that Thursday.
It was instant.
And while in some ways, you know, that was, as a practical matter, that was good, but...
It gave me a measure of how worried the White House was about this.
Okay, so let's look at the summary of the conversation you had with them, Mr. Clerk, if you can just scroll down so we can see that entire part of the email.
Yeah.
Okay, so starting February 10th, so this is you, Mr. Freeland, writing and say, he called me.
They are very, very, very worried.
If this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, All of their northeastern car plants will shut down.
He said that he supposed that this proved the point that we'd made previously to them about how closely integrated our economies are.
He did not seem to see this as a positive.
He asked what he could do to help us.
I said, tow trucks?
Make your point about banning travel to the U.S. for participants public?
Arrange a call between the PM and the president?
And then you say he was aware of points one and two?
Yeah, I mean, you know, I think, can you move up a little bit?
Just, you know, I think the point, the second sentence, he said that this proved the point about how integrated our economies are, and he didn't seem to see this as positive.
He brought that up.
And you have to kind of bear in mind, I have been bugging the guy and Canadians have been nagging Americans since the fall.
And we've been saying, guys, you don't understand Canada.
You don't understand how integrated our economies are.
This approach you're taking to the EVs, it's completely counterproductive for you because we work so closely together.
Those parts, they cross the border six times.
We've been saying this over and over.
And so he comes back at me and he says, yeah, okay.
Like, you've made the point.
We get it.
And it was a surprise to him, actually, the extent to which their car industry was dependent on the trade with Canada.
But that was a dangerous moment for Canada, I felt.
Very, very dangerous.
Because the U.S. then...
And now, as part of their own soft landing from COVID, something that is happening there is a real move to protect the supply chains of the United States.
The same supply chain challenges I was talking about earlier as affecting Canada affected the U.S. And I think we have all seen A very strong push this year by Americans to insulate their supply chains, particularly from China.
I'm very worried about the semiconductors, but more broadly, COVID brought alive to them the vulnerability of their supply chains.
And this was so worrying to me because I could see, really for the first time ever, The Americans having this amber light flashing in Canada and this amber light that said to them, you know what?
The Canadian supply chain could be a vulnerability too.
And that's a problem for us because there are plenty of Americans, both Democrats and Republicans, who would love any excuse to impose more protectionist measures on us.
So that line to me, it jumped out at me.
It made me really, really worried.
And I understood, I really understood at that point that the danger wasn't just the danger of the, it wasn't just the immediate damage.
It wasn't just the immediate harm.
It wasn't, oh, you know, this plant loses four days of operation.
The danger was, were we in the process as a country of doing long-term and possibly irreparable harm to our trading relationship with the United States?
And it's also important to understand that our trading relationship with the United States, it's not just about Canada-US trade.
It's about Canada's attractiveness as a destination.
For all foreign investments.
Japanese car companies invest in Canada because of our trading relationship with the United States.
So that one conversation was a seminal one for me.
And it was a moment when I realized as a country, somehow we had to find a way to bring this to an end.
And Mr. Clerk, if you just scroll up a bit so we can see the next email there.
You say one final thing.
He'd like to talk to me again tomorrow and every day until this is sorted out.
Did that end up happening?
It didn't because we sorted it out.
So, you know, that was a conversation on a Thursday night.
You'll see from that conversation that I asked Brian to help organize a call between the Prime Minister and the President.
And again, that's a very hard thing to set up.
The President of the United States, the most important elected leader in the world, very, very busy guy.
He also, by the way, was involved in this potential Russian invasion of Ukraine, very involved.
And yet, I asked for the call that Thursday.
I can't remember exactly when my call with Brian happened.
Thursday, sort of early evening, I think, late afternoon, early evening.
The President and the Prime Minister spoke.
On the Friday.
And then, as you know, we made an announcement on the Monday.
Okay.
I'm just going to take you back for one second.
Mr. Clerk, can you pull that one down and go to ssm.can404175?
So, Mr. Freeland, this is a text exchange you had on the 11th with Brian Clow of PMO.
Yeah, okay.
And that is...
That's the following day then?
That's the Friday.
That's the Friday.
And scroll down a little bit, please, Mr. Clark, until we see Windsor was supposed to be there.
So you say, Windsor was supposed to happen today.
This can't go on.
We need to show some federal leadership too.
So does that go back to what you were just saying?
At that point, you had decided something had to be done and quickly.
Yes.
And also, you know, that...
I think it's worth dwelling on for a moment because it speaks, you know, to our experience in the eye of the storm, which is that we continued to hear that action was going to be taken and things were going to come to an end.
And it seemed that that wasn't happening.
And at the same time, what seemed to be happening is we had this metastasizing of the illegal blockades and occupations.
So there were sort of, you know, copycat action across the country, sort of a whack-a-mole.
And that was also worrying.
Okay.
We'll go back to the stakeholders now, Mr. Clerk.
You can take that one down and pull up SSM.can404138.
So this is a text exchange with Mr. Flavio Volpe.
Can you explain who Mr. Volpe is?
Yeah.
Flavio is the head of the Car Parts Group.
He is a...
Real leader in the car sector.
I got to know him well during the NAFTA negotiations where we had sort of a real Team Canada approach and autos were a very important issue.
And so Flavio and his constituent companies and the trade negotiators and I worked really closely together on the specifics of the deal.
And Flavio also...
You know, significantly, I think, for this exchange, Flavio was very aware of the EV issue.
And if I have seemed to you guys today to be kind of weirdly obsessed with EVs and U.S. EV incentives, I would urge you to spend five minutes talking to Flavio and you will understand how...
Really kind of life or death for the car sector it is.
So he was very, very steeped in all of these issues.
Okay.
So if we just look at the text exchange, he says to you on the 9th, this is the Ambassador Bridge debacle is embarrassing.
And then you say, let's talk tomorrow.
I would love to get your ideas.
I'm worried too.
So the text then skips to February 14th, but we don't necessarily need to go.
Well, actually, let's go there.
So this is at the point, I guess, where the Emergencies Act has been involved and you say, express to him, I know how devastating this has been and it's been determined that we need to take strong action.
We didn't save NAFTA only to have it undermined.
Can you tell us about the conversations you had sort of in between these texts?
Not really, because I don't have sort of specific memory of actual things we said.
And I can't even tell you 100% whether we spoke on the phone or just exchanged texts.
So I don't want to pretend to knowledge of that.
But, you know, I can give you some context for that view that I expressed there, which I do remember expressing, which I think is consistent with what I've I've been saying earlier this morning, that all of us who had been involved in the NAFTA negotiation,
very much the car sector people, but I think you'll see that I also had a text exchange with one of the steel guys.
All of the industries that were very implicated in the NAFTA negotiations were aware of how Canada's access to the U.S. market was both essential and kind of constantly fragile.
And in need of tending.
I don't know, maybe it's like a marriage.
Like your whole life is based on it, but you have to take care of it every single day.
And these people whose jobs, whose livelihoods depended on it, really understood that.
And like, I'm aware as I'm speaking that this might seem esoteric to lawyers.
What I really want to say is, you know, especially for me personally, the NAFTA negotiations were kind of a bonding experience just for me as an elected Canadian leader with everyone who works in a Canadian car plant or a Canadian car park plant, with Canadian steel workers, with Canadian aluminum workers.
With people in Regina who make pipes.
I knew during the NAFTA negotiations, their jobs were on the line.
And they knew it too.
And all of those people across Canada, they were so great.
Like, they were prepared for Canada to take a strong position.
They were prepared for the U.S. president to insult us.
They were prepared for us to take...
Really strong retaliatory actions against the 232 tariffs because they knew how important it was for them and their jobs and their lives.
And what that text exchange with Flavio represents is me sharing with him something I know he felt too, which is this really important market access that we managed to secure just a couple of years ago.
It's constantly under threat.
Witness the EV incentives.
And it's under threat right now.
And we just, we can't let Canada be devastated this way.
Okay.
You mentioned one of the steel guys.
Would that be Alan Kestenbaum?
It certainly would.
Okay.
Let's pull up then SSM.can404171.
This is a text exchange you had with him on the 11th.
And what he has to say is a little bit different, I think.
So worth going through.
Thank you.
So he sends you this and he says, Hi, Christy, I hope you're well.
I know you have your hands full.
I'm not saying anything you probably don't know, but this is really impacting us badly now, like many others.
And I fear that even worse, the long-term consequences of shutting down auto plants because of lack of Canadian parts.
We'll only convince the auto companies onshore even more and relocate supplies.
This is a bit annoying because it's in three separate documents.
So, Mr. Clerk, can you take that one down and put up SSM.can404349?
Thank you.
Record time.
Okay, so that's a continuation of the text.
Relocate supplies and our customers to the USA.
I know it sucks politically to back down and reverse course, but it does really pay to carry on the policy, or does it really pay, I'm sorry, to carry on the policy in support of a mandate for a vaccine that doesn't prevent the spread of Omicron and which seems to be vanishing naturally anyway.
Moreover, this could create a resurgence of the right wing, just like it did in America.
Anyway, I know this is a massive headache for you, but it could be solved by retreating and letting it fade away from everyone's memory.
Just sharing my views, hoping the spreading disruption gets resolved quickly.
Okay, and then the next one, Mr. Clerk, is your response, which is SSM.CAN404170.
And that response is, Dear Alan, thank you for reaching out.
I share your concerns.
We are determined to bring this to an end quickly, and we will.
So what Mr. Kestenbaum is expressing there is the same concern and a suggestion that the solution to it is to alter the public health measures.
So what was your reaction to that?
For me, the salient point was the first part of his message.
And, you know, I think...
What he says there, and he runs Stelco in Hamilton.
He is American, though, and U.S.-based.
What he was saying at the beginning about on-shoring and relocating to the U.S., that's what I was talking about earlier today.
And I kind of highlight that for all of us here.
To kind of make clear to everyone that for people whose bread and butter, whose livelihoods were in the U.S. trade exposed industries, their immediate conclusion, you didn't have to think about it, the immediate conclusion from the blockage of trade was the Americans are going to respond by cutting us out.
And then in terms of Alan's proposal, I didn't debate it with him.
I don't think that it's...
I think that the relevant information for me from him wasn't for him to tell me what the right solution was.
The relevant information for me from him was for him pointing out to me.
That this was a really big problem, and it had to get resolved.
Okay.
We're now going to skip to one of the very, very crucial days in all of this chronology, which is the 13th of February.
I understand that on that day, you had a call with a number of Canadian bank CEOs.
And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but the chronology of that day in your world goes, call with the bank.
Afternoon, around 1 p.m., IRG meeting mid-afternoon, and then cabinet meeting at 8.30 at night.
Does that sound right?
It does.
I'm just referring to my own chronology, because there was one other meeting which is relevant, which is at 2 o 'clock that day, I had a national security meeting on Ukraine.
Okay, fair enough.
So just to give you guys a sense of how overlapping the issues were.
Okay.
Mr. Clerk, if you can pull up a document.
I've lost my document.
SSM.CAN 1281, please.
Okay, so we're on the 13th now, and this is an email from Meredith Tyler?
Tyler Meredith.
Tyler Meredith, I'm sorry.
Can you tell us who Tyler Meredith is?
Doesn't work in my office anymore.
But I think his title was Strategic Policy Advisor.
A senior policy person.
Okay.
And he writes in the timestamp of this email, it's that wonky Greenwich Mean Time thing.
So that means around 1130 in the morning, I believe.
He writes, Hi, Chrystia.
Everyone is confirmed for 1pm.
A list of CEOs is at the bottom of this email.
A couple of points of background for the call.
The institutions are all aware we convened a call with the Canadian Bankers Association earlier this week just to check in on whether they had any advice for us in light of recent events.
The message from industry, mostly speaking, Four, that probably means from their legal counsel at the time, was we've got this under control and generally feel comfortable with the current regime.
Then he says privately, certain banks have proactively said that it might be worthwhile looking at bringing in platforms under AML, that's anti-money laundering, proceeds of crime, limiting access to payment processors, and then...
The last bullet is we haven't given them any indication about what's under consideration.
So in all of that, it's actually the first bullet that I want to focus on most, which was this message that what had been heard from industry prior to this was, we got this.
It's under control.
We're comfortable with what's happening.
Is that something that you were aware of that you've heard before?
I mean, this was an extremely busy time that week.
Tons and tons of stuff was happening.
I had a lot of information flowing through my phone and my inbox.
And I can't confirm one way or the other whether I read this specific note from Tyler.
So I can't comment on this specific email.
What I can say is That weekend, and you've seen sort of the disclosure of all of the things that, all of the messages that I sent and things I wrote down.
What I can also say is that weekend, and I can't tell you the specific times, I had two one-on-one phone calls with bank CEOs, with the CEO of BMO and the CEO of TD, I believe at their request.
That was unusual.
I do, as a matter of course, meet with the bank CEOs as a group every six months.
Obviously, they can and should have access to me.
They should be able to meet with me.
It usually takes a while for people's calendars to work and for the meeting to be arranged.
It's highly unusual for them to want to talk to me.
On a weekend.
So that was significant to me that they wanted to talk to me on the phone.
I spoke to both of them.
I am sure, pretty sure.
Well, 90% sure I spoke to both of them before this call at 1:00 PM on Sunday with all of the bank CEOs and each of them expressed.
A high degree of concern about the damage being done to Canada and the Canadian economy, which was then reflected in the group call.
Okay, so let's have a look at that group call now.
It's SSM.can408766.
So this is about a three-page document, Mr. Freeland.
I'm just going to take you to certain excerpts of it that I'd like you to elaborate on.
So the first one, Mr. Park, if you just...
There we go.
We don't know who's speaking here, but whoever it is, it's one of the bank's CEOs, says, the big hole in our financial system is these platforms, which are effectively money service businesses that are not being regulated as such.
So these platforms refers to the payment processors, the crowdfunding platforms.
I believe so.
I mean, I shouldn't put words in the mouth of another person, but I think one of the messages that I recall came through in this call and that my memory was refreshed when I looked at these notes.
One of the messages from the bank CEOs was, Kind of what finance had concluded independently earlier in the week, which is there's this whole space where financial transactions happen that no one has any line of sight to.
And that is the crowdfunding platforms or the crowdfunding platforms, the payment systems.
And then I think someone also mentions crypto later on in this call.
Yeah, I think they do.
That's right.
So we'll just scroll down a little bit there.
I'm not sure we're going to get to crypto just yet, but we are going to get to your response here where you say, I'm very prepared to come out and speak about this.
This is an attack on democracy.
We need to educate Canadians about this.
What do you mean by this is an attack on democracy here?
So I was responding specifically to one of the CEOs who...
Whose bank had acted to freeze an account.
This was prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
It was based, as that note shows, on what the bank's anti-money laundering systems detected.
And based on that, the bank rightly acted.
What was a concern for me...
And this did shape how we acted, was the banks being blamed for taking this action, the banks being seen as choosing to do it, as having the agency.
And it was particularly a concern.
And you note the mention of Fox News.
The thing you have to remember about Canadian banks is many of them are significant banks in the United States as well.
They are big players there, and some of them trade under their Canadian names.
And so they were in jeopardy not only in Canada, but also in the United States.
If they were being seen to be taking a politicized position.
I didn't think that was their responsibility.
I thought it was the responsibility of the government to make judgments about this.
Okay.
The next concern highlighted there is Canada's reputation is indeed at risk.
We need to show the world proactively that we won't let this happen again.
Our trade corridors will remain open.
We should think about putting the military in place to keep the border crossings moving, even if the protesters were removed to send a clear signal.
So this is about as strong a suggestion you can get bringing the military.
And your response here is, couldn't agree more with those points.
We must make clear that one, we won't resolve this, and two, we won't let this happen again.
So can you explain your response there?
And were you agreeing there that...
Bringing the military to patrol the borders was a viable option.
No.
It was, I mean, look, if you look at that conversation, people raised lots of different points in their commentary, and I didn't respond to every single one.
Just as in my previous exchange with Alan Kestelbaum, our Stelco guy, I acknowledged his concern, but I didn't really...
Address his public health measure point.
My point there was, as I said in my follow-up, that what we need to do is, as a government, one, resolve it, two, be clear it's not going to happen again.
And, you know, from my perspective, I wanted, the reason I convened that call, and again, probably worth highlighting.
It is highly unusual for the CEOs, like, highly, highly, like, never, I mean, I've only been finance minister for two years, but it hasn't happened before, and I hope it will never happen again.
For the CEOs of all of Canada's banks on, you know, a couple of hours notice on a Sunday afternoon to come together on a Zoom call.
With the finance minister and deputy minister of finance.
It's very, very unusual for them to find the time to do that.
I'm right now trying to organize a meeting with them, my kind of every six month meeting for December.
And it's the kind of thing that we sort of organize four to six weeks in advance because these are all busy people.
So that's kind of just worth mentioning.
Shows their degree of concern and anxiety.
Value for me of this meeting.
Why did I want to have it?
What did I want to get out of it?
Two things.
One, I wanted to hear from them.
How worried were they?
By that point, I was really worried.
But we were contemplating, as you know, really serious action.
And I needed to hear.
How directly myself from the leaders of Canada's financial institutions did they share my level of concern?
That was a very important proof point for me.
So that was kind of number one.
And it was important for me, for them, it was important for it to be a meeting of everyone because that's also a measure of how worried were they, right?
Are you prepared to say these things to a group of your peers?
You judge your words carefully there, and you should.
So number one, am I right to be as worried as I am?
What do these guys think?
And then number two concern was, okay, we do have some tools.
How are the tools working?
The people who have these tools, who are in charge of using them, how are they finding they work in practice?
Those were the two things I tried to get out of the call, and it was a very useful call in terms of answering both those questions.
So maybe the next extract I wanted to point out goes to that second point.
Mr. Kirk, can you just scroll down a little bit?
There we go.
So this is someone saying, we need court orders to act.
We'd identified an individual who was an organizer who had several hundred thousand dollars move into their accounts.
We flagged it to FinTrack, started work on a court order, and because of the delay of four hours, the money was withdrawn before we could stop it.
And you say there, you ask, was the problem there a gap in the current system or that it moves too slowly and the reply is four hours was too long?
And then I think underneath that, there's, and let's be clear, that's the reference you were talking about, and let's be clear, they will all eventually move to crypto.
Okay.
A little lower down, this is the bottom of that page.
You mentioned reputational risk.
That's something you've talked about several times.
Here's one of those, I think, quotable quotes.
Agree with my colleagues.
Reputation of Canada is at risk.
Just spent a lot of time in the U.S. last week, and we were being called a quote-unquote joke by people.
I had one investor say, I won't invest another red cent in your banana republic in Canada.
That adds to an already tough investment perspective on Canada.
Did that have any impact on the banana republic idea?
I mean, it's hyperbolic.
Well, I mean, I believe and subsequent conversations underscore, you know, if I were an editor, I would ask my, if I were still an editor, I would ask my reporter, is that a direct quote or are you paraphrasing?
And I think subsequent conversations we had show that was a direct quote.
A direct quote that a Canadian bank CEO was relaying to me that he had heard on an investment trip to the US from someone who he wanted to invest in Canada.
He was trying to persuade someone to invest in Canada.
And that was a heart-stopping quote for me.
That was really a moment when, having already been concerned, When I really understood that what was happening was profoundly jeopardizing the Canadian economy and putting investment in Canada at risk.
And, you know, I don't expect you guys to have read our April budget, but one of the things we identify in the April budget is underinvestment.
As being a core problem for the Canadian economy, an Achilles heel.
We don't have a high enough rate of business investment.
We've done really well.
I don't want to talk Canada down.
Canada's fantastic.
Our economy is very strong.
We have a great jobs recovery from the COVID recession.
But one indicator where we're underperforming is business investment.
And again, that can sound like...
A dry thing to focus on.
But a lack of business investment ultimately translates into Canadians not having jobs and Canadians not having jobs that pay well enough to maintain a good standard of living.
That's what a lack of business investment means.
And that quote relayed to me.
Really made me realize I had a duty of stewardship.
I have a duty.
I had at that moment a very profound duty to Canadians to stand up for them.
And I'm surprised that I'm getting emotional, but I really felt it.
And I felt like You know, the Canadian economy, it could seem like this amorphous thing.
Investment, it can seem amorphous.
EV incentives, amorphous.
But when I heard that, I realized I'm the finance minister.
I'm the deputy prime minister.
I have to protect Canadians.
I have to protect their well-being.
It's being really, really damaged.
So, yeah, that was a meaningful conversation for me, and that was a very memorable.
Quote, and for sure a spur to action.
So maybe in the end, not so hyperbolic in your view.
Well, look, I can't comment on what that investor was thinking.
It's secondhand, right?
That was what a bank CEO reported to me and investors said to him.
But it is my job to ultimately, what's the job of the finance minister?
To make sure Canadians have a good life, right?
And part of how Canadians have a good life is capital is invested into the Canadian economy, so they have well-paying jobs.
And what that quote said is something is happening in Canada that very profoundly hurts Canadian jobs.
And if you go down a little bit, you'll see, and I didn't remember this until I reread this note.
You know, I tried to kind of rally the troops there in the call.
I tried to say, I can show you the line.
Just scroll down?
Yeah, please.
You can just direct that.
So this is it.
If the investor you speak of is American, I sort of said what I was trying to do was rally the bank CEOs and kind of say to them, you guys are playing for Team Canada.
Don't take that from your investors.
Don't let guys, you know, I don't know if it was New York or wherever, but don't let those guys say to you that Canada is a banana republic.
We're a great country.
That's what I was trying to say there.
And I was trying to say, sure, we have our problems, but, you know, as I say there, our report card looks not too shabby.
I wanted the CEOs to have us...
Confidence in Canada and the Canadian economy so that they could relay that to investors.
So, you know, I put up a good, I think, anyway, my objective was to imbue them with confidence because the confidence they project is important for Canada.
But when I turned the Zoom off, I thought, wow, this is really serious.
Okay, the last thing I want to take you to before we put this document down is that just last little paragraph there that just came up on the screen.
You say, I am very resolute in ending this occupation of our democracy, but I will never support negotiating with those who held our democracy hostage.
No good thing comes of that.
Can you explain that comment?
You will never sanction or never support negotiating with those who hold our democracy hostage.
I think it's pretty self-explanatory.
I don't think it's healthy for a democracy, for any democracy, for policy to be made at gunpoint, if you will.
And that really...
It also devalues the views and the contributions of all Canadians who express their political views and their political preferences in different ways, for example, by voting.
So, yeah.
Were you referring there to the vaccine mandates, to public health measures, or more generally?
Yeah, I think, I mean, again, I don't...
Have a sort of photographic or a video memory of exactly how that conversation evolved.
And in fact, I didn't remember saying this until I read it again, but I'm sure that's a faithful account.
Having read the note, having read this note, what I think I was referring to is a comment made earlier in the conversation suggesting that the solution to this Was a change in policy on vaccines.
That's what I think I was responding to.
Okay.
So we're going to leave the call now.
Mr. Clerk, you can take that document down and talk about the economic impact of the protests and the blockades as you saw it and what you conveyed to your colleagues on that front.
So last week when...
Your department officials were here.
We went through in some detail the initial assessment they prepared on February 10th and also the eventual February 22nd economic analysis.
So we're not going to go through that in detail this morning.
But what I would like to take you to is actually this is SSM.can5095.
These are the minutes of the February 13th IRG.
So we're still on the same day here, February 13th.
And that was, I believe it was around the time of the IRG again?
The early evening around four o 'clock?
It says right there four o 'clock.
Thank you.
I was looking at my paper, not at the screen.
Four o 'clock.
So in between, you had the bank call, then you had the Ukraine call that we learned about, and then four o 'clock is the IRG.
And if you scroll down to page six, please, Mr. Clerk.
Rotate there.
So you're reporting to the IRG on the economic impact, and you say the minister highlighted ongoing economic losses of 0.1% to 0.2% of the GDP for every week the blockades continue.
Now, we know at this point that that didn't come from an internal Department of Finance analysis.
I believe you were referring to something that had been reported in a Bloomberg article.
Is that right?
A Bloomberg Economic Analysis.
A Bloomberg Economic Analysis.
And it was also fresh in my mind because in that bank CEO conversation, that number was also referred to by one of the CEOs.
So I was aware of that Bloomberg Economic Analysis, and I was also aware that on the street, that was the number that...
Canadian business leaders and international investors were seeing and citing.
So on the street, you mean on Bay Street?
On Bay Street and probably on Wall Street too.
Okay.
Did you explain to your colleagues at the IRG the source of this number?
I cannot recall whether I did or not.
But my, yeah, so I can't remember.
But, you know, it was a very busy time.
A lot of people were speaking.
My objective was in a succinct way to convey to my colleagues who aren't responsible for the economy that this was a really serious economic impact.
So I think that it was possible, you know, say you're a cabinet minister, you don't have principally economic responsibilities.
You might be seeing this mostly as about, you know, damage to Ottawa shopkeepers.
And that's really serious.
I don't want to understate the human toll of that.
But what I wanted to communicate was this is getting...
To have a macro impact that will be material on the Canadian economy.
And the only other thing that I would say is, you know, with hindsight, if anything, I feel that that statement, if that's all I said there, I feel that statement understated the possible impact.
Because the real challenge was...
It was exponential.
So as it happened, that trade blockade was effectively a week-long thing.
And that's what statistics ended up recording.
But had it gone on, then you would have seen not an arithmetic adding up the damage of week plus week plus week.
I think what you would have seen...
And why this really rose to the level of a profound threat to Canada's economy was the exponential nature of it.
That the longer it went on, the greater threat that the U.S. would lose faith in us and our trading relationship would be irreparably damaged.
The longer it went on, the greater the threat that foreign investors would write off Canada.
Okay.
So obviously that was a concern that you were expressing to your cabinet colleagues that day.
Probably more clearly to you right now than I did then.
But I think I did communicate to them.
I was really worried.
Okay.
So the overall economic impact, both near-term and long-term.
We can take that down now.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
The next topic I want to address with you is another concern that was being expressed around this time.
Which is the issue of foreign funding and foreign influence and money flowing largely, I think, up from the U.S. to fund the convoy.
So Mr. Clerk, can you pull up please SSM.CAN 401846?
So this is an after-the-fact, not quite after-the-fact, but certainly after the invocation of the Emergencies Act discussion that you're having with your departmental officials.
And if we scroll down a little bit, please, Mr. Clerk, keep going.
I'll let you know when to stop.
Keep going.
There we go.
This is a question that you've posed to your officials.
And the question is, do we have any info on foreign donations?
And the response that comes back is, we do not have any information on foreign donations that entered our Canadian financial systems.
It is possible that Fintrac, CSIS, or the RCMP possess information on foreign donations, but that information is not shared with the Department of Finance.
So is it fair to say that at the point at which foreign...
Foreign influence, foreign donations were being talked about.
The government wasn't actually in possession of information to corroborate that.
No, I wouldn't say that.
What I would say is a couple of things.
One of the things that this occupation...
And the blockades really brought to our attention was how little official insight we had to crowdfunding and payment platforms.
How little we knew for sure about what was going on there.
And we've talked about that and we have since acted on a permanent basis to correct that.
But the first thing that I was going to do There was very good reason to believe.
And in fact, the subsequent report that the commission did that I thought was very good on foreign donations documents in a lot of detail that there were foreign donations coming in to support the convoy.
And so, you know, that was happening.
Our own systems were weak at officially picking that up and slow.
And quite rightly, actually, there are a lot of checks and balances within the Canadian system about what finance specifically.
Learns, right?
Because law enforcement and finance operate in different silos, and certainly elected ministers and law enforcement have a lot of silos between them, and I think that's a good thing.
So, yeah, so that would be my understanding of the situation.
So to summarize that, would it be fair to say you were operating with incomplete information at that point?
Yeah, I would 100% say that.
And the other thing I would say is, you know, we were operating in the fog of war.
And things were moving very quickly in real life on the ground.
We had to operate based on the best possible information we could get at every single moment.
And sometimes that meant using open source information.
It didn't always mean relying on official government information and analysis that came through the finance channels.
And I feel, you know, not only comfortable doing that, but that that's the right thing to do.
In a fast-moving, hour-by-hour situation like this, you have to gather information from a lot of different sources, reliable sources.
I believe that's the responsibility of an elected minister.
And if you don't do that, my experience in government has been, you know, quite rightly, stuff that you officially get through official channels as a minister, I don't know, it's like flour that has been sifted many, many times.
It's like very pure.
Very verified.
It's gone through a lot of different hands and there have been a lot of different checks on it.
That's a good thing because it has, you know, Government of Canada stamp of approval.
And I think it's really good for us to have those systems.
But at the same time, I think to do your job as a minister, you have to be aware of and actively seek out.
Other sources of information, including open source sources of information.
And I think you have to hear some things for yourself.
That's, for example, why, for me, having that call with the banks directly was really, really important.
And I wasn't just going to rely on other people telling me what they were hearing.
Okay, so the last thing I want to take you to on this point is SSM.CAN 4003807, please, Mr. Clerk.
So this is a draft, Minister Freeland, of the Section 58 explanation that was reported to Parliament.
I'm sure you're familiar with that, as we all are in this room right now.
If we scroll down to page 8, please, Mr. Clerk.
Bottom of the page, I believe.
Okay, yeah, sorry, here we go.
So under item number 6 there, Roman numeral.
This is a paragraph in the draft or a bullet point in the draft that says: "There is credible evidence that significant amounts of funding for the protests come from sources outside of Canada, which raises concerns about foreign interference in Canadian affairs and questions whether they represent threats to the security of Canada."
And the comment made on that underneath it is: Anecdotal reports of donations from outside Canada to support the protesters were given credence when, on February 13th, hackers of the crowdfunding website GiveSendGo released hack data, and it goes on to explain what happened there.
But that bullet point paragraph there, there is credible evidence that significant amount of funding come from sources outside Canada was removed from the eventual Section 58 explanation.
Were you aware of that?
I wasn't part of that whole process.
Okay.
And do you have any comment on that at this point?
I mean, I wasn't part of that process and of the drafting of all of that.
And finance was not...
We weren't the people responsible for looking at that aspect of what was going on.
And, you know, as my previous comments have kind of underscored, I think my primary concern and anxiety around this was about the economic impact.
And we've talked about that at some length, but that's that I felt my job was in the cabinet.
And as a teammate with my colleagues, what were they relying on me as the Minister of Finance to do?
They were relying on me to figure out and communicate to them how big is the economic problem.
And then they were relying on me to figure out and communicate to them, look, finance guys, are you doing your job here?
Are you awake?
Are you using all the possible tools you have?
To stop the problem.
That was my job number two.
And then job number three is, okay, if you think it's a really big problem, which we did, if you think you're using all the tools which currently exist, which we did, number three, do you have any ideas?
Is there anything in the finance toolbox that could be devised that would help?
That was how I understood finance's job.
Okay, so this would be more law enforcement slash intelligence area.
Okay.
We can take that one down, Mr. Clerk, and move on to what sort of goes back to what you were just addressing, Minister Freeland.
What do we do about this?
So the development and the implementation of the Emergency Economic Measures Order.
Again, we've heard at this point quite a bit about the orders and about what was done with them.
So I want to take you to a few specific concerns that have been expressed about them.
The first one being that the EMA was overbroad.
In the sense that it might capture individuals who are not really directly involved in the protests, but people who donated to the protests and or have adverse effects on family members.
You know, if you freeze someone's bank account, it may be a spouse or a child or someone else who suffers.
So my first question was, is that a concern that you were...
Is that a concern that you had?
And is that a concern that you felt was properly addressed with the measures that were enacted?
Okay, that's a lot of questions.
But it's, I mean, that is kind of, I would say, core.
You're getting at some core things we grappled with beforehand.
During the time the measures were in force and in our reflections afterwards.
And I want to start by saying something that I was really, really worried about and extremely conscious of the whole time was, you know, I've talked a lot about my profound conviction that Canada was in economic jeopardy.
But then as we were talking about, okay, what can we do about it?
I had probably an equally profound and even emotional concern of we don't want anybody to get hurt.
And one of my colleagues said to me in our conversation about all of this, As, you know, we were talking constantly, and I was sort of saying, we really have to act.
Something has to be done.
And I remember a colleague saying to me, my nightmare is blood on the face of a child.
And I remember that very clearly because I was worried about that.
And I really was conscious.
That, yes, we had to end this, but it was so important for it to be ended peacefully without anybody being hurt.
So that was a hugely important objective for me.
I didn't want to be a person responsible for making Canada a place where people, and you have heard by now there were reports of children, We actually get hurt in our efforts to protect the country.
That was wrong.
And I felt so strongly we had to look for ways to resolve this.
Yes, that was urgent, but not physically hurting anyone.
And look, especially not a child, but anyone was a really key objective for me.
And that, so that was...
One key thing.
And that was a consideration that very much shaped the development and use of the financial measures.
From my perspective at the time, and also with hindsight, a virtue of these measures was no blood on the face of a child.
No physical coercion required.
And I thought that it was good that we came up with a way of creating some economic incentives for people to leave.
So that was a very important consideration.
And a second really important consideration in this question, right?
I think you're asking exactly the right question.
It's the balance, right?
I've talked a lot now about why it was such a big problem, why I think we needed to act.
Are your actions kind of appropriate and proportionate?
And I would say the other thing in my mind there was we needed to always have in our minds Yes, a concern about the number of people who would be restricted by these measures,
but that always needed to be balanced against an awareness of the number of people who would be protected by this action.
So those were the things that I chiefly had in mind.
And I think at the end of the day...
It was something like 280 accounts frozen.
One of the reports I remember when we were at like 240 or 241 accounts frozen, my numbers won't be exact, but I know you guys have all the numbers too.
It was something like 57 people when we were at around 240.
So I don't have the exact figure of how many actual people when we were at 280, but I think we have an idea of the ballpark.
And so in my mind, I say, okay, I regret that that happened to those people.
I really do.
I would have preferred, it was a serious thing.
I would have preferred not to have had to do this.
But in my mind, I weigh that against what I really believe is the tens, hundreds of thousands of Canadian jobs and families that we protected.
So that's kind of a high-level thing.
I can talk about donations and family members if you'd like me to.
Sure.
I mean, what I was going to ask you, and maybe this will lead into it, but would it be fair to say then that if it's put to you, you know, someone is at the protest in Ottawa and gets a call, you've got to come home, they've frozen the account and I can't pay the grocery bill.
In a sense, that is the measure doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is create an incentive for that person to have to go home and leave the protest.
That is in effect exactly what the measure was trying to do, because the purpose of it was to avoid what you saw as a worse outcome, being an enforcement action that would have potentially violent aspects to it.
I wouldn't quite go that far.
So, you know, had it been possible...
If we lived in a universe where it was possible that a jointly held family account, the family members could still have access to it, but the person doing the illegal activity didn't, that would be great.
But that's not how these accounts really work.
So the intention was not to apply...
Create any incentives on people who were not personally choosing to engage in this illegal activity.
I accept that that may have happened to some people, but that wasn't the intention.
The intention was really clear, and I think broadly it worked, was to create non-violent, non-physical incentives.
for people to stop doing this illegal activity, which was hurting Canadians very much.
And I would have loved it if we had made the announcement on February 14th that we are going to take this action unless you leave.
Ideal outcome would have been if everyone had left that night.
And if none of the measures...
There was no desire to be in any way punitive.
There was a desire to create non-violent incentives for people to do the right thing.
Okay.
I do want to talk about the donations issue.
Sorry, Mr. Commissioner, I saw you looking at me.
Is that break time?
It's any time you like.
It can be now or in 10 minutes.
That's a good moment.
Maybe now, might as well.
Okay, so we'll take the morning break for 15 minutes.
The commission is in recess for 15 minutes.
Thank you.
Commission on the web, because it's minute.
Thank you.
Order alert.
Okay.
The Commission has reconvened.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
I think I have about 15 minutes left in the examination, so we may actually clock in on time.
It's great.
Mr. Freeland, when we left off, the next topic that we planned on addressing was the issue of donations.
To do that, Mr. Clerk, can you please pull up SSM.CAN 403972?
Thank you.
And to be clear, the issue that we're getting at here is whether donations are captured, small donors are captured by the measures that were enacted.
And what we've heard in the evidence was that the position taken essentially by the RCMP was this is not who they were targeting.
They were targeting influencers.
They weren't targeting small donors.
So this is a text exchange between, I believe, two of your staffers.
Can you tell us who Alex Lawrence is there?
Yes, he's my director of communications.
Okay.
So the comment made here, you can just scroll down a bit, Mr. Clerk, is...
Freeland, highly skeptical of this, thinks that the banks will have frozen some smaller accounts and we just won't know.
Is that an accurate depiction of your thinking around this at the time?
Were you concerned that small donors were being, when I say small donors, I'm talking about the amount of the donation, were being captured by these measures?
What I remember being concerned about, and again, this isn't...
Something that I wrote.
It's something that Alex wrote.
So I can't speak to his specific conveying of what I said to him and what I was concerned about.
But once we put the measures in place, I knew this was an extraordinary action.
The kind of thing that I hope only happens, you know, once in a generation.
And I knew that Canadians were very focused on what was happening and concerned about it.
And it was very important for me, having taken this extraordinary step, to be as careful as possible in communicating what was happening.
Not to over-egg the pudding.
Not to stretch the truth.
And I didn't want to make a flat statement that no small donors have had their accounts frozen, although I very much hoped that was the case.
I didn't want to make that categorical statement unless I knew for sure that was the case.
I really did understand that we were, you know, in terra incognita, and it was really important for us to do everything we could to maintain public confidence of Canadians in their government, including the confidence of the Canadians who disagreed with us.
Most of all, the confidence of those Canadians.
And so my skepticism was sort of about saying to my team, if I'm going to be in question period, if I'm going to be in a press conference, I only want to assert things that are absolutely true.
And the position I didn't want to be in was to take this example of donations.
I'm really glad.
That no small donors had their accounts frozen.
That was a good outcome and the one that I hoped would be the case.
But I also knew that things were happening in real time.
And what I didn't want to have happen was for me to go out to say categorically and reassuringly, don't worry.
If you made a small donation, your account isn't going to be frozen.
And then have someone show up and say, well, actually it was.
Because had that been the case, and had I categorically asserted otherwise, then people who already had real doubts about our government would be feeling, wow, these guys are even lying to us.
So that's where my skepticism came from.
Okay, so would it be fair to say then that perhaps the intention was not to capture small donations in the measures, but...
They weren't crafted in order to be able to avoid that outcome specifically, and therefore you couldn't guarantee that that had happened.
Yes.
Okay.
The next issue I want to address briefly is, Mr. Clerk, can you pull up ssm.nsc.can50404?
You mentioned earlier, Mr. Freeland, that...
One of the issues or one of the concerns you were hearing from the banks was that they were being put in the middle of this and essentially having to do some, there's action having to be taken on their specific parts.
As a corollary to that, if we go to the top of page seven, So there's the banks themselves, and then there's the issue of the bank employees themselves.
So the people who are working there, who have now essentially become frontline officers in this particular area.
You voice this at the, this is the minutes of the February 19th IRG.
The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance noted that in conversations with the banks...
She is hearing concerns around the safety of bank employees, especially tellers who work at branches, who may be dealing with individuals who have had their accounts frozen.
So what were you conveying there?
What was the concern?
What were you hearing?
I was concerned about bank tellers.
You know, they are vulnerable.
They're frontline people.
They don't get paid that much money.
They worked hard during COVID.
It was important for me for them not to be exposed to any danger in all of this.
And actually, one of the motivations for crafting the measures the way we did was to protect them.
And you'll remember in the document we looked at from that Sunday, February 13th, a concern one of the CEOs expressed is absent a clear government instruction to the banks, the banks would be held responsible.
And that that was not fair or appropriate.
And I actually agreed with that.
My central concern was, you know, that some poor teller not get yelled at and be held responsible and even be in a dangerous situation.
And so that was part of the thinking behind having these measures to give the banks at all levels, including the tellers, the ability to say this is the government's decision.
It's not my decision.
If you're angry at someone, you know, be angry at Christia Freeland.
Don't be angry at me.
And I think that's appropriate.
Okay.
Do you think that worked?
Yeah, I think by and large it did.
Okay, the next topic that I want to ask you about is, as you know, the commission, part of the commission's mandate is to examine the...
The necessity of the measures that were taken and whether the measures that were decided upon and chosen by your government were the correct measures and circumstances.
So you've identified, and obviously identified at the time, choking off funding as an important part of how to bring an end to what was going on in Ottawa and across the country, funding of the convoys, the funding of the protesters.
We know that there were...
There were a number of actions being taken on that front by various actors.
So in and around the time when the Emergencies Act was being considered by Cabinet, by the IRG, by Cabinet, by the Prime Minister, a number of things had already taken place.
So just to list some of them, GoFundMe obviously had shut down the Convoy's campaign on February 4th.
TD had, and by the way, all of these are listed in the crowdfunding overview report that you referenced earlier that I can take no credit for, but the TD had frozen accounts on February 10th, I believe, And the Attorney General of Ontario had obtained a restraint order and the Mareva project, I'm sorry, the Mareva injunction process was in play and was eventually obtained on February 2nd.
So, all this to say, there were various measures being taken by others designed to achieve a similar end, choking off the funding.
And in light of that, and knowledge of what was going on in that area, why did you conclude that it was still necessary for the government to do what it did with the economic measures?
It's a good question and something that we thought about a lot and we were constantly assessing.
And so one of the things I think worth bearing in mind is, you know, sitting here today, we kind of are judging a period of time that's frozen.
Whereas as we were making the decisions, we were making the decisions in real time as things were evolving.
It's a real difference in perspective, and I've been struck by it myself as I have reviewed documents to get ready for today.
In that real-time process, you know, I can't emphasize too much the extent to which our preference, everyone's preference, would have been for the actions to stop the blockades and occupation.
Without the Emergencies Act needing to be invoked.
That was overwhelmingly what we would have preferred to do.
It is a measure of last resort.
We understood it to be a measure of last resort, and we would have preferred not to have needed to resort to it.
So on the financial side of things, we were constantly looking and seeing, okay.
Are the tools that are currently in place good enough, effective enough?
And that was one reason from my perspective that I convened that call of the bank CEOs on February 13th.
And what you'll see in that call that we've gone over already is they were very clear that the measures were not enough.
And there was one CEO there who talked about how Very specifically, they had identified an account, they went to get the court order, but by the time they did, just four hours had passed and the money had moved.
And that, it is certainly consistent with my understanding of the financial system as moving faster than the legal system can move.
The other concern, which was also raised on that call, which I was very alive to, was the inappropriateness of putting the onus on the banks,
including the tellers that we've spoken about, about acting, that this had become a very politicized And they felt, and one of the CEOs said in that conversation on Sunday, we are being seen in taking this measure as having taken a political position.
And I thought it was really legitimate for them to say, it's not our job to make a political judgment here.
You are the elected government.
It's your job.
And it's your job to bear that responsibility.
So essentially, if this is going to happen, the government should own it, not the banks?
Yeah.
Also on the topic of necessity, then, there were a variety of measures enacted, some of which were barely even used.
So the insurance provisions, for instance, barely not used at all, I believe.
The FinTrack ended up seeing very few reports made.
How would you say, in retrospect, those measures were necessary, given that they weren't even used?
In retrospect, I am glad that we put both of those measures in there.
And I can explain each one if you'd like me to.
So on FinTrack, as we said we would do on February 14th, this was the case of this crisis causing us, you know, to review our toolbox.
And kind of saying, okay, we're missing a screwdriver.
And it turned out we couldn't, I don't know, build the screwdriver in time to use it in this situation.
But we were missing a screwdriver.
We identified that.
And we said on February 14th, you know, this is a gap we've identified.
We're going to fill the gap.
We did, in fact, go ahead and do that.
So FinTrack now has those authorities, and that's a good thing.
As it happened in this sort of fast-moving situation, the way FinTrack works means there was a lag time between those authorities being granted to FinTrack.
Not granted, being sort of...
And that actually being actionable and meaningful in this specific case, I judge that to be a good thing because it meant that things came to an end quite quickly.
But I also judge, as we judged at the time and as we said very openly to Canadians, and I don't think there's actually a lot of debate around this, that It's a good thing for Fintrac to have this authority.
So that's Fintrac.
And it was also appropriate, as was the case, that in the emergency measures, that specific extra power was limited just to the actions in the measures.
It wasn't a universal granting.
We went back with regulatory changes to give that authority to Fintrac in a permanent way.
And I think Isabel Jacques has explained that, you know, I guess theoretically a person could say, well, why not just take that regulatory action on February the 14th or February the 15th right away rather than put it in the emergency measures?
And regulation just takes longer to fully develop and to do properly.
But that was always the intention and we did it and I think that's good.
On the insurance.
From my perspective, it actually is good that we put it in place, and it's good that we didn't have to use it.
You will have seen in some of the previous documents you've discussed with me, And in some of previous testimony, that a huge preoccupation was tow trucks.
I think Canadians will not forget Premier Kenny's comments about tow trucks, for example.
And it's something that I raised with Brian Deese.
It was like this serious thing, you know, for lack of a tow truck.
The economy was wrecked, right?
For lack of a nail, the kingdom was lost.
It was that kind of a situation.
It all came down to lack of tow trucks.
The insurance measure, I saw and I see as like a virtual tow truck.
It was specifically designed to create an incentive.
For the trucks to move.
And I think it did.
And there was news reporting at the time that suggests that some people moved their trucks because they saw the insurance measure was there.
We were very public about it being there.
And that that created an incentive to leave.
And that's what we wanted to have happen.
That it didn't ever have to be used as a feature, not a bug.
Again, from my perspective, the less action we had to actually take, the less we had to actually use these measures, the better.
If the measures had been effective purely upon being announced, creating A deterrent and an incentive for people to leave.
And if that had happened in 24 or 48 hours and no accounts had been frozen, that would have been a wonderful outcome.
I think you've coined a phrase there.
We've been at this for seven months and virtual tow truck is not an expression we've yet heard.
But getting back to the substance of what you were saying there, would it be fair to say or...
The emergency was revoked within about a week, the declaration of the emergency.
Did it end faster than you expected it to?
I don't think I can answer that question because I don't think I had any precise expectation.
In a situation like that, I think...
You have to just hope for the best and plan for the worst.
And I think that's what we tried to do.
Almost done.
There's a few texts I want to take you to now that consist of some discussions you had with various people after the act was invoked.
So the first one I want to pull up is...
4352, please.
So this is a discussion you had with Perrin Beattie.
Can you just explain for the Commission's benefit who Perrin Beattie is?
Okay, and maybe for my benefit, you can remind me what the date of this was, because I don't remember.
The 22nd of February.
Okay, thanks.
Maybe you said that and I didn't know.
Sorry.
So Perrin Beattie is the head of the Chamber of Commerce.
He is a person with whom I have now worked closely for a long time during the NAFTA negotiations, also during the COVID recession when we were working on our economic response.
He is someone whose collaboration I really value, of course, because he represents the Chamber and Canadian small business, and that's an important constituency for the Department of Finance, obviously.
But also because Perrin is a former Conservative Cabinet Minister, and in fact is the guy originally responsible for the Emergencies Act.
But in his capacity as sort of a former Conservative Cabinet Minister, I do think that where possible, it's really good for a Liberal government to try to have good relationships, good working conversations with former conservative ministers to understand that point of view,
I fully understand that we're talking now about a very strong action we took which was polarizing for the country or which spoke to a time of polarization in the country.
But Perrin specifically for me is an example of a person with whom I work hard to maintain a relationship.
Because I think where we can have consensus in Canada, where we can work across partisan lines, and we can't always do that.
But where we can, I think that's good for the country.
Okay, so let's see what Mr. Beattie wrote to you.
So presumably you were texting him about the invocation of the Act, and he writes, Hi, Chrystia.
Thanks for your note.
While I'm still working my way through the implications, the financial aspects you announced seem to be the most significant additional measures that the government took under the Act.
He goes on and says, I certainly hope that we'll see an early non-violent end to the blockades, although I am worried as I know you are.
There are also lots of long-term issues we need to consider once this is over, including whether we need to take other measures that could obviate the need to use the extraordinary powers in the act in the future and how to repair holes in our political system.
I'm particularly concerned about the radicalization of people who would normally be law-abiding.
mr clerk can you now pull up again it's in two separate documents ssm.can 404351 please So scrolling down until we get to where we were.
There we go.
I'm particularly concerned about the radicalization of people who would normally be law-abiding and focused on going about their daily lives, glad to talk at any time.
So the first thing I want to ask you, Minister, is would you agree that Mr. Beattie says the most significant additional measures taken by the government were the financial ones?
Is that an observation you would agree with?
I think they were significant, for sure, and effective.
I'm not sure I would say they were the most significant, but I think for sure they were significant.
Okay.
And the other question I want to ask is, Mr. Beattie raises the issue or the possibility of considering other measures that could be taken to obviate the need for the Emergencies Act.
Do you have any comment on that aspect of his?
I think that's a question for Perrin.
Okay, fair enough.
And perhaps even a question for the Commission as we head into Policy Week next week.
Perrin actually, I mean, quite seriously, I think Perrin Beattie would be a very good person to talk to about this.
Thank you.
He's very thoughtful.
Which is why you were approaching him about this at this time.
Okay, so I think that's probably enough with Mr. Beattie's observations.
The other person, do you recall a phone call or a conversation with Brian Mulrooney?
Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney about this?
I did not recall it at the time, and sort of it didn't immediately come to mind.
But having reviewed my own notes, I do see that I spoke to him.
Okay, so if I pull up the notes, will you recognize the conversation?
Okay, so it's SSM.can408764.
Okay, so it's SSM.can408764.
And the notation, I believe, is at page 37. There we go.
So you'll have to forgive me if I butcher this in deciphering the handwriting, but Mulroney, you have conducted, I guess, yourself in such a way, and then flipping to the next page, there's not much else there, Emergencies Act.
I brought it into law, so I am in favor of it.
The thing in brackets, protests are over and then scrolling down.
I'm glad I brought in that legislation.
So do you have any recollection of this conversation and why you would have approached Mr. Mulrooney about this?
Being perfectly honest, my recollection of the conversation is really...
Sparked and based on having the notes.
There was a lot going on.
That's why I take notes.
I do think, actually, that the conversation was mostly or was a lot about Ukraine and Russia.
And Prime Minister Mulroney was the Canadian Prime Minister who recognized Ukraine and is very proud of that.
And it's an issue that I talk with him about.
And I have found him to be a really smart and wise advisor on it.
So I do talk to him about that.
And I do have a relationship with him dating back to the NAFTA negotiations, where he was a very good and helpful advisor.
To me and to the government.
So the date of that conversation is February 25th.
So that would probably go back to your point about there were a lot of things going on at that time.
Right.
Russia invaded Ukraine on the 24th of February.
And I think I can't, you know, I've sworn on the Bible what I'm about to say.
I can't swear 100%.
But my recollection is that that conversation was actually chiefly about Ukraine and him.
Giving me some advice and specifically that he thought it was an important opportunity for Canada to play an important role in the world.
And he wanted to encourage me and, you know, through me, our government, not to underestimate the impact that Canada could have and the seriousness of this.
So that brings me to the very last question I want to ask you, Minister, which is...
This is something that's been touched on already in the inquiry.
We haven't really spoken about it yet today, but if you look at the Section 58 explanation, and I'm not going to pull it up because it's nothing specific, but in reporting to Parliament about why the Act was invoked, much of that explanation focuses on economic security and the threats to,
as we've talked about today, Yeah, thank you for the question.
And I say that really sincerely.
I think that is...
A really important question and a serious and challenging one.
You know, people could write books about it.
Maybe someone can write a PhD thesis about it one day.
But I will try to offer two links that are central in my own thinking and were at the time.
The first is I really do believe our security as a country is built on our economic security.
And if our economic security is threatened, all of our security is threatened.
And I think that's true for us as a country.
And it's true for individuals.
It's true for the people who work in a Windsor car plant and who, you know, in some dystopian counterfactual, let's imagine that we hadn't acted.
Let's imagine that this had entirely spiraled out of control.
Let's imagine that immediate trade in the car sector had been imperiled and that the Americans just sort of said, you know what, we just can't.
Do this building of cars together with you guys who are too unreliable.
So, you know, the people who would have lost their jobs there.
The people in a steel mill in Hamilton who would lose their job as that relationship fell apart.
The people in an aluminum smelter in Quebec.
For each of those people, having this all fall apart.
And the country's economy be profoundly undermined, that would undermine their security, and it would undermine our security as a country.
And if that seems too abstract, I think you're seeing it today in the geopolitical space, where we're actually seeing economic tools being weaponized in actual wars.
I spoke yesterday with the Prime Minister of Ukraine because we're issuing sovereignty bonds.
It's a good thing that Canada is doing.
It's good.
But I spoke with him yesterday and he was talking to me in the darkness because most of Ukraine's power and water had been taken out by Russian missiles.
Now, I'm not saying that...
We're talking about missiles with Canada, but I'm saying that a tool being used to undermine Ukraine is directly going at its economy.
And we're seeing something similar happening in Europe, where energy supply to Europe, entirely an economic measure, is being used to undermine Europe's security.
So I do think that an attack Or an undermining of a country's economy that can fundamentally undermine that country's national security.
There's a second aspect which I was really worried about, which is maybe less kind of highfalutin and philosophical and more human and specific.
And what I was worried about was that You know, it can sound very abstract to say economic security can undermine national security, to say geoeconomics is a tool in geopolitics.
But actually, that's not that complicated.
And I think that while these illegal blockades and occupation were going on, I think actual ordinary Canadians...
Who do not debate these concepts in their ordinary lives were feeling their own security to be undermined and were getting really angry.
And one thing that I was worried about, I've mentioned that I was worried about in the ending of these blockades and occupation, I really didn't want.
Anyone who was part of the blockade and occupation to be hurt.
Another thing that was very much in my mind was the possibility of violent conflict between people doing the blockading and occupying and other Canadians who were very angry about it.
I felt that Canada was sort of a powder cake and that you could have a violent physical confrontation at any point.
I didn't visit Windsor at the time, but I heard a lot of people saying, you know, this could really get out of hand.
And the people of Windsor, they really understand how important that trade over the Ambassador Bridge is.
And I did really fear you could have counter-protests and a confrontation there, and that would have been terrible.
For the people involved and terrible for our country.
And I was worried in Ottawa also.
And this is now just very sort of personal eyewitness experience.
But I don't normally have RCMP security.
And I think that's a good thing.
I think that says something good about Canada.
But the RCMP, they know what I'm doing every day.
And it's their job to judge whether they think I need security or not.
And I have to say to the RCMP officers who are here, who I recognize, they do a very good job of it, of making that judgment, I think.
So a measure for me of how much Ottawa was a powder keg was the fact that I think from the end of January, the RCMP judged that I did need to have RCMP with me just walking around.
And so I didn't feel personally in danger because the RCMP were taking care of me.
But I do remember one morning, and I'm sorry, I didn't write it down in my notebook, so I can't tell you the date.
But I remember one morning when I was walking from my hotel to my office.
I walked past a parked truck, and there was a young woman walking there too.
And the truck honked really loudly.
And she shouted something not very nice and made an obscene hand gesture.
And the truck honked again really loudly.
And I was really glad that I was there.
And more importantly, that the RCMP was there.
Because I thought, this is exactly the kind of thing.
Like, imagine no one had been there.
It was just this small, young woman.
And this...
Big truck and a person in it.
And she was mad.
And I just thought, you know, there are dozens and dozens of these things happening every day.
And, you know, God forbid that one of them should actually flare into violence and physical harm.
So I was worried about that too.
And that does speak to the economic challenge because...
Many, many Canadians, while this was happening, understood that for them, this threat to Canada's economic security, for many, many Canadians, it was a personal threat to them.
And they felt that their government was not protecting them.
And they were right.
We weren't for a while.
And it was a real danger, I think, that...
That totally understandable and reasonable feeling that my economic security is being undermined by these illegal blockades and occupation.
My government isn't taking care of me.
Maybe I have to take care of myself.
And that would have been terrible had that happened.
That's why we have a government.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Those are my questions.
Okay well thank you.
So we're now we'll move to the cross-examination portion.
First, I'd like to call on the convoy organizers for first to go ahead, please.
Hello, my name is Brendan Miller, and I'm counsel to Freedom Corp., which is the representative of the protesters that were in your city, Ottawa, in January and February 2022.
So, ma 'am, I understand the mandate regarding truckers that led to the protest.
It came into effect on January 15th, 2022.
Is that correct?
I don't recall the exact date, but I'm prepared to believe you are citing it correctly.
During the pandemic, from March 20 through January 15, 2022, there was no such regulation, right?
Again, I don't recall the exact dates myself, but I do know we didn't have the mandate, and then it came into force.
Just so the folks at home understand, a regulation is a different type of law.
It's passed by the executive branch alone, not by all of Parliament, right?
Like the Emergencies Act.
Is absolutely a distinction between things a government can do by regulation and things it can only do by legislation.
And so, would you agree with me that, given that during the throes of the pandemic, from March 2020 through to January 15th, 2022, and we had no regulation, you didn't need one?
No.
I actually...
I...
I believe that, taken as a whole, the public health measures that Canada put in place were very, very important.
Oh, I understand that.
I only have so much time, so I'm going to cut you off there.
And you'd agree with me that, given that there was no regulation in place from March 2020 through January 15, 2022, during the throes of the pandemic, there was no reason to pass one on January 15, 2022, was there?
There was no health risk.
No, I'm afraid I don't agree.
In January, we had an Omicron wave.
We were still fighting COVID, and there was a real value in encouraging as many Canadians as possible to get vaccinated.
So the purpose was to encourage Canadians to get vaccinated, to compel them to get vaccinated.
Is that fair?
That's right.
All right.
So that was the purpose of the regulation.
That was the true purpose.
It wasn't to keep people safe.
It was to get them vaccinated.
I believe then and I believe now that creating strong incentives for Canadians to be vaccinated protected the health of vaccinated Canadians and protected the health of our country overall.
Okay.
So from March 2020 to January 15, 2022, did you fail to protect Canadians without having that regulation?
Let me start with one aspect of that timeline.
Which is, obviously, when COVID first hit us, vaccines didn't exist.
And then even when vaccines arrived, it took time for them to be distributed.
So, of course, vaccine mandates couldn't be put in place before vaccines existed or were made available.
And, of course, the government, you ended up creating a vaccine compensation fund in December of 2020.
Do you remember that?
Yes, I do.
Right.
And you're aware that Quebec had a vaccine compensation fund and it was the only province that actually had one prior to that?
I am prepared to accept that that's the case.
I can't recall specifically.
And can you agree with me that the United States has a federal vaccine compensation fund?
Again, I'm prepared to accept that that's the case.
So from 1867, when Canada was founded, Up until December of 2020, Canada had no federal vaccine compensation fund.
Can you agree with that?
Again, I'm not an expert in the history of vaccine compensation funds in Canada.
But you can agree the first compensation fund in Canada for vaccines came about only because of the COVID vaccines, correct?
Again, I'm really not an expert in vaccine compensation funds.
If the direction of the question is to suggest that the COVID vaccines are more dangerous in some way than previous vaccines we've used in Canada, I'll say, one, I'm not a health expert, but I believe very much in really...
The advice, the effectiveness, the thoroughness of Health Canada.
They're very good at judging the safety of vaccines.
And I will say, I have been vaccinated four times.
My children have been vaccinated.
I understand, ma 'am.
I don't need to know that.
But it does speak to my confidence in the vaccines.
If I've had my children vaccinated, it speaks to my belief that they're safe.
Please stop talking at the clock and let me ask my questions, okay?
Well, it's a bit of a trade-off.
You make a statement and you say, do you agree?
And she qualifies the answer.
That's appropriate.
Okay.
So, ma 'am, if that's the case then, did Health Canada advise you to enact this regulation?
The mandate?
Yeah.
Again, I'm not the health minister and I'm not going to speak to specific moments that we had advice.
But what I will say is we were very careful and thoughtful throughout COVID in the public health measures that we put in place and acted based on advice.
Right.
And so that mandate was only in place until June of 2022, right?
Again, I can't recall the specific dates, but I'm prepared to accept what you're saying.
We're going to move on to just another area.
I take it you know who Tamara Leach is, right?
I don't know her personally, but I have read about her.
Yeah, and you know who Chris Barber is?
Again, I don't know him personally, but I've read about him.
Yeah, and you know who Tom Morazzo is, right?
Can you say the third name?
Tom Morazzo, the gentleman over there.
I can't say that I know as much about him or I've heard as much about him.
And what about Danny Beaufort?
Do you know who he is, correct?
What was that final last name?
Danny Beaufort?
He used to be with the security team for the RCMP with the Prime Minister.
I'm afraid I'm not so familiar with that final name.
Tamara Leach and Chris Barber I've heard of, yes.
And when you were...
Making your decision with respect to invoking the Emergencies Act, you'd already heard about Tamara Leach and Chris Barber?
I had heard of their names, yes.
Yeah, and there's some discussions about them in some of the records.
There was issues.
You knew who they were.
I had read their names in the media.
Yeah, and you knew about that before you invoked the Emergencies Act.
Again...
I can't say 100% not having reviewed what I read, but my recollection is they were reasonably prominent, and so I think it's reasonable to think that I would have read their names.
And of course you know Tamara Leach.
She's a Canadian.
Again, I haven't familiarized myself with her biography before coming here.
She's from Alberta.
Do you know that, where you're from?
I really haven't studied about her before coming here.
I want to be careful that I say things I know for sure are true.
I am certainly Canadian, and I'm born in Peace River, Alberta.
Okay.
Is Tamara Leach a terrorist?
In terms of designating who is a terrorist and who isn't, that is not my job as Minister of Finance or Deputy Prime Minister.
We have authorities whose job is to do that.
Right.
So it's not your authority to designate Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo, or Danny Boldford Terrace.
Somebody else has to do that.
Yes, we have...
We have intelligence services.
We have enforcement agencies whose job is to determine who is a terrorist.
And that's entirely appropriate.
Can I bring up document?
Can I say one thing about that?
If I can bring up document, ssm.cam.00008764 underscore rel dot 001, please.
And you can please point that up if you want to answer your answer.
Okay, if we can scroll down to page, I believe, this is a note with Dave.
What page?
12?
Page 12, please.
And this is a note that I understand you wrote with Dave from CSIS.
That's 11. And this is a meeting with Dave from CSIS.
And if you scroll down...
Keep going.
Okay.
And there you say that you need to designate the group as terrorists.
So...
But it's not your job, but you wanted to designate them as terrorists, right?
So that handwritten note in my notebook, I can...
Assure you that was not a meeting with the director of CSIS, with whom I didn't have a meeting.
It says...
Okay.
It's with David Vignon from CSIS.
It doesn't say that.
It says it's with a gentleman called Dave.
Which Dave?
That...
That is not an account of a meeting with Dave Vigneault because I didn't have a meeting with the CSIS director.
Which Dave is in those notes?
What's Dave's last name?
I need to see my whole notebook that you're referring to, but I can tell you for certain...
It only says Dave.
I can tell you for certain that I did not have a meeting during this time with the CSIS director.
Okay, so...
I can exclude that 100%.
I'm just going to...
This isn't a document.
I don't need to bring it up, but...
You stayed in the House, Mr. Speaker.
The members opposite has just used the bad apple excuse.
She has excused the desecration of the national...
Yes?
Something that the Deputy Prime Minister said in the House?
Yeah.
There's an objection there for parliamentary privilege.
This is a parliamentary commission.
There is no parliamentary privilege.
It does exist.
Parliamentary privilege does exist.
It does exist, but because this is a report to Parliament pursuant to the case I gave you earlier, McIver, it doesn't apply.
You can actually ask all of it because we're carrying out a parliamentary function and there's no liability here.
It's just a report to Parliament and the Federal Court of Appeal has agreed.
I'm not aware of that.
I gave you the McIver case quite a while ago when we talked about the objections and I think, yes, it's there.
Well, that's my friend, the doctrine that he's referring to so that we know what he's talking about, so we can understand the parliamentary...
This is just a statement from the Deputy Prime Minister in the House, and Mr. Speaker, the members opposite, this is what it says, used just the bad apples excuse.
She has excused the declaration.
I think we're going to have to sort this out.
Because I don't think at this stage, and I apologize, I'm not as familiar with you as you are about that case.
And clearly the Crown is not either, the government.
So I think we're going to have to find that.
So I'd like you to hold that question.
Okay, I'll come back to it.
But you do recall, ma 'am, that you had expressed concerns publicly with respect to desecration to national monuments.
Is that fair?
I'm going to need advice from my council on whether things I said in Parliament I should be speaking about.
I'll move on.
It's okay.
So one of the things that happened during the protest in Ottawa dealt with the National Monument, the Terry Fox statue.
Do you remember reading about that?
Yes, I do remember the Terry Fox statue.
I remember discussing it with my children.
They were very upset.
Yeah, and that Terry Fox statue, they put a hat on Terry Fox's head and then put a flag in his arm, and then there was a mandate freedom sign on it.
I don't remember specifically how the Terry Fox statue was implicated in this, but I do remember reading about it, and I remember it specifically because my children were aware of it.
We're upset.
Right.
And so I went online and I just looked at how many times someone's done that to that statute and it seems to be hundreds.
So I'm just going to put this one to you.
If someone puts an LGBTQ flag on the Terry Fox statute and flowers in the statute, is that a desecration?
I am not going to.
I really don't think it's my job or helpful for Canadians for me to go into a discussion of what is okay and not okay.
When you've called it a desecration in public, that was what you're referring to based on what was put on the statute.
So is it fair to say that it's only a desecration to you if you don't agree with the message?
Again, you've made a couple of leaps beyond anything that I've said.
That's okay.
It's the public record.
With respects to, you said you had concerns for violent actions and interactions with respect to protesters.
And I take it that was nationally?
You had concerns nationally?
Or was it just Ottawa?
I described in my testimony a moment ago.
I was worried about the potential for conflict between angry people in Ottawa and the occupation.
Can I finish the answer because I have something to add?
And as I said in my earlier testimony, and I believe the mayor of Windsor shared this concern, I was concerned about the possibility Of that kind of a conflict in Windsor.
And I was concerned about the situation in Coots.
Okay.
Which we heard about at the IRG on this Saturday.
Okay.
But with respect to the interaction with protesters, I don't know if you heard the testimony of the mayor there, but he said that 75% of his small towns supported the blockades and that many of the properties have F. Trudeau flags all over them.
So you wouldn't have concern with that specific protest, would you?
My reference to Cootes just now was very specific.
At the IRG on Saturday, the 12th of February, the RCMP commissioner raised with us the possibility that there were weapons there.
And that was a source of great concern.
Right.
And so you can agree that police investigate weapons offenses all over the country every day.
Again, I'm not a police expert, but that seems like a reasonable common sense observation.
So simply because the police know a weapon is somewhere, you can agree with me it's not a national emergency.
The concern about a single weapon somewhere in Canada, and as you say, I think that one weapon being investigated somewhere in Canada, if that were to happen today, certainly.
Right.
And you testified earlier about what you viewed as, you know, ensuring that we as Canadians have a good international reputation so that people come to our country and want to do business with us.
Is that fair?
Yes, that's something I was very concerned about.
Okay, and I take it when you consider those sort of things, you look at various reports, and I'm sure you look at various indexes, and I'm sure you look at the Transparency International Index.
Is that fair?
I am familiar with the Transparency International Index, but I haven't looked at it recently.
Okay.
Well, since 2019, We've began to fall.
All right?
And we have now come down out of the top 10 and it continues to decline.
So can you agree with me that Canada not being transparent hurts our relationship internationally?
I have to say...
That I disagree with the premise of the question.
I think Canada is a very transparent democracy.
And in fact, the commission that we're part of right now is a part of Canadian transparency.
That's why it's important.
And on that point, if I told you that there is a whole bunch of unlawfully redacted documents that we've been fighting over and waiting for an order just to get them today.
And we haven't had them for this whole proceeding.
Do you think that's transparent?
Again, and with apologies, I can't agree with the premise of the question.
I think that, but what I can say is, I think that the fact that this commission exists, that these hearings are being held, that they're public, is really important for Canada and is a measure of Canadian transparency.
Right.
And one of your concerns, of course, with transparency and our reputation, was that you would want your government to be as transparent as possible, right?
Again, here, I do believe that transparency and accountability are important, but I also recognize that cabinet confidentiality In many issues, needs to be preserved for a reason.
And, you know, there are areas where transparency is not appropriate, and I recognize that as well.
Okay.
Can you agree with me if, you know, anytime it comes out that the Canadian government has misled Canadians on something, it really hurts our international reputation, doesn't it?
I think that the Canadian government should always seek Not to mislead Canadians.
Right.
First and foremost, because that's wrong and that is not the way we should treat Canadians.
And in the many statements that have been said by all the politicians in this matter, one of the main things they talked about and Justin Trudeau did particularly on the following the first weekend of the invocation of the Emergencies Act was these horrible, horrible The Nazi flag and all those things that people saw in Ottawa.
You heard him say that?
Again, I have to say, prior to coming here, I have not specifically reviewed specific statements of the Prime Minister.
If you want to point to a specific one, maybe we could discuss it.
You'd agree if it turned out those flags were linked to your government.
That would look really bad for our international reputation, wouldn't it?
Based on some...
Okay next if I could call on the CCLA please.
Good afternoon, Minister Freeland.
My name is Eva Krajewska, and I'm counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Minister Freeland, I'd like to start off with going back to your testimony in chief with respect to the Ambassador Bridge.
If I understand your testimony correctly, you stated that the blockage of the Ambassador Bridge escalated matters in your mind significantly.
That's fair?
So first of all, good afternoon, Ms. Krajewska.
Nice, well, maybe I shouldn't say nice.
Maybe you can tell me that later.
Yeah, but good afternoon, and I will try to answer your questions.
And I think when you say testimony, you're referring to the two hours this morning.
So to be very, try to be precise, yes, as finance minister.
In my judgment around the economic impact of the illegal blockades and occupation, certainly the blockade of the Ambassador Bridge was a very significant escalation.
Right.
And precisely the words you just used now, it was at least at that point, if not earlier, that to your mind, the blockades and the demonstrations became illegal.
No, I don't think I want to be so precise about that.
What I am very clear about is the blockade of the bridge made this a real economic crisis for Canada.
That was a moment when, as finance minister, I really had to figure out a way to stop the harm to Canada from getting worse and from really snowballing and irreparably damaging our country.
And you said because it had potentially exponential harm to the Canadian economy.
Yes.
I mean, I wasn't taking notes of what I said, but I believe that.
Yes.
And that's when you started looking at the Bank Act and the PCLMFTA as potential using the measures under that legislation to stop those demonstrations.
Again, here, let me be sort of very precise about my state of mind.
From my perspective, We had a number of different, but certainly inspired by one another, occupations and blockades across the country.
There was the occupation of Ottawa.
And I can't tell you the chronology of them.
I'm sure you're familiar with them.
But so there's the occupation of Ottawa.
There was Cootes.
There was Emerson.
In terms of economic impact, the Ambassador Bridge was the most significant.
There was also, I believe, Sarnia, Niagara, and Surrey.
So from my perspective, what was happening was this kind of metastasizing, whack-a-mole, copycat events around the country.
And some of them had a greater specific economic impact than others.
The Ambassador Bridge sort of stepped up the impact, but it was not the case in my view that this was just the Ambassador Bridge.
And that was not the purpose of my question, that it was only about the Ambassador Bridge.
I understand your evidence that the blockades generally had a significant economic impact.
On Canada that you were concerned about.
That's fair.
Again, can I say yes and offer an explanation?
I'm not trying to make this controversial or to trap you.
I'm just trying to establish this to move on to my next point.
Okay, well, I would just say you are a lawyer, so a person does have to be careful.
And I say that with the greatest respect for all the lawyers who are here.
But look, the point that I just want to be clear about, and I do think that there has been, in some of the public thinking about this, a lack of clarity.
From my perspective, one way that you could look at the economic harm was what happens every day arithmetically and just add it up.
From my perspective, that grossly understates the potential economic harm that was being done.
Because what I was really worried about was that as this goes on, every single hour...
More damage is done to American confidence in us as a trading partner, and more damage is done to us as an investment destination.
Witness the Banana Republic comment.
Right.
Exactly.
So you were concerned that this economic disruption was painting Canada as politically unstable, not a place that is safe to invest for, and potentially a Banana Republic, which by definition is an unstable country.
I mean, Banana Republic wasn't my term, but it was a term that had an impact on me for sure.
Okay.
Now...
Minister Phelan, you can appreciate that from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, our concern is that the Emergencies Act should not be used to quash political dissent.
You understand that?
I totally do.
And if I can be personal for one moment, in my life as a person and a writer and an elected politician, I...
Would always prefer for myself to be on the same side as the Civil Liberties Association, that these are values I hold very dear.
And so I understand the urgency with which you champion them.
Right.
And then, so I think you would also agree that the Emergencies Act should not be used because demonstrators are disagreeing with government policy.
I think that's a very...
Low thresholds here that I'm putting to you.
Yes, I absolutely agree with that.
And I think you also know in your life, both as a journalist and as a minister, that on occasion, the right to freedom of assembly and freedom of expression includes actions that are of civil disobedience.
I do recognize that that sometimes happens.
And I also recognize that laws are enforced against people committing acts of civil disobedience.
People can believe in something and can bravely commit those acts and pay the price of the legal penalty.
Exactly.
And civil disobedience will on occasion also involve serious economic...
And I'll give you a few examples.
A general strike is a form of civil disobedience that causes economic disruption.
You'd agree with that.
If the tendency of these questions is to equate the economic harm that was being done to Canada and that would have risen had these illegal occupations and blockades continued with the harm done by the country, Okay.
And sometimes blockades by Indigenous people cause economic harm, correct?
They do.
Yeah.
Certainly, but the economic harm, you know, to take those two specific instances, very, very limited, actually, compared to the damage being done to Canada.
And if I may, you know, had what was happening in Canada been about, I don't know, the field behind the National Art Gallery?
Being occupied for a long time.
And maybe some comparable public park in Windsor being occupied.
And so on across the country.
That would have been entirely legitimate protest.
But that wasn't what was happening.
Okay.
Maybe I can take you to an example closer to home.
For me.
When Solidarity had a general strike in Poland and blocked the ports, Western democracies applauded that action.
Economic disruption was viewed as a legitimate form of political protest at that time.
I'm going to allow myself one personal comment, which is I did make a bet with myself that you and I would end up talking about Solidarność.
You know, coming from the Eastern Bloc, it was going to happen.
Yeah, I am aware of that.
And I don't think you'll be surprised to think that I thought about that at the time.
And more recently and more specifically, I thought about the Maidan in Ukraine.
And when we took this action.
And let me talk about a few differences.
And the main one is this.
Solidarność, as you know very well, was a protest against a government that was illegitimate.
That was from whence it drew its power and legitimacy.
This was people rising up against an authoritarian, and I would even say in the case of Poland, colonial.
In Canada, what happened was a democratically elected government that was actually acting on policies that we had campaigned on just that summer.
So it was a fresh democratic mandate.
There was no lack of transparency with the people of Canada.
And people who disagreed with those policies.
We're holding the country's economy hostage.
And that was not appropriate.
I do want to raise a concern.
I'm assuming you're not saying that democracy only operates at the time of casting our ballot.
Obviously, I think you acknowledge that we are able to...
So even after you were democratically elected, people could protest your government's policies, correct?
A hundred percent.
And I am in no way, in no way, suggesting that the act of protest is anti-democratic.
On the contrary, the right to protest, I think it's a feature, not a bug of democracy.
But what I was saying...
Which I believe very strongly is there is a big difference between acts of popular resistance and even revolution against an authoritarian regime and protest in a democracy.
And Minister Phila, I'd like to just take you to, you started your comments this morning as well with The bigger geopolitical issues here between President Putin trying to demonstrate that his way of dictatorships is preferable to Western democracies.
I think you can appreciate that there have been countries in the world that have said You should invest in us because we are politically stable.
We do not have general strikes.
We do not tolerate dissent.
And I want to end on this.
Surely you agree that in Canada, which is a democracy, the right to protest, the right to demonstration must be steadily protected and that economic security does not trump those rights.
So many things packed in there.
I know.
I just think I'm running out of time, so it's all going in.
So many things packed in there, and many of them I agree with.
I have reported on a lot of authoritarian regimes that spoke about their stability as something that should be attractive to investors.
Clearly, I strongly disagree with that argument.
My concern when it came to the economic security of Canada was about our ability not to not have political debate.
Political debate is a sign of a healthy society.
The fact we're having this commission, that's a healthy democracy.
The fact that in question period we yell at each other.
I really don't like it, but it's a sign of a healthy democracy.
What was undermining of Canada's economic security sufficiently dangerously that I believe we needed to act and it was the right thing to do was that our trade was being stopped.
And was being seriously blocked.
And I was very worried that that was handing arguments to US protectionists who were already on the move and that had that relationship been seriously damaged, that would really hurt Canada.
Administrator, my last point, you mentioned at some point that it would have been one thing for the protesters to stand with a placard at the War Museum and protest.
You mentioned that today in testimony with me.
I didn't say War Museum and I didn't say placard.
Sorry.
The basic idea, I think we're in the same zone.
I'm sorry, I'm thinking of a different Ottawa monument.
But you agree that public assembly and the right to protest goes beyond simply me standing on a green lawn in front of a government building.
That it does encompass more than that and that Canada should protect that to be a vibrant democracy.
I, you know, am not...
Going to right now try to define with you specifically, you know, what is, you know, give examples of protests.
But what I will say, and I really agree with, and I think one of the lines that very much in my mind in this decision is, I do agree with you.
That in a democracy, the right to protest is important and has to be protected.
And yeah, I mean, that's such an obvious statement, and I agree with that, and I agree.
Yeah, so since it's obvious, I'll say it, and I won't gild the lily.
Thank you.
Thank you, Minister.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Okay.
We have five minutes left.
I don't know if...
the canadian constitution foundation allows to start or Lunch, but I'm in your hands.
I don't know.
I think we'll adjourn for lunch.
How's that?
Okay, great.
Thank you.
We'll come back then at two o 'clock.
The commission is in recess until 2 o'clock.
The commission is just going to cut those out.
Thank you.
Order a lot.
The Commission is reconvened, la Commissaire Applau.
Okay.
Once again, I apologize for the slight delay.
Issues have come up that I'm having to deal with, so I apologize now.
I think we can go to the next, which is the...
Canadian Constitution Foundation, and you're online.
Go ahead.
Great.
Thank you very much.
So, good afternoon, Minister.
My name is Jenanish Shen-McGunathan, and I am counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
And today, in your evidence, you talked about the economic and financial consequences of the protests.
You talked about the reputational damage to Canada as an investment destination.
And at the end of Commission Council's examination, she asked you to explain how you understood this, you know, economic harm was linked to national security.
Do you recall that?
Yes, I do.
All right.
And your answer to that was, you believe our security as a country is built on economic security.
And if our economic security is threatened, all of our security is threatened.
And now I'm not asking you to elaborate on this.
I just want you to confirm that this was your evidence.
Obviously, I don't have word-by-word recall of what I said, but that's what I believe, and it sounds like you're reading the transcript.
All right.
Thank you very much.
And now, I take it you know that...
In order to declare a public order emergency pursuant to the Emergencies Act, there must be what's called threats to the security of Canada.
You're aware of that?
Yes, I am.
And the Emergency Act says that threats to the security of Canada has the meaning assigned by Section 2 of the CSIS Act.
You're aware of that?
Yes, I am.
All right, so I just want to take you to section two of the CSIS Act, and this is COM, either five zeros or six zeros, nine, three, five.
should be five zeros.
If I can take to page eight, please.
Okay.
Perfect.
If you can just pause there.
So the CSIS Act defines threats to the security of Canada.
And we've heard evidence in this commission that for the purposes of invoking the Emergencies Act here, the focus was on C. That's where they were focused on in terms of the threats to the security of Canada.
So what C says is activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat, Or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state.
So you see that?
I do.
All right.
And so in terms of the economic harm that you've described today, the reputational damage to Canada as an investment country.
You'll agree that it doesn't fall within C, right?
The activities relating to Canada, directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence.
Would you agree with that or is that fair to say?
Not precisely.
You know, if the direction of these questions is to ask me, I believe we were acting within legal authorities granted by the Emergencies Act.
If that's where this question is leading, then my answer is, yes, I believed we had the authority to do what we did.
And I hope no one is surprised by my saying that.
Had I not believed it, I would not have done it.
And I wouldn't be here speaking, you know, with sadness, but confidence that we did the right thing.
So my question was whether the economic harm that you've described today falls within the definition found in C. Which speaks specifically to the support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property for the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state.
Does the economic harm you've described today fall within sea?
It's a big question, and so I was offering an answer in several parts.
And I offered...
The first part of it, and I can continue if you'd like.
No, I mean to be respectful.
I just want to know, you know, I appreciate that your position is that Canada acted within lawful authority to invoke the Emergencies Act, but I just want to understand if the economic harm that we spent a lot of today talking about, whether that falls within the scope of C. And so I just want to know your answer to that question.
And I also really do want to be respectful and answer this really important question.
But it's a big question, so I'm going to have to take it in stages.
And I offered the first stage.
I can carry on if you'd like.
Sure.
So that was my first stage.
Second stage is in terms of One of the things that this commission is, I think, quite rightly investigating was the government acting within its authorities.
For me, as finance minister, an important factor in the judgment I came to, which is that we were.
Was the expert advice that we received.
I'm not a lawyer.
I rely on the judgment of officials who advised us and on expert legal advice.
And I say that even as I am very confident.
That it was the right decision and confident in taking personal political responsibility.
I can also speak to what I saw and experienced and believed that falls within the scope of the serious violence against persons or property point.
But I do want to be clear that I'm not speaking here as someone with an expert legal opinion, but I'm speaking as a minister who made a political judgment and as someone who was also in Ottawa.
So some of the things that factored into my thinking about it were, as I described in my testimony this morning, A real concern that we were in a tinderbox situation where the economic threats and the threats generally and the damage that were being
created both by the Ottawa occupation and the Ambassador Bridge did risk, I felt, at every moment.
Some kind of conflict between protesters and counter-protesters.
I saw that and experienced it myself, just being a person who was in Ottawa.
I felt it was a tinder keg that could be sparked at any moment and was therefore very dangerous.
And although I didn't see it myself, I heard accounts of Windsor of a situation there, which I found to be very credible.
I was also influenced.
Can I say one more thing?
Sure.
Which speaks to this.
I was also influenced by our IRG meeting on, I think it was the Saturday, the 12th, where we heard from the RCMP commissioner about concerns that there were serious weapons in coots.
And that...
Really raise the stakes in terms of my degree of concern about what could be happening there, but also what could be happening in this sort of whack-a-mole, copycat situation across the country.
Okay, so my question was about...
How you understood the economic harms to fall within subsection or see the definition of threats to security of Canada in C. And as I understand your explanation, your explanation is it falls within it because there's a risk that the economic harm that's being created by the protests.
Could somehow manifest into actual threats of violence?
Is that your understanding of how it falls within C?
I'm going to object to the question as phrased.
That's a legal question.
I'm just trying to find out her on, you know, she's offered an explanation for how she says the economic harm falls within C, and she linked it directly to the threats or use of acts.
And I'm just trying to understand what that link is.
I mean, my counsel may have something to say, but I don't think that's a fair characterization of what I said just now or of what I said this morning.
What I think is fair is, first of all, that I relied on expert legal judgment to make a very important and weighty legal decision.
What I also said is, as a person who was here in Ottawa, I did see a real danger of violence.
And then finally, what I described in my testimony this morning was the way in which the economic security of our country, I really believe, is a part of our national security.
But that was a much broader conversation we were having about a broad set of issues, which I certainly think are important for us to think about and consider.
And I don't want to mischaracterize your evidence.
Just so that we're all clear, do you see a link between the economic harm that you say was caused by the protests to Canada with What's contained in C in terms of the threats or use of acts of serious violence against persons?
And again, there, I really do not want to shirk my personal political responsibility.
And while this was a grave and serious decision...
We took it carefully and thoughtfully, and I believed it was the right decision then, and I believe today it is the right decision.
But I'm also conscious, if I may continue?
Of course.
I'm also conscious that I am not a lawyer, and I'm not a person who can give expert opinion.
On the precise parsing of these authorities.
It was important for me to be assured that we did have the authority to act.
And I received, as a cabinet member, assurances that we had those authorities from people who I believe were qualified to offer those assurances.
And I don't mean to belabor the point.
I just want to make sure the evidence is clear.
So your evidence is that you understood that you had the authority to invoke the Emergencies Act.
But in terms of saying there's a linkage between the economic harm caused by the protests with the requirement of the threat or use of acts of serious violence, is that something that you can't speak to?
Again, Commissioner, this is illegal.
Interpretation question that will be addressed in closing submissions.
And I don't mean to belabor this.
I just want to make sure I understand Deputy Minister's evidence.
Is she just saying that she can't comment on it because it's a legal question or she's saying that there is a link?
I just want to know what the answer is.
I renew my objection and would ask for a ruling on it.
Okay, well, I think at the end of the day, I don't think you can pursue this any further at the moment.
I think you've got your answer as it is.
That's fine.
Thank you very much.
I don't know how much time I have left, but I do have just one other point I'd like to, or one other issue to address, if I may.
So when we were talking about FinTrack this morning, and you explored it as one option to pursue, but decided that...
You know, making a change to it, you know, the legislative amendment would take too much time.
Do you recall your evidence earlier today about that?
Yes, I do.
All right.
And so, just so that we're all clear, because we have Canadians watching who may not understand the process, the money, the proceeds of crime and money laundering and terrorist financing act, it gives the ability to create regulations, right?
If your question is, was it possible to grant FINTRAC, to give FINTRAC these expanded powers through regulation, that is correct.
And I said that this morning.
We did go on to grant those powers through regulation.
And there's just a difference between how...
Regulations are passed versus, say, example, legislation or amendments to legislation.
The latter is what you have to do, the three readings, going to Senate.
It's a much longer legislative process.
That's fair?
100%.
And by comparison, passing regulations is a much shorter process.
Absolutely.
Okay, those are all my questions.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you.
Next is the...
democracy fund jccf Good afternoon, Minister.
My name is Alan Hawner.
I'm a lawyer at the Democracy Fund, and we share status with the JCCF and Citizens for Freedom.
Ms. Freeland, in your witness statement, you mentioned challenges to supply chains as being a major focus for you in January of 2022.
But you didn't mention the government vaccine mandate for truckers, and I'd just like to ask you a little bit about that.
Can we please pull up OTT 3027621.0001.
And Ms. Freeland, while we're waiting for that to come up, this is a letter which is addressed to you and other ministers by the Canadian Trucking Alliance, and it's dated December 10th.
I'd like to take you through part of this letter, but before I do that, can you tell me, do you know who this group is, the Canadian Trucker Alliance?
I can't say I'm familiar with them right now.
Maybe I've heard of them, but...
Okay.
Well, I think we've heard some evidence about them, but if you're not familiar with them, that's okay.
Let's just go down to the first paragraph here.
And Ms. Ferland, I just want to read this to you.
It says that the Canadian Trucker Alliance is disappointed to learn that our current exemption from the national vaccination mandate is being removed, considering the immense impact this decision will have on already beleaguered supply chains.
Do you see that?
I do.
Okay, and if I can take you to another part of that letter, just the second page, second paragraph, please.
Here we see...
CTA estimates that combined the proposed vaccine mandate for cross-border truck drivers and the federal sector mandate announced by the Minister of Labour would remove between 15,000 and 30,000 Canadian drivers from the interprovincial and international supply chains.
The expected loss of transportation services, service capacity will trigger significant ripple effects throughout the entire economy.
And Mr. Lynn, I just want to ask you, this is something you knew about when the exemption for truckers was removed in February.
You knew that this might have some effect on the supply chain.
Is that fair?
I knew that some people asserted that it might.
Okay, thank you.
And I'm going to suggest, this is not the first time this group wrote to you.
If we can scroll down to page five, please.
We have another letter just to the top of page five.
Sorry, it might be page four.
Just go up, please.
Okay, so here we have a letter.
It is a little bit down, please.
I'm sorry.
Can we just go to the top?
So December the 8th, 2021, and if we can scroll down to the second paragraph, it says here, when the mandate was originally announced, CTA expected that upwards of 20% of the 120,000 Canadian truck drivers crossing the US-Canada border would have likely remained unvaccinated by January 2022.
Of the 40,000 US-based truck drivers crossing the border, CTA estimated that upwards of 40% of these drivers would not be prepared to meet the vaccine mandate requirement.
Do you see that?
I do.
Okay, and just...
One last question about this.
You would agree that the reduction of truck drivers crossing the border when there are already supply chain issues could have an effect on the economy?
I don't agree with the estimates that are provided there.
And I don't agree with the assertion that the vaccine mandates themselves.
But they affected it.
They had a contribution to that supply chain.
No, I don't agree with that.
The vast majority of Canadian truckers are in fact and were at the time vaccinated and supported the vaccine mandates.
Okay, well, let's go to page six, please.
Okay, in the first paragraph that we see there, The CTA is giving stats that truckers move about 70% of the $648 billion Canada-US trade.
Does that sound about right to you?
Again, I can't say whether that's true or not, but I have no reason to.
Let me say this.
Trucking is very important for the Canadian economy.
Trucking is very important for our supply chains, and trucking is very important for cross-border trade.
I am very prepared to agree with.
I think we can all agree on that.
And let's just consider that if what the Canadian, if what the CTA is saying is correct and the drivers are reduced by 20%, that's a reduction of 24,000 trucks in the supply chain.
The challenge here for me...
I disagree with the fundamental premise.
And this was something that was looked at carefully by Minister Al-Ghabra and also by the Minister of Health.
Okay, so you disagree with the fundamental premise of the Canadian trucker lives.
Thank you.
I'll move on to something else.
I just want to understand a little bit more about what was going on in January.
And you gave some evidence today, and I think you told us that it was a very intense month for you.
That would be fair?
Yes, that would be fair.
Okay, and let me make sure that I understand it.
So, on the one hand, you were preparing a budget.
Yes.
Okay, and there was the issue of the Build Back Better legislation in the States, and there was the electric vehicle tax credit, right?
That was on your plate.
Not solely on mine, but it was something I was working on.
Right.
And there was the COVID recovery and there were local and global supply chain issues.
Yes.
Okay.
And there was the looming threat of inflation.
Yes.
And we talked a little bit about the Ukraine, and I think you said that was the biggest threat to national security since World War II.
The Russian invasion.
The Russian invasion.
When it actually happened.
Yes, I think that is the biggest national security challenge our country has faced.
And it was on your radar in January?
Yes, it was.
Okay.
And in the midst of this, there was this trucker protest of unprecedented proportions taking place across the country, and you described that as whack-a-mole.
No.
What?
I would describe as what we saw happening from the moment that the initial occupation began is copycat protests happening across the country, and that posed a particular national challenge.
I see.
I thought you said the word whack-a-mole, but it's not important.
But what is important I would put to you is that the U.S. was unhappy with the situation in Canada, and they were seeing their own vulnerability in our supply chains.
That was your evidence, was it not?
Certainly.
And they didn't like that.
The, in particular, blockade of the Ambassador Bridge exposed the vulnerability of the U.S. economy, particularly the car sector, to the Canadian car sector.
Exactly.
And I put it to you, Minister, that the government felt that they had to do something about these protests, not because of threats of serious violence, but because your government was completely overwhelmed and you were under a tremendous amount of pressure from the United States.
I absolutely disagree with that.
Okay, well, we heard evidence from you earlier today and you said that You were put into contact with Brian Dees.
So he's the economic advisor to the president.
He's a very influential player in the decision for the electric vehicle tax credit issue.
And he actually contacted you.
That's correct.
And you thought that it was striking that someone of his importance, who's so hard to get a hold of, contacted you.
I had spoken to Brian Deese before and since, but the speed and urgency with which he got in touch with me was definitely significant and relevant.
And he was unhappy and there could be major economic consequences.
What he said to me...
As I reported in that readout, was that they were very concerned that because of the blockades, U.S. factories would shut down.
Right.
And we heard that the CEOs of two major banks contacted you, Canadian banks, I believe.
And we also heard that President Biden, who is probably the world's most powerful person or near that, had a telephone call with the prime minister.
Yes, both of those things are true.
And that telephone call...
It happened on a Friday, and by the Monday, the Emergencies Act was invoked.
That's true.
Okay, and so I put it to you, Minister, that the federal government had to show the USA that they were in control, and that explains why the Emergencies Act was invoked, despite the fact that, for example, the Ambassador Bridge was cleared and open to traffic.
No, I wouldn't agree with that characterization.
Okay, well, I would put it to you that the pressure the government was under explains why the Emergencies Act was invoked, despite the fact that a deal had been struck with the protesters in Ottawa to reduce the footprint of the protest in that city.
Again, I would disagree with that.
Well, let's see if you would agree with this.
I'd put it to you that there was no meaningful consultation with the provinces, not even advanced notice of what the First Minister's meeting was about.
And that's because the government didn't have time for it.
They just had to make a decision about the Emergencies Act because of the tremendous pressure that they were under.
Again, I disagree with a great deal of that characterization.
One last question for you then, Ms. Freeland.
I put it to you that given the overwhelming situation that the government was facing, explains why they were willing to use extraordinary powers against their own people, despite the fact that no police agency or intelligence agency
Again, I disagree with many of the premises in that question, and I would be happy to elaborate, but it seems that we're out of time.
It seems so.
Thank you very much for your answers.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
Okay, thank you.
Next, I'd like to call on the Government of Alberta.
Thank you very much and good afternoon.
Minister Freeland, I have just two questions for you this afternoon.
As has been discussed today...
Oh, sorry, I apologize for the transcript.
My name is Mandy England and I'm one of the lawyers for the Government of Alberta.
As has been discussed today...
You had consultations with the CEOs of several banks on February the 13th about potential economic measures.
And you said in your testimony today how important it was for you to hear from the leaders of the financial institutions what their views were on the situation with the blockades.
And as you're also aware, the consultation with the first ministers of the provinces and territories was held on the morning of February 14th.
And that was after the cabinet meetings and the IRG meetings had been held.
Now, consulting with the CEOs of financial institutions for their views on the situation is not required by the Emergencies Act before the government can invoke the Act for a public order emergency, but consulting with the provinces and territories for their input is required.
As Deputy Prime Minister, don't you think that the input of the first ministers of the provinces and territories on the potential invocation of the Emergencies Act and the proposed measures Would have been relevant information to have before you at the IRG meetings and the cabinet meetings where the invocation of the Emergencies Act was discussed and debated?
Thank you for the question.
And as a former intergovernmental relations minister, I understand it and I really do understand the importance and sometimes the challenges of that federal-provincial relationship.
In this particular situation, it was a very complex, fast-developing situation, and each minister was responsible for managing a series of relationships and bringing that information to the table.
My colleague, Dominic LeBlanc, is an extremely able minister, an extremely able intergovernmental affairs minister.
And I relied on him, as did everyone around the table, to manage that relationship and to bring to us and to the table his knowledge of the views of the provinces and territories.
And with your knowledge that they weren't consulted about the Emergencies Act or told until the morning of February the 14th that the Emergencies Act...
In my view, Minister LeBlanc very effectively, from what I could see, very effectively communicated with the provinces and territories.
And communicated with us what he learned from those conversations.
That discussion that happened on the Monday was important.
I wasn't part of that discussion, but it happened and it was important that it happened.
And so the evidence that has been given before this inquiry is that the Emergencies Act had not been raised.
With any of the first ministers of the provinces or territories or any of the cabinet members of the provinces or territories.
So wouldn't you agree with me that whatever information it was that Minister LeBlanc was bringing to the table, it did not involve discussions about the Federal Emergencies Act?
Again there, I would say this was an area of responsibility for Minister LeBlanc, who I do...
Absolutely believe does that very difficult job very well, and I had confidence in how he did that job.
I'll move on to my second question.
We spoke about the call that you had with the banks on February the 13th.
There was another call with the banks on February the 21st, and I'd like to just pull up the readout from that call, if I may.
It's ssm.can401828.
And the section that I'd like to draw your attention to is close to the top.
It's the portion that reads from DPM, which I take to be indicating that this is what you said on the call as Deputy Prime Minister would be DPM.
Is that correct?
I think so.
Okay, thank you.
And then there's a paragraph that begins first.
And then the next little paragraph says, the RCMP has told us they have heard from protesters as they were leaving the blockades that they did so because their family said their accounts were frozen.
So get the hell out of there.
Now, freezing someone's bank account without due process engages their personal rights.
And it also engages the personal rights of the families that shared many of those bank accounts, individuals who weren't even at the protest.
You've stated here in this document that your view was that this is better and more peaceful.
Presumably then using the existing legal authorities, which multiple branches of law enforcement have testified that this inquiry were adequate to bring a peaceful end to the protests, and indeed they did so using those authorities.
So do you still hold that view today that freezing the accounts was a better solution than law enforcement carrying out its legal authorities in the responsible manner that they do?
The view that I do hold, as we discussed earlier today, is one of my very grave concerns about bringing these illegal blockades and this illegal occupation to an end was the danger that there would be violence and that there would be violence directed towards the protesters.
I was particularly concerned because of reports.
And that was one of the reasons that I felt the financial tools that were put in place by the Emergencies Act were a better option.
From my perspective, the job of these tools was to create a peaceful Non-violent incentive for people who were doing something illegal to leave.
And I think those tools did work.
And so I would just remind you in that regard that the call that we're looking at this readout from in front of us was held on February the 21st.
And so at that time, the COOTS blockade, we can scroll up to the top of the document.
We have Monday, February the 21st, and you say, it's hard to believe it was only a week ago we were on a call last Sunday, which was February the 13th, talking about this.
So this is a call that was held on February the 21st.
After the enforcement actions had been taken out at Coutts, which were done before the Emergencies Act was invoked, after the Ambassador Bridge was cleared, which was before the Emergencies Act was invoked, and while the enforcement efforts in Ottawa were well underway, and you would have had the knowledge at that time that there was peaceful resolution by law enforcement at both of those border blockades, and that there was no violence against children, and it was a peaceful resolution by law enforcement in Ottawa.
And so, with respect to those comments about the fear of the prospect of violence, I don't know that on the timeline of February 21st, are you saying you still had them then and you would still have those today?
No, not at all.
And so you expressed this view after you were of the knowledge that there's...
May I explain?
Absolutely.
I didn't realize you were talking.
I apologize.
No problem.
It can be hard on the video calls.
So on February 21st, when I made those comments, it was looking back on the events of the week that had passed.
And I certainly believed then, and I believe today, that the financial tools we put in place aided in the peaceful resolution of all of those occupations and blockades.
The reports that we heard, the reports that were in the media, the reports from law enforcement were that many people did leave as a result of the incentives created by those tools.
And then the final thing that I think is important to emphasize is we said on February 14th, we are putting these tools in place, so please leave now.
So that these tools never need to be used.
So any person who had their account frozen had due warning that they were engaged in illegal activity and that they should stop doing that activity.
And the other thing that I would point to that I think did work well is the accounts were very quickly unfrozen after the illegal activity ceased.
And with respect to the due warning, there were, as you acknowledged in your earlier testimony, accounts of families, individuals who weren't present at the protests that were also frozen.
Would your view be the same with respect to those individuals?
Again there, that was never the intent to in any way affect family members.
Certainly the consequence, the reality of people having joint bank accounts made that impossible to entirely avoid.
But I would say that the family members whose presence at the protest, at the illegal occupation and blockades, caused the accounts to be frozen.
had a very easy, readily available remedy with a lot of notice.
They could have left before the freezing began.
And as soon as people did leave, the accounts were unfrozen.
Thank you, Minister.
Those are my questions today.
Okay, thank you.
Next, I'd like to call on the City of Ottawa, please.
The City has ceded its time to the Government of Canada.
Alyssa Tompkins for the record.
Okay, thank you.
Council for former Chief Slowly, please.
Rebecca Jones for Chief Slowly.
And we also have no questions for the Deputy Prime Minister and have ceded our time to the Government of Canada.
Thank you.
Okay.
Next is City of Windsor.
Good afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister.
My name is Jennifer King and I am legal counsel.
To the City of Windsor.
I only have a few moments with you this afternoon.
You have testified about the macroeconomic impacts of the border blockades and the Ambassador Bridge blockades specifically.
In my few moments with you, I want to shift tracks a bit and ask you to scope down and talk to us about the impacts of the blockades on the community and individual level.
As you may be aware, I hope you're aware, Windsor is not just a road to the Ambassador Bridge.
It's a community.
It's a place where people live, work and study.
Are you aware that the bridge lands in the community?
Yes, I am.
Are you aware that for Windsor and Windsorites, the blockade of the bridge was felt directly and immediately?
Yes, I am.
Has not completed an analysis of the blockade and the impacts on the local economy and local Windsor businesses.
Is that right?
That's right.
Okay.
But you are well aware of the importance of the automotive sector as an employer in the region, right?
I'm very aware of that and was motivated by my awareness of that and some of the actions we've been discussing today.
Okay.
And you're aware that given the nature of the automotive sector, the blockade had a significant impact and resulted almost immediately in shutdowns and partial layoffs?
Yes.
Can you tell us generally how impacts on the Canadian economy at this kind of macro level that you've been talking about trickles down and impacts local communities and residents, particularly communities like Windsor that are reliant on these types of automotive industries?
I think you've been doing a very good job of telling us that.
And certainly, I'm, you know, very prepared to agree with you that Windsor was very specifically and meaningfully affected.
Okay.
You also gave testimony this morning about US EV incentives.
Mayor Dilkens gave evidence to this commission about the $5 billion investment announced in March through a joint venture between Stellantis.
And LG Energy Solutions to establish a battery manufacturing plant in the region.
You're aware of that investment?
Extremely.
So this will be the first Canadian electric vehicle battery manufacturing facility?
Well, let's get it off the ground, but I'm very optimistic about it.
And Mayor Dilkens testified that these discussions and pre-planning about this investment was underway at the time of the blockade.
Yes, I believe that's the case.
Is this the kind of investment that you were concerned about, that you were talking about earlier today?
100%.
The Commission has heard evidence about the response in Windsor Police and its policing partners to peacefully clear the blockade of the bridge.
Were you aware at the time that the necessary policing efforts to maintain access to the bridge after the blockade impacted Windsorites?
Yes.
Deputy Minister Sabia agreed that the reopening of the bridge was key to avoiding greater damage to Canada's reputation as a good place to invest, Canada's reputation as a reliable trading partner.
Do you agree?
Yes, I do.
For Windsorites, this is, of course, not about just what happened in February.
Windsor has been host to this critical piece of infrastructure for almost a century.
Windsor keeps traffic flowing to this bridge every day, and that benefits the entire country, doesn't it?
100%.
It helped us get the 3M masks, in fact.
Right.
So we've heard a number of witnesses recommend that the frameworks and laws to protect critical infrastructure should be studied and strengthened.
Do you agree?
I do.
Would you also agree that Windsor is not only a stakeholder in debriefing the lessons learned and in developing these frameworks, but also an important partner?
Yes, Windsor is definitely an important partner.
Okay, thank you.
Those are all my questions.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you.
Next is the Windsor Police Service.
Hi there, Heather Patterson for the Windsor Police Service.
We have no questions for Minister Freeland and have ceded our time to the Government of Saskatchewan.
I guess then we go to the Government of Saskatchewan.
Good afternoon.
My name is Mike Morris and I'm Counsel for the Government of Saskatchewan.
Minister, spoiler alert, I hope to get you to agree with me as much as my colleague did just a couple minutes ago.
I guess we'll see where we get to.
But Minister, I think I can start out with some easy ones.
You're familiar with Farm Credit Canada, which is a federal crown corporation.
Is that fair?
Not intimately, but I know it exists.
You grew up on the prairies.
It used to be called Farm Credit Corporation.
If I call it FCC, you'll understand what I mean.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
And are you aware that FCC is headquartered in Regina?
Yes.
Okay.
And that it provides loans to farmers, correct?
Yes.
And Farm Credit Canada would have been a financial institution subject to the Emergency Economic Measures Order, correct?
I believe so.
And if I just call that the order, you'll understand what I mean.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
I want to refer you to an article from Farmers Forum, which is self-described as the largest circulation farm newspaper in Ontario.
So I'm going to ask the clerk to pull up a document.
It's P-O-E-S-A-S-7-0-3.
And just while we're pulling this up, it's the May 3rd, 2022 article from Farmers Forum entitled, Read the Documents Farm Credit Compiled List of Nine Names for Possible Blacklisting.
So we can see that on the screen there now.
And I'm just going to read from the first three paragraphs of the article.
So we'll just have to go down there.
Perfect.
Farm Credit Canada compiled a list of nine people to be potentially blacklisted because of possible participation in the Freedom Convoy protest in February, according to internal FCC emails acquired by Farmer Forum through an Access to Information request.
The access to information documents revealed that FCC employees were instructed to report the names of customers who were involved in the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa after the Emergencies Act was enacted on Feb 14. The Federal Lending Agency compiled a list of nine people by viewing Twitter accounts and online media posts, as well as drawing from conversations with customers.
I expect we can agree that it's not surprising that FCC instructed its employees to report in this manner because FCC was required to do so under the terms of the order.
Is that fair?
Well, maybe not entirely.
And I will say I am reading this news report for the first time as I see it.
On my screen.
So my response is a little bit limited.
But even in the paragraphs that you've displayed for us, there is a misunderstanding if this email is genuine.
And I'm just saying because I haven't seen it, right?
We can look at the emails.
No, no, no.
Reporting is a hard thing to do.
I used to be a reporter.
But the email that is reported on here saying, if the federal government directs us to, that is a misunderstanding of how the order worked.
We were always very conscious that it wasn't the job of the federal government or the Ministry of Finance to name specific names or to even know which names were involved.
The way the order worked was that that was to be a communication between law enforcement and the financial institutions.
I know it's not my job to ask you to agree with me, but I hope you will agree with me that that was appropriate, that elected ministers shouldn't be involved in naming specific names.
So that was a misunderstanding.
I think we should look at the documents referred to from that access to information request.
So I'm going to ask the clerk to bring up POESAS704.
These are the documents which were obtained by Farmers Forum and that are referred to in this article.
And I'm just going to ask that we go to the third page of this PDF, please.
There, perfect.
So we can see this is an email with a subject line, "How the Emergencies Act affects FCC." And it's two operations field staff dated February 23rd, 2022.
So I'd just like us to scroll down to the third paragraph, please.
Stop there.
The third paragraph begins.
If you become aware of potential customer involvement in blockades, occupations and other supportive activity related to the Freedom Convoy, you must submit a tip to the Customer Diligence Center, brackets CDC.
So this is the morning of February 23rd, and we know that the order was no longer in place later that day because, of course, the emergency declaration was revoked on February 23rd later that day.
Is that fair, Minister?
Yes.
Yes, exactly.
Okay.
I'd just like us to scroll down to page 5 of the PDF now, please.
And this should be an email dated February 25th.
Yes, there it is.
So, we see this as an email dated February 25th with the subject Emergencies Act Customers Identified.
And the content of the email indicates that the sender is telling the recipient that they'd like to follow up regarding customers that have been identified as possibly participating in the 2022 Freedom Convoy.
So, we've agreed, I think, or we can agree, that as of February 25th, there was no requirement under the order to conduct this follow-up.
Is that fair?
So let me say a couple of things.
First of all, I'm seeing this email now for the first time.
And as far as I know, it had nothing to do with me.
I understand.
Second of all, it's certainly the case that the order ceased to apply after February 23rd.
And maybe the third thing for people who are listening that it's worth pointing out is...
All the accounts were unfrozen around that time.
Okay, I just want to continue on to the next page of the PDF, which is page six.
I appreciate you're seeing this for the first time, Minister, and I understand that's difficult.
But this appears to be a spreadsheet entitled 2022 Freedom Convoy Tips.
It has a column for tip, for date, for customer name, and preliminary findings.
And I'd just like us to slowly scroll to the very end of all of these PDFs, looking at the dates as it goes by.
Yeah, you can keep scrolling.
That's a good pace.
So we've seen February 23rd.
Keep scrolling.
Now we see February 24th.
Keep scrolling.
I think there's one more page.
We'll get to the end here.
Oh, another page.
More February 24th.
Keep going.
Yeah.
So the last one is number nine.
Okay, go up a little bit.
And this would appear to indicate that the last tip in the spreadsheet was received February 25th.
There's a description, I gather, of the preliminary investigation at this point.
So it appears, and I appreciate your viewing this for the first time, that FCC...
Was still investigating tips relating to the Freedom Convoy 2022 as of February 25th.
And I don't know when it stopped investigating tips, and I expect you may not know either.
Is that fair, Minister?
With real respect, I have to say I think these are questions for FCC and not for me.
Okay.
I expected you might answer that, and that's a fair answer.
Aside from FCC, can you identify any other federal financial institutions which were subject to the order for us?
The order applied to all financial institutions across the country.
Okay.
No, that's fair.
It was a privilege to speak with you, Minister.
Thank you very much for answering my questions.
Okay, thank you.
So we now turn to the Government of Canada please.
Good afternoon, Deputy Prime Minister.
As you know, my name is Stephen Haleward.
I'm one of the lawyers for the Government of Canada.
My friend for the government of Saskatchewan just now took you to a news article that referred to the blacklisting of account holders or borrowers under a federal program.
Is there anything in the emergency economic measures order that authorized or required financial institutions to blacklist an individual?
No, there was not.
Was there anything that prescribed any lasting impacts beyond the determination that a person was a designated person or the expiry of the Emergencies Act?
There absolutely was not.
Earlier, my friend for Commission Council put it to you on the issue of foreign funding that there was no information that the government had.
In relation to foreign funding at the time of the declaration of the emergency, in your response you mentioned open source information.
I take it that would have included news articles?
Yes, it would.
Okay, and I won't take you to them, but I'm just going to read into the record the names of two such articles, pb.can.401755 and pb.can.401756.
My friend for the Democracy Fund mentioned to you certain letters from the Canadian Truckers Association in which they expressed concern in December of 2021 over the removal of the exemption for cross-border trucking.
Do you recall that?
I do.
And if we could pull up, Mr. Clerk, SSM.can.50335.
And this document that's pulling up is a statement from the same organization that was made in January of 2022.
22. And if you see there, the statement says the CTA does not support and strongly disapproves of any protests on public roadways, highways, and bridges.
CTA believes such actions, especially those that interfere with Public safety are not how disagreements with governments should be expressed.
Were you aware of that being the position of the Canadian Truckers Association at the time?
Yes, I was.
And indeed, if we could go to SSM.can.50987, this is a letter dated...
February 10, 2022, again from the Canadian Truckers Association.
And in this letter, the Canadian Truckers Association is asking the federal government to take action to address the issue with the border blockades.
It's a letter addressed to the Prime Minister and Minister Al Ghabra, but I'll just ask, were you aware of the Canadian Truckers Association making such a request at the time?
I can't pretend to have memorized the exact date and content of the letter, but I was aware that Minister Al-Gabra was in touch with the Truckers Association and that they were very concerned.
Okay, so if we talk about economic impacts for a moment, you discussed with Commission Council earlier the...
uh a Bloomberg briefing and as well a Bloomberg article um if we could just pull up the news article uh com five zeros eight three nine please and if we could go to the third page of that document when it's ready this is the news article and apart from the uh reference to the point one percent that you were discussing uh earlier uh there are some discuss there are some um Reporting
in here about other individuals that were commenting on the situation of the border blockades at the time.
And if you look under the heading there, we don't need this.
There's a quote attributed to the Governor of the Bank of Canada, Tiff Macklem, that was made on the Wednesday, so that would have been the day before this article, so on Wednesday, February 9th, in which the Governor of the Bank of Canada noted that we've already got a strained global supply chain.
We don't need this, in reference to the border blockade.
Do you remember being aware of the comments of the Governor of the Bank of Canada at the time?
I absolutely do, and that's in my timeline.
I think it's in my notebook.
When we spoke earlier today about concerns around achieving a soft landing for the Canadian economy, concerns about rising inflation, concerns about the rise in interest rates.
With which the Bank of Canada would respond to rising inflation.
That was very much on my mind.
And I mentioned that we had already had a January inflation number, which was elevated.
We expected inflation.
We expected an elevated number.
The number that we had in January was for December.
We expected in February to learn of an elevated number for January.
We were aware that the bank was concerned and that made us concerned, definitely.
Okay, so you spoke earlier about some of your concerns around comments by public officials in the United States.
I'd just like to go through the timeline of some of those statements.
I think we've heard a bit about them, but I think it's helpful to look at actually...
Sure, and if I could just say one more thing on the Bank of Canada.
That wasn't in an interview with Bloomberg.
Governor Macklem spoke at a press conference about it, so that was widely reported.
No, indeed.
That was just one instance of a document that's in the record that records that statement.
So, February 7th, we know, is the day that the blockade begins at the Ambassador Bridge.
And so, on February 9th, this is day three.
That's the date of those comments by the Governor of the Bank of Canada.
It's also the date of several statements by U.S. public officials.
If we could pull up pb.can.6023.
And go to page three.
This is a tweet by Representative Alyssa Slotkin, and I believe you may have indirectly made reference to this earlier this morning, but I'd just like to put the tweet up.
and yeah If you can see there, we have Representative Slotkin saying, if we need another example of why supply chains matter, look no further than the Ambassador Bridge, the blockade at the Ambassador Bridge.
Then it continues.
And if you look at the second installation of the thread, or the second part of the thread, it says, It doesn't matter if it's an adversary or an ally.
We can't be this reliant on parts coming from foreign countries.
Was that the comment that you were referencing earlier in your testimony?
Yes, it was.
And I remember when that came out very, very clearly.
And, you know...
What was being publicly said by U.S. officials, all of it worried me.
But I think if I had to identify for people here one particular line that worried me the most, it's those two sentences.
And in particular, it doesn't matter if it's an adversary or an ally.
We can't be this reliant on parts coming from foreign countries.
That is a huge threat to Canada's entire auto sector.
And the point, especially there, that she's underscoring adversary or ally.
Because a point that we had been making, and actually we made successfully, for example, with the 232 steel and aluminum tariffs, was Those were inappropriately levied against Canada by the US because we were an ally.
And so you could rely on us.
And that point there is saying, you know what?
You shouldn't differentiate between, for example, Canada and China.
The United States is equally at risk if it has an economic dependency.
And having US elected representatives...
Assert that publicly and connect it to this blockade and say, look, by relying on Canada, you're going to lose your job.
That was very, very dangerous for us.
And I will also just point out, this was a Democratic member of the Michigan delegation.
And I think later on in the tweet...
Representative Slotkin talks about being in touch with the White House.
These were the people that the White House was talking to about this situation, but also about the EV incentives.
And their views mattered very, very much.
And on the White House point, if we look just further down this page, the last line on this page of the document, it's a headline from an article from the Detroit News, White House worried.
Worries about Ambassador Bridge blockade.
And that article, we don't need to go through the text, but it references a statement by then Press Secretary Jen Psaki commenting on White House concern.
And I take it you were aware of those comments at the time as well?
Yes, I was.
And so then if we go to February 10th, that's day four of the blockades.
Commission Council mentioned earlier that the Department of Finance prepared an economic analysis on February 10th that day, and we looked at it the other day with the Department of Finance officials, and that background noted that at that time, as of the fourth day, there were auto plant shutdowns at Ford, Stellantis.
And Toyota plants that were caused by the Ambassador Bridge blockade.
Were you aware of that?
And were you surprised at how quickly those shutdowns occurred?
I was aware of that.
And we spoke earlier this morning about my conversation that day, the 10th of February, with Brian Deese, where he said...
And I can't recall exactly, but something like another 12 hours and all the Northeast will shut down.
So I was aware of the impact.
And at some level, I wasn't surprised because I did know, I knew two things, that the auto sector is so hugely integrated.
And, you know, the U.S. plants are dependent on us, but we're also dependent on the U.S. plants.
Parts go across six times, right?
So I knew that.
And the other thing, which I think Reese Mendes spoke to you guys about, but is very true, is the auto sector operates on a just-in-time production process.
They don't like to hold big stores of parts because that's expensive.
And so the industry...
Requires very reliable and very speedy supply chains.
And if there's a break in them, yes, it stops production.
So I knew that intellectually.
I would say, though, at a kind of emotional level, it still, you know, was breathtaking how quickly it...
How quickly the effect mounted, how swift the political impact was.
And I think that was the case also for the White House.
And that was reflected in my Brian Deese conversation where he sort of said, yeah, you've been telling us about the integration, but now I really see it.
And so you mentioned you spoke to Brian Deese and part of that was setting up a call with the president between the president and the prime minister, which then took place the following day.
What was your reaction when you heard that that call had taken place the next day after you'd begun the process to set it up?
So I was glad that the conversation happened because I knew it was important and valuable for The Prime Minister to have a chance to explain the situation, to discuss the situation directly with the President.
So that was good.
And I had asked Brian for that call to happen.
But at another level, I was quite concerned by how quickly the call was set up because the speed of response spoke to me about the degree of concern.
We've heard earlier in this proceeding about a statement that was released by Governor Whitmer on February 10th.
There was a second statement that Governor Whitmer released on February 11th.
And if we could just pull that one up, it's pb.can.401840.
And as part of that statement, Governor Whitmer said, we cannot allow another minute to go by unnecessarily, calling on the Canadian government to act.
Was it unusual for Governor Whitmer to be issuing two statements on the same topic one day after the next?
Very unusual.
And her...
The content of her statement was also very striking.
So she makes the point, first of all, that she is talking to the White House.
She's talking to the congressional delegation, the people who we've been speaking about.
There is a real concerted push.
And then...
I can't quite see it here.
Yeah, this, we can't let another minute go by unnecessarily.
That was also striking to me and speaks to how I perceived, and I believe rightly, the economic situation, that every minute, every hour counted.
That the situation was deteriorating really hour by hour.
And Canada was being very harmed.
And so that speaks to why I believed, and I think it was the right judgment, we needed to act really swiftly.
And if we fast forward then...
After the events of January and February, have you heard anything from business leaders since that time about the impacts of the blockades?
I have.
And I'll give you a couple of examples.
PDAC is a big annual Toronto mining conference.
If you're in the mining industry, you will have heard of it.
It's famous among miners, and Canada is rightly proud to host it every year and to be the mining capital of the world.
PDAC this year, because of COVID restrictions, it's normally held in the winter, but it was held in June.
And at PDAC in Toronto in June, Jonathan Wilkinson, the Minister of Natural Resources, and I convened a table to talk about critical minerals and metals and electric vehicles.
And one thing that really struck me was, and we had sort of miners there, processors, and also car companies and car parts people, sort of the full circle.
One of the people there, the Canadian CEO of a Japanese car company, proactively sort of went around the table.
Everyone raised their points about critical minerals and metals and EVs and opportunities in Canada.
And this CEO, who is a guy whose job is to get his Japanese headquarters to invest in Canada.
And he...
Raised in his remarks, I think it was the first thing he said, I'm still getting questions around the blockades and the occupation.
And I need to be able to say to my headquarters in Japan that this is not going to happen again in Canada, that they can be confident that that...
Access to the U.S. market is not going to be impeded.
So that was very striking to me that still in June, even after our action, which worked, there were still those lingering concerns.
And it made me glad that we had acted when we did and not later.
And then just in October, I was in Windsor.
Which we've heard so much about earlier today, is speaking about the economy, actually at a big car parts event.
And one of the car industry journalists asked me a question.
And I'm, you know, it's on the public record exactly what he said, but I'm just recalling broadly.
His question was basically, Can you offer assurances that something like the convoy and the blockade won't happen again?
It continues to be a major concern in the car industry here.
And again, I was surprised that someone in October was still asking the question.
And it was further evidence to me of how serious the threat had been.
And while taking very seriously the magnitude of our action and the reluctance that any government should have on ultimately acting as we did, that question was a confirmation for me that there was very great harm that was in the process of being done, and I was glad that we acted to stop the harm.
Thank you.
Shifting gears, if we talk about the economic measures, my friend from the Government of Alberta put it to you that there was no need to adopt the economic measures, that police had adequate tools to clear the blockades without them.
I take it that you did not direct the Commissioner of the RCMP to...
Use any of the tools made available in the Emergency Economic Measures Order?
I absolutely did not.
And so to the extent that police made use of those tools, that was because they believed in their judgment that it would be a useful thing to do in carrying out their duties?
Yes, that would be correct.
And have you heard anything from police officers about whether they in fact found those tools to be effective in dealing with the situation?
I'm not the main person who speaks to or hears from police officers, but it is my understanding that the tools were used and that they were effective.
I'd like to ask you a couple more questions about the readout of the February 13th Banks call that we...
The Commission Council went through with you earlier this morning.
First, Commission Council took you to the email setting up that call from Tyler Meredith, in which he alluded to previous communications with the Canadian Bankers Association, in which he relayed that the message from the industry, mainly speaking for their legal counsels, is that we have this under control.
And we're generally feeling comfortable with the existing, with the current regime.
Do you remember that exchange?
I remember that exchange from this morning.
I didn't remember that email from the time, but I remember our conversation this morning.
So my question is just, in light of your call on February 13th with the bank CEOs, Do you believe that statement, as expressed in the email, that the banks believe they have the situation under control and are comfortable with the current regime, do you believe that was an accurate statement based on the reaction of the bank CEOs on that call?
I didn't write it, and I can't remember whether I read it at the time or not, but what I can say 100% based on...
The conversation that I had, which I both recorded and remember, certainly parts of it with striking kind of branded on my brain clarity, is when I spoke to the bank CEOs on the Sunday, they were very, very concerned.
They did not feel the situation was under control.
We did not discuss with them.
Specific measures.
I was sort of in listening mode, apart from kind of saying to them, you know, buck up, gentlemen, and do tell your investors that Canada is great.
And sort of wanting to give them confidence in our leadership.
But as you have seen from the transcript, they volunteered, a number of them, two things.
Grave concern about the economic situation and to absolute concern, and I would even say frustration, that the tools available to them were both inadequate.
You remember from that transcript, there was the point made of, we tried to get a court order, but it took four hours, and by the time we tracked it down, the money had moved to another account.
And then also the concern, which I did take seriously, about the banks being concerned that acting absent some form of government instruction would put them in jeopardy, the Fox News point that was there.
And so the banks were effectively asking for more government regulation?
I suppose you could put it that way.
And I think what the banks were saying, and not I think, I mean, people can read through the transcript, is they were saying this is a real threat to our economy and you, the government, need to act.
And I think they were right.
And the other thing that I will say there is it's not...
In the ordinary way of things, for leaders of big Canadian businesses to want the government to do more in the economy.
I would say quite the contrary.
And at this particular moment, the banks had reason to not be so happy about things the government was doing.
This followed our election, during which we had campaigned on the 15% COVID recovery dividend, which would be levied on banks and financial institutions, and we had campaigned on a permanent tax on the banks.
So I would guess, and you could speak to them, but I would guess that if you had spoken to the bank CEOs at the beginning of January and said, I just say that because the
fact that they were saying the tools were not adequate and you need to do more was particularly compelling to me because they were not a constituency.
That was inclined to seek strong government action in the economy.
Just on the Fox News point that you just mentioned, in the Commission's overview report on fundraising, they trace the flow of funds through the crowdfunding platforms and show that there was a million dollars raised through the GoFundMe campaign that was paid into a TD bank account and that TD froze that account on Thursday, February 10th.
So before the phone call, so the Fox News coverage, when it says on the readout of there having been Fox News coverage that Friday of an incident, you're aware that was in reference to TD freezing that million dollars from the GoFundMe campaign?
Yeah, that makes sense.
That makes sense that it was Bharat Masrani speaking.
And Bharat Mizrani, that would be the CEO of TD Bank?
Yes.
And so the concern was putting on any individual bank the potential for backlash of public opinion of taking that step.
Yes, that was the concern.
As we have also discussed already today, a concern about tellers being in jeopardy.
And the Fox News reference there is especially significant because many Canadian banks have significant operations in the United States.
And so having Fox News attack you isn't a problem only because Canadians might be watching.
But if you have a big U.S. operation, it's a problem because your American customers will be watching.
And I do think that was a problem that was legitimate to raise, and I was concerned about it.
And so just briefly to conclude, earlier you mentioned that you had relied on certain legal advice related to matters connected with this.
I just want to confirm with you, as Deputy Prime Minister, you don't have the authority to waive solicitor-client privilege on behalf of the Government of Canada, and you weren't intending to do so?
I was not intending to do so, and to be clear, I was speaking about the advice we received, which I think the Commission, some of which I think the Commission has heard about earlier from officials.
Thank you.
Those are my questions.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Thank you.
Any re-examination?
No re-examination, Commissioner.
Okay.
Well, thank you very much for attending and for your testimony.
We know you probably have other things to do, but I appreciate your coming here and taking the Commission's work seriously.
I guess I should say thank you very much, and I will say to you, Commissioner, and all the lawyers doing this work, I do think it's really important work, and it's important for Canadians to be able to see and hear you asking the government and other people questions about this very important and serious decision.
Okay, thank you.
We'll take a short break to...
Prepare for our next panel and should only be five minutes or so, but if it takes longer, they'll let me know.
Thank you.
The commission is in the rest of the five minutes.
The commission is in the rest of the commission.
The commission is in the rest of the five minutes.
Order a lot.
The commission has reconvened.
Good afternoon, Mr. Commissioner.
Shantona Choudhury for the record.
Our next witnesses are from the Prime Minister's office.
Mr. John Broadhead, Ms. Katie Telford, Mr. Brian Clough.
Mr. Clough, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
I will affirm.
For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
First name Brian, B-R-I-A-N, last name Clough, C-L-O-W.
Do you solemnly affirm that the evidence to be given by you to this commission shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do.
Thank you.
Ms. Telford, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
A religious document.
We have the Bible, the Quran, or the Torah available?
bible For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
Catherine Telford, K-A-T-H-E-R-I-N-E, Telford, T-E-L-F-O-R-D.
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.
Mr. Broadhead, will you swear on a religious document or do you wish to affirm?
Affirm, please.
For the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
John Broadhead, J-O-H-N-B-R-O-D-H-E-A-D.
Do you solemnly affirm that the evidence to be given by you to this commission shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?
I do.
Thank you.
Good afternoon.
Thank you for being here.
We're just going to start with a couple of routine housekeeping items, the first of which is introducing your interview summary.
So, you'll recall having sat for an interview with Commission Council on October 11th of this year, and following that interview, Commission Council prepared a summary of the interview.
Have you all three reviewed that summary?
Yes.
Sorry, just for the record.
I know it's a bit difficult with the three of you, but someone answer yes, please.
Yes.
Okay, and also present at that interview was your colleague, Mr. Jeremy Broadhurst.
Yes.
Can you confirm that Mr. Broadhurst as well has reviewed the summary of the interview?
Yes.
And that it is accurate according to all four of you.
Yes.
Perfect.
So, Mr. Clerk, for the record, that's WTS 6083.
No need to call it up.
And then the second small order of business is the PMO Institutional Report.
So, the Prime Minister's Office prepared an institutional report for these proceedings.
The stock ID number of that is DOJIR6014.
And I'd just like you to confirm again that that report was prepared by PCO and that you have reviewed it and that it is accurate to the best of your knowledge.
Yes.
Okay, so the first thing I'll say is this is one of the examinations that we're doing as a panel.
There are three of you.
And some of my questions will be directed at one of you specifically because it's something that's within your personal knowledge or a document or a communication that you were involved in.
And some of them I will throw out more generally and the person best place can answer.
And you can also feel free if it's appropriate and you have knowledge to add to someone else's answer, you're free to do that.
So the first question I think I'll address to Ms. Telford, which is just, can you explain the mandate and the structure at a very sort of general level of the Prime Minister's office?
What does the Prime Minister's office do?
The Prime Minister's office, we serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, which is different than our public service colleagues in the sense that job security is a little different.
We work between elections as well, and many of us, though not all of us, do take leaves during election campaigns to work on election campaigns.
But in between elections and working in government, our role is to facilitate information to the Prime Minister, to facilitate his...
Ability to make the best decisions he can to advance the agenda that he was elected on by the Canadians.
So that includes everything from very operational work.
So we have teams of tour advanced people, as we call them.
We have regional desks who coordinate with stakeholders, including different levels of government in different parts of the country.
I'm sure my colleagues can speak to John.
Is our Director of Policy and can speak to the policy team.
Brian Clough is one of two Deputy Chiefs of Staff in the Prime Minister's office.
The other Deputy Chief of Staff is Marjorie Michel.
And the other chief of staff, since she's not here, is primarily responsible for a lot of the operational elements of the office, ranging from human resources, because we are an office of roughly 100.
And so the human resources side, the public appointments as well, there's hundreds and thousands of public appointments that go through government.
And so we act as a coordinating body in many ways on the political side between ministers' offices as well.
But our primary job is getting the Prime Minister the information that he needs, getting him the best advice from all parts of government, but also from outside of government, that he needs to be able to accomplish what he committed to Canadians he would do if he were elected.
And just building on that, I'll ask you to explain, Ms. Telford, your specific role as Chief of Staff, and then I'll ask each of your colleagues to do the same.
So I view my role in two ways.
There's the day-to-day management role.
So I manage the prime minister's office and of an extraordinary group of people who work day and night, particularly during this time period they did.
And so it's all the sort of operational scheduling and day-to-day management you can imagine of running an office of that size, as well as...
Coordinating between other ministers' offices as well.
So we have a weekly chief of staff meeting that involves the chiefs of staff from all of the ministers' offices across government as a way of touching base and sharing information, sometimes best practices.
And then the other hat I wear at the same time is being a senior advisor to the prime minister.
In terms of bringing him the best advice I can from everywhere I can, but also facilitating other people, being able to get in front of him and provide him with all the advice and the inputs that he needs to make the best decisions he can for Canadians.
Thank you.
And Mr. Broadhead, can you explain your role, please?
Sure.
So as Director of Policy, one of the key pieces of my role is to kind of work with the Privy Council Office very closely to coordinate the cabinet agenda.
So as you've heard through these proceedings, we have many cabinet committees, and so we work with PCO to make sure items are ready to go forward on those agendas, any kind of...
Remaining issues to be sorted out between ministers or departments.
So that's one.
We have a team of 14 policy advisors.
So they cover all the departments.
So they each have policy files.
So they become, you know, the links to the minister's offices as well as to the content experts at PCO and other departments.
And I think in that role, we provide advice to the prime minister on policy items.
Whether it's items going to cabinet, other items such as the budget, our team will often prepare memos along those lines and advise the Prime Minister on the policy side of these things.
Okay, and we're going to come back in a minute to, you mentioned PCO, and we've heard from a few witnesses last week from PCO.
So we're going to come back to the interplay a little bit between your office and PCO.
But first of all, I'll just ask Mr. Cloud to introduce himself and describe his role.
So I am one of two deputy chiefs of staff, as Katie laid out, and I oversee five teams in the office.
One is the policy team, which John described.
Second is communications team.
It's the largest of the five.
They do exactly what their name says, press releases, all government communications, media relations for sure, quite a range of activities in that department.
Third is the Issues Management and Parliamentary Affairs team.
That's one unit.
So everything that goes through Parliament, whether it's legislation, votes in the House, debates in the House, the PMO Parliamentary Affairs team engages in that space.
But they also focus on issues management, which I like to think of it as the government has its proactive agenda, which is largely driven out of the policy team.
The issues management team deals with day-to-day developments, whatever comes at us.
So certainly the issues management team was involved in what's being studied here quite early on.
And then there are two more units that I oversee.
They're smaller units.
One is a global affairs team.
They focus on any number of international files.
And finally, there's a unit that was created a couple of years ago to deal with the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Thank you.
And I should mention that the reason you've all been selected to be here today is you were all involved in some way in assisting the Prime Minister in responding to the events of late January and February that are before the Commission.
Certainly not just you, but certainly all of you.
So just going back to that question of the interplay between PCO and PMO, I'm not sure who's best placed to speak to that between the three of you.
Mr. Broadhead, you brought it up, so maybe we'll start with you.
What specifically is of interest?
Just the general relationship?
Yeah, so the lines of communication and the interaction between the public service and the political side in advising the Prime Minister.
Sure, so I'll speak to my experience because I obviously cover one part of that dynamic, and I interact with primarily two parts of Privy Council Office.
One is the kind of...
Priorities and planning group, which is Michael Vandergrift's group.
And then the other one is the operations team, which is now run by Kayleigh LeBeck.
Plans and priorities is really the cabinet side, and operations is more the execution of that.
So there is, I would say, a constant flow of information back and forth.
They provide us advice.
They convene meetings of departments across the government.
They really kind of hold the institutional knowledge on many of these files.
And so we kind of work very closely together to ensure we're aligned on the policy agenda, that things are rolling out.
They also have great experience in terms of execution of policy.
So it's, are things getting done?
Are things happening that we brought into play?
Are they still going?
Is it still moving?
So it's a very constant and a very important relationship for us.
Ms. Telford, do you have anything to add to that in terms of the lines of communication and in providing advice to the Prime Minister?
I would just add that, and I'm sure you heard this from the Clerk, who is who I have...
Primarily the most contact with is with the Clerk and the National Security and Intelligence Advisor and to only a slightly lesser degree, the Deputy Clerk.
And they're also the ones who have the most contact with the Prime Minister.
And so the Clerk meets with the Prime Minister on a very regular basis, often meets with the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister together, and I will attend the majority of those meetings as well.
And there is and then and then She and I will talk regularly in between those meetings as well in terms of planning out what needs to get covered and what's going on and prioritizing who else we might need in those meetings.
And so, as John said, it's a very regular flow of information back and forth.
And that's true for the entire Prime Minister's office.
Everybody has counterparts of one kind or another on the public service side.
And the flow of information is...
Is significant, though we do have clearly different roles in terms of what our responsibilities are to the Prime Minister and of course, as I said earlier, how we're employed.
Thank you.
Okay.
That introduction out of the way, we'll turn to the matters before the Commission.
And starting with the very early days of the convoy, can you describe to us when PMO first Became aware that the convoy was a thing that was possibly rolling into Ottawa, what your initial impressions of it were, what your sources of information were, and the sort of pre-arrival early days.
So the week of January 17th, there were a few interactions.
On Monday, January 17th, there was a report sent from PCO to PMO, I think one or two people in the Prime Minister's office.
It might have actually come from a minister's office as a flag.
That there was some slow roll activity in Emerson, Manitoba.
At that point, though, that information was not shared beyond that.
It was just one of any number of issues.
As the week went on, though, we started to hear more and see more reports of the convoy protest.
On Thursday, January 20th, there was an email that came from PCO to a number of people in PMO that laid out, it was an update on the convoy protest.
I think it was focused on, it named three places specifically.
Coutts, North Portal, Saskatchewan, and Ottawa.
And the update also included a press release from the Canadian Trucking Alliance, which condemned the convoy activity, specifically proposed unlawful activity, which even at that point, what was coming out of a number of the speakers was proposed unlawful activity and road blockages specifically.
So it was that week, January 17th, when we...
Started to hear about this that weekend, I'd say 22nd, 23rd.
By then, it was on everybody's radar.
The week of the 24th is when the Prime Minister started to get updated daily on it.
Okay.
And that takes us, Mr. Clare, can you please bring up ssm.can.nsc402578?
So, Mr. Clare, if I take this correctly, you were speaking at that point of PMO's sort of monitoring of what was going on.
And I believe the 25th was the first time you got a briefing from the PCO.
So, in addition to, I'll look at this email.
So, there was email traffic and there would have been phone calls the week of the 17th between PCO and PMO.
But Tuesday the 25th, I do believe, was the first meeting scheduled with PCO and PMO staff to go through all of the elements, as were known at that point.
Okay, so we're just going to look at what the content of that meeting was.
Mr. Clerk, if you can scroll down, keep scrolling.
Okay, there we go.
So this is Mike McDonald, and we know, can you actually just refresh our memories as to who Mike McDonald is?
So he works in PCO, and he's part of the National Security Team.
That's right, Intelligence Secretariat.
Okay, so Mike McDonald is explaining and briefing essentially on what the state of knowledge there is at the time.
So he says, latest lay of the land, security, coordination, national security apparatus, what do we know?
Law enforcement across the country is learning more about the convoy and its organizers as they interact with them.
And then there's some description of where it's coming from.
The next bullet down says actively monitoring.
One thing they're picking up on is chatter on social media.
So far, RCMP telling us that the convoy itself is peaceful, not causing problems along the way.
Their goal is to get to Ottawa, not have infractions along the way.
Very small online chatter.
That's where people are using disturbing language.
Mr. Clerk, if you can just keep scrolling to the next page, please.
There we go.
Following January 6th events last year, which is a reference to January 6th in Capitol Hill in the United States, NSIA worked with PPS, RCMP, and Sergeant at Arms for a scenario planning for regular protests.
Push boundaries and plan out for things like an insurrection.
This has been done.
Then Ottawa Police and PPS have an MOU, have done exercises for these types of protests.
On the federal side, we have governance in place that is up and running.
ADM, National Security Operations Centre, meeting every day to ensure parts of the federal family are coordinated in efforts and can feed information through.
Does that represent, essentially, first of all, the content of that briefing as you were aware of it that day?
So I wasn't a part of this specific brief, but received this email.
And so I have no reason to believe it doesn't represent what was discussed there.
But I would say it's only a piece of the picture of what we were watching at that time.
There's a reference in there to social media chatter and disturbing comments.
And by this point, it was a very significant...
And getting a lot of coverage in media, some of those comments.
This email was sent on January 25th, which is the same day it was reported in media that some individuals who were planning to participate in the demonstration were saying they wanted this to be there January 6th.
That's why you see, I suspect you see this in this email summary, because there were individuals explicitly referencing January 6th.
And at this point as well, it was known in public.
That some people planning to participate in the demonstration had a proposal to replace the government by going to the Governor General and the Senate.
It's otherwise known as the MOU.
Okay.
So just scrolling down a bit again, Mr. Clerk, there's a comment at the end there.
So you'll see at the end it says questions, question mark, Zed, and I believe that's a reference to Zeta Astrovis, Bill Blair's Chief of Staff.
Yes.
Mr. Blair, Chief of Staff.
So she says, curious to know how feed into political level.
From our perspective, feel assured having worked in the space of all work being done, but ministers feeling uneasy and keen on details.
I'm wondering if you can help us understand what is meant there by sense of unease at the political level.
I think they're at that point.
There was a lot of conversation going on about what we were seeing and what we thought this was going to be.
And there were a number of updates coming through, like the one you see here, but we were also seeing a lot in open source and through the media, which was very concerning.
I already mentioned the reference to January 6th.
So that's what I think this speaks to.
Okay, so is it fair to say then, in Mike McDonald's email that we just read through, the message coming through is essentially, well, we've planned for this.
We did some planning after January 6th, and things are sort of under control, and the machine is operating as it should.
But then Ms. Astrovis raises a concern saying, the ministers are actually pretty worried about this.
So is it fair to say that there was some unease at the ministerial or the political level that...
Maybe isn't reflected in the briefing?
Yes.
Okay.
So then just moving...
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
You can take that document down.
So that's the sort of pre-arrival state.
Unless there's anything else you'd like to add about what was going on pre-arrival.
But then chronologically, the next thing that happens is that...
The convoy arrives and doesn't leave when everyone expected it to do, and then we head into the first week of the protests, if we can call it that.
So I'd like you to pull up now, Mr. Clerk, ssm.nsc.can402941.
And as that's being done, maybe I can ask you to just describe to us from your point of view what that first week was like and what was going on from your perspective in attempting to respond.
And the notes I'm pulling up here are Mr. Clow's notes from a February 3rd meeting, which I think can fairly be described as a brainstorming ideas kind of meeting.
But before we get into the specifics of the notes, can you fill in a bit of the narrative of what was happening in your thinking and in your office at the time?
So we watched the convoy arrive, not only in Ottawa, but there was activity in Coutts, very serious activity that first weekend.
Emerson, we're starting to see some blockages there.
It was down to one lane.
It would open up again.
Some trucks would move, but there was activity in Emerson.
So this was already a national issue in the first week.
And we continued to see very concerning statements from some demonstrators, including...
From demonstrators and organizers that they were not going to leave until the government changed its policy.
But in that first weekend, law enforcement was responsible, local law enforcement, I should say.
And by the end of the weekend, it was clear they weren't leaving.
So I would say concern had increased at the end of the weekend.
So we in the prime minister's office, with PCO, with minister's offices, with caucus, with others, we were hearing a lot of concern and we were discussing internally.
And getting updates and sharing information with each other as best we could.
Before this meeting on the 3rd, which was well into the second week, there had been a briefing of the Prime Minister by the National Security Advisor and the Clerk.
So there were discussions happening.
What happened on February 3rd and what these notes reflect is this was a Thursday, the second weekend was approaching, and law enforcement had not been able to...
Contain the various protests.
And in fact, in my view, they were getting worse.
So we assembled and basically covered the waterfront.
What's going on?
Who's talking to who?
What can we be doing more of?
What are different provinces and municipalities asking?
Are different provinces and municipalities asking questions that if they aren't asking for support, if they aren't?
Can we have a conversation with them to see if they should be asking for support?
So in these notes, you'll see us cover quite a few different ideas.
Thank you, and you'll appreciate we have an hour and a half, so I know I'm skipping through weeks in chronology very quickly, but it's necessary, and thank you for filling that in.
So here we go, February 3rd.
There's just a few points that I want to pick out here.
So the first notation says, JB, that's John Broadhead, Mr. Broadhead.
That was Jeremy Broadhurst.
Oh, that's Jeremy Broadhurst.
Okay, this may get confusing.
Jeremy Broadhurst.
Looks like OPS won't move.
Weeks, not days.
Weird reinforcements problem or something.
Reinforcements problem.
Weekend reinforcement problem.
That makes more sense.
Behind scenes, too deferential.
Need bad cop.
You've got to use tools you have.
Whether to change public message is different.
And then KT, that's Ms. Talford?
Yes.
I can't read the first part.
The second part says, what, if anything, can we do?
What are options?
So that's introducing this as a sort of a brainstorming of ideas.
And then we'll see a variety of ideas expressed here.
Mr. Clark, can you just scroll down?
We see, sorry, just above there.
Anyway, we can get Bergen's help.
That's a reference to Candace Bergen.
I believe she had just become leader that day.
Okay.
And then we have Ms. Astrovis saying Blair doesn't want to call slowly, but he's open to calling Watson.
And then RFA is a reference to a request for assistance, and we're going to come back to these in a moment.
But Ontario could only ask if they've exhausted resources.
Scrolling down again, please, Mr. Clerk, until you get to the bottom of the page.
So here we have an intervention.
Many of the ideas that are expressed here we've already heard about, so I'm skipping through them quickly.
But at the bottom of the page here, this is a Yasser, I believe?
So that was separate from the meeting we just covered.
That was a phone call from Ottawa Centre MP Yasser NACV.
He called me and I wrote down what he told me.
Okay, that same day on February 3rd?
Same day.
Okay, and what he told you was, clearly Ottawa police and city are unable to deal with this.
Reinforcements coming this weekend.
I'm going to really embolden these folks, my constituents, near a breaking point.
Worried people will take things into his own hands, into their own hands, I'm sorry.
So does that reflect, Mr. Klau, what Mr. Nagthy was expressing to you?
Absolutely.
And this was on February 3rd.
So by this point, the Ottawa convoy had been here for a full week, a full seven days, and Ottawa residents had experienced a lot.
And I think you see that reflected in Mr. Nagthy's comments.
Okay, Mr. Hook, let me just scroll down to the top of the next page.
Yeah, there we go.
So I think this is a continuation of the phone call with Mr. Nakfi.
What I heard from slowly, plea for help.
It's a plea for something, something political.
Do you recall that reference, Mr. Glau?
I believe that was a reference to...
Either the day before or earlier that week, Chief Slowly said there was no policing solution.
That's correct.
It was the day before.
And what I'm wondering is, what was the reaction within PMO to that statement?
Here we have Mr. Nakfi's, I think, interpretation of it, which is it's a plea for something.
And then he says it's a plea for something political.
Does that reflect or was there any thinking among the three of you or among your office?
Within your office about what Chief Slowly may have been expressing there.
It definitely added to the concern of what we were seeing.
And to hear Ottawa police say that this was not a policing solution was very concerning.
And it told us that this was not going to end anytime soon.
I think we can leave those notes for now.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
The next ones we'll pull up.
Well, it's actually the same note.
Sorry, Mr. Clark.
Keep scrolling down until you see February 6th.
Yeah, there we go.
So it says p.m.
February 6th, 6 to 8 p.m.
So I assume this is a meeting that was with the Prime Minister, attended by, as it says here, the clerk, the NSIA, and then John, Janice, Jody, Sam.
That would be John Broadhead, Mr. Broadhead.
Janice is the clerk.
Janice Charette.
Jody Thomas, the NSIA.
Sam.
Who's Sam?
Sam Khalil is the Director of Issues Management.
Okay.
And there were probably a few other people on that call.
Not many more.
I'm confident Katie was on that call.
Okay.
So if we just scroll down then until we see OPS trying to reduce violence or taking some steps.
And then below that, COOTS persists, but traffic is moving.
AB, this is Alberta, asked for RFA.
We don't see CAF, Canadian Armed Forces, being able to help with that.
Do you remember who was making that statement there?
Is this the NSIA's update there, Mr. Klaff?
So, one, to situate this conversation, this was Sunday, February 6th in the evening, so the end of the second weekend.
Prime Minister was updated just as he was updated the previous Sunday because a second weekend had passed.
Ottawa had worsened and other situations were becoming more difficult as well.
And I note the NSA reported that 11 BC communities have protests, 35 across the country.
So I can't tell from the notes if that comment was Jody Thomas's comment, the one you asked about, but it looks like it was part of a list of updates from Jody Thomas.
Were these briefings happening daily?
There were multiple conversations happening daily at this point, and there were interactions with the Prime Minister every day at this point in some way or another.
But this specific construct of a meeting with the Clerk, National Security Intelligence Advisor, and staff didn't happen every day, but it happened with increasing frequency.
Okay.
So the next point that I want to look at here is right at the bottom of the page here.
"ON," that's a reference to "Ontario pushed back." And then the notation is PM.
Established list of mandates.
I can't read the next word.
Something vaccines.
Gyms, vaccines, all provincial.
And then under that, it says DM for Solzhen, so that would be Deputy Solicitor General pushed back.
And that takes us to an issue that we've canvassed a bit here in the Commission so far, and I'd like to get your perspective on this afternoon, which is what was going on in those early days of the protest, the first week and a half, in terms of...
Interaction between various levels of government and the federal and provincial aspects, and especially Ontario's response or perhaps lack of response, if we can characterize it that way.
Mr. Broadhead, I believe this is probably best put to you within your purview.
Sure, I can start and then folks can add in.
So I would say there was lots of conversations happening at this point with various governments at the officials' level, at the political level across the country, as we tried to make sure we were hearing from them on what was happening on the ground and making sure we had that intelligence.
I think with respect to Ontario specifically, I think there was...
At the outset, a different approach to the strategy.
And I think as we get to, we were quite keen on this idea of a tripartite table that Minister Blair had been working on.
And we thought that was a good way of getting everybody at the table, making sure resources were aligned, making sure everyone...
We looked each other in the eyes and worked together.
And at that time, Ontario was not as keen on that approach.
I don't really want to, you know, speculate for what the Solicitor General or Deputy Minister or Solicitor General at this point wasn't.
But from my conversations with them, they did want to have Ottawa, the City of Ottawa, and the Ottawa Police Service kind of play the lead role.
And we're not as...
Interested at that time in the collaborative tripartite approach that we were interested in.
Okay.
Mr. Clerk, can you take those notes down for a second and pull up ssm.nsc.can403015, please?
mr broadhead i think this is a text that goes to the point you were just elucidating So, we don't have a confirmed date for this one, but it must be some...
I think it's February 8th.
Thank you.
And this is a text between you and Ms. Astrovis, a text exchange.
And she says to you, I believe she's in the blue here, Marco, that's a reference to Minister Mendicino, hasn't heard back from Sylvia Jones, that's a reference to Solicitor General of Ontario, on the meeting with the three orders of government, reference to the tripartite.
And you say, yeah, because they don't want to be a part of it.
And she says, oh, I know.
And you say, so anything I should do, we should just go ahead without them.
And then it goes on.
So can you contextualize that for us a little bit?
Yeah, as they were getting kind of pushed back and were just not support from there.
Counterparts, the Solicitor General in particular, they had asked me to connect with my contact in the Premier's office and to just check and see if was this something that the entire government or this minister, just to kind of ascertain some of those kind of contextual details.
So I did.
I chatted with Jamie Wallace and it was clear that they were kind of, they had a different approach and strategy and the tripartite table was not a priority for them at that time.
Sorry, who is Jamie Wallace?
Sorry, Jamie Wallace is the Chief of Staff to Premier Ford.
Okay, so you had a conversation with Mr. Wallace, Chief of Staff to Premier Ford, and the message coming back to you was?
Was this was not a strategy they wanted to pursue at this time.
Was there any reason given for that?
It was, you know, I think, you know, my recollection of that conversation was it was really they wanted Ottawa to be the main.
I was the driver of this and did not want a kind of multi-governmental approach to this at that time.
That was the impression I got from that phone call.
Okay.
Were you having interactions during this time with counterparts in other provinces as well?
Yeah, so previous to being a director of policy, which I started in January, I was senior advisor with a focus on intergovernmental affairs.
And so through that, I...
I got to work closely with a number of the provinces.
The three I was having most contact with, one was British Columbia because they were chair of the Council of Federation at the time, so that was an ongoing active discussion generally.
And I want to be clear not just about this.
For example, Mr. Wallace and I were working on childcare very actively at this time as well, and other issues were very...
And then other provinces as well.
But the other part of our PMO, which is important in this, is the regional desks, who don't report to me.
They're part of the operations team.
They have geographical areas of responsibility.
So they're often in touch with provinces and cities, and we have kind of information sharing between us.
So I'm in touch with them a lot.
They let me know when things are happening.
I do as well.
So I know that in those times, there was a lot of informal contact, as well as obviously from ministers and officials.
Okay.
And we may come back to some of those interactions, but we'll stick to Ontario for now.
Mr. Clerk, can you pull up ssm.nsc.can402935?
So, Ms. Talford, this is a text exchange between you and Minister Dominique Leblanc, who we know is the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs.
And he writes to you and says, just got this from Vandergrift.
So that's a reference to his Deputy Minister, Michael Vandergrift.
Minister, want to let you know that the Ontario Solicitor General has again declined the invitation to attend the tripartite meeting today on the Ottawa occupation.
And you say, I think we need to shine a light on that.
He says we'll say it.
Can you explain to us what was going on in this text message and what you meant by I think we need to shine a light on that?
So I think this was a continuation of what John was just talking about.
This was obviously a further attempt at a meeting with the three levels of government and Ontario was continuing to decline.
I don't recall when he says we'll say it.
Where that meant, but putting myself back in that time, I think when I'm saying we should shine a light on it, it's bringing some attention to the fact that Ontario wasn't at the table.
And we really did believe it would be a more efficient and effective way to work.
Would it be fair to say that there was some frustration with Ontario's response at this point?
There was definitely some frustration because we believed it could be easier than it was, all things being very relative at that time.
But there was ongoing communication with Ontario bilaterally throughout.
It just meant that the conversations were happening between Ottawa and the federal government, the federal government in Ontario, Ontario.
And so there were just numerous bilateral conversations that we just thought could have been better handled and more efficient if we could have all just come together.
As I know has come up throughout the inquiry, there was a fair bit of confusion around numbers and requests and the RFAs, the way they work, the request for assistance.
They do need to go through the provincial level of government, and so not having them as part of the conversation made things that bit more complicated.
That's fair.
Mr. Clerk, can you please pull up ONT50159?
So I'm going to ask you here about a meeting that was held on on February 6th that was a sort of tripartite, but not quite, between the City of Ottawa, federal government and provincial government, and the exchange I'm going to take you to.
We've seen this document several times in the Commission, so I'm not going to go through the whole thing.
But at the end of the document, there's an exchange between the National Security Advisor and the Deputy Solicitor General of Ontario.
I'd like to get your take on.
So it's February 6th, an 11 o 'clock meeting attended by officials from three levels of government.
So Mr. Clerk, if you can scroll down to the very bottom of the document.
You'll see it says there, Jody Thomas, National Security Advisor, noted that it was a positive meeting and regrets to end on this following point.
Would the province be looking to the federal government if this protest was happening outside the city of Ottawa, e.g.
happening in other places like Kingston?
And the response from Mr. Di Tommaso was, this is a protest, an encampment moving against the federal mandate on trucks.
They came to Ottawa from across the country for that purpose.
Mr. Di Tommaso testified at the commission approximately two weeks ago.
He expressed that in his view, he interpreted Ms. Thomas' comment as, and I'll quote the words here, the federal government wanting to wash its hands of the entire matter.
And so I'd just like to get your reaction in terms of whether you think that was a fair assessment of what was going on, whether you think that that was what was being expressed there, and what Ms. Thomas was trying to express when she said, would this be...
Would the province be looking to the federal government if this was somewhere other than Ottawa?
I might start...
I'm not putting too much weight into this as I read it and I wasn't there, but this strikes me as frustration and a bit of a back and forth in that frustration happening and both sides articulating some of that frustration.
I think we were trying to...
Look for ways to work together.
There were three levels of government.
And it was a challenge to get these machines working in the right direction.
And I think this back and forth is a...
My guess would be this is an outcrop of just a frustration around those levels of government and the two different approaches that I've outlined before.
Fair enough.
And you can appreciate that one of the issues the Commission is looking into is the interaction between governments, which is not always an easy thing, but how it all played out here.
Okay, so eventually, around this time, around the time of February 7th, 8th, 9th, Ontario became more engaged when the Ambassador Bridge blockade became entrenched, and so we know that that has happened.
And I'll take you at that point to the witness summary.
I'm sorry, Mr. Clerk, it's WTS 6-0 is 14, page 11. Oh, I'm sorry.
83. I'm sorry, I got the wrong number.
83, 14 is the IR.
So if we scroll down to page 11, please, Mr. Clerk.
Keep scrolling.
Keep scrolling.
Okay, scroll up a bit, please.
What I'm looking for is the panel was asked what in their view.
Could be that I have the wrong page number.
While they're looking for the reference, Mr. Broadhead, what I want to ask you about is what, in your view, you were asked this during the interview, and I'd like you to elaborate on it, what inspired the shift from Ontario?
Why did it happen then, and how did that occur?
And I'll preface my answer by saying this is me not in the government of Ontario, which I did spend a long time in the government of Ontario, but I was not there at this point.
I think it, in a sense, it started to become absolutely clear that we had to work together.
So it was almost the increase of things happening.
So you add the Ambassador Bridge to the Ottawa situation.
You have other things starting to happen around the province, New Windsor, Sarnia, Cornwall.
And I think it became clear, and I'm hypothesizing here, that...
But we did see an evolution of their strategy at that time.
In terms of at the political level collaboration, I think there's lots going on in other places that I don't want to comment to, but just that's what I can specifically comment to.
Okay.
And we know that there were several important phone calls that happened around that time, certainly between the Prime Minister and Premier Ford, which we'll talk about tomorrow when the Prime Minister is here, between Minister LeBlanc.
We talked about when Minister LeBlanc was here.
Leaving Ontario for a moment and talking about engagement with other provinces, I do want to ask you some questions about another topic that's come up several times here, which is Alberta's request for assistance.
So I'm going to put to you a few facts that we know and that have come out already at the Commission and that are also brought out in the PMO institutional report.
So there's a notation in your IR that PMO staff engaged with Pam Livingston.
So, Mr. Broadhead, maybe you can tell us who Pam Livingston is?
Pam Livingston at the time was Chief of Staff to Premier Kenney.
Okay.
And there were two interactions, apparently, between PMO and Ms. Livingston about the Alberta request for assistance.
And that request for assistance we've seen several times before, so no need to pull it up, but was for essentially assistance in tow trucks and removing vehicles from the Coutts blockade.
There's also a notation that the Prime Minister had a formal call on February 6th with Minister Blair to discuss Alberta's request for assistance and the ongoing situation.
And then I'm going to pull up or ask the clerk to pull up Mr. Clow's notes again, SSM.nsc.can402941.
Thank you.
So this is the notation I said we'd come back to.
This is the meeting that you're having with the Prime Minister on February 6th, and the notation...
There it is.
Thank you.
COOTS persists, but traffic is moving.
Alberta asked for RFA.
We don't see CAF being able to help with that.
So at that point, it's apparently been concluded or decided in some form that the Canadian Armed Forces is unable to assist.
Is that correct, Mr. Cla?
So the RFA came in the day before that and it immediately spurred a number of conversations.
With different offices, ministers were consulted, and the Prime Minister was consulted on a few different occasions about this.
And yes, there was a general sense that CAF should be a last resort.
But also in this specific case, I think you've heard from other witnesses as well, but at the time, the discussion was that this was not an appropriate or even useful response to what the problem was.
And what I mean by that was, were these trucks actually going to be able to do the job?
That was all part of the discussion that ensued after the request came in on the 5th.
What I'm really wondering about all of these exchanges, and there was a further meeting apparently on the 9th, where, again, this time it was Ms. Telford, Ms. Charette, the Prime Minister, and Ministers Le Blanc, Mancino, and Blair, all discussing the RFA during one of the meetings that was held.
Why was this RFA treated quite differently than most are?
This was elevated to the level of the PMO and the Prime Minister, which most requests for assistance are not.
Can you explain or elaborate on that?
Just, and you might want to add to this, but we are usually made aware of requests for assistance.
Wherever they're going in government.
And in this case, we were obviously following everything to do with the blockades and the occupation very, very closely.
And in this case, because the feedback from departments was coming, that there wasn't a way to help.
And what we were trying to do was support anybody who needed assistance on the ground.
And so if Alberta was asking for help, we wanted to be able to support them.
So it just led to a lot of conversations.
It kind of comes to the role that our office often plays of coordination and facilitation because we then started reaching out and asking questions of other departments saying, does anyone else have the equipment that they might be looking for?
It may not be appropriate for CAF and they may not have the equipment, but...
Is there that equipment somewhere else that could be found?
So I think as is in the interview summary, you know, we even went so far as to say, does Parks Canada have this kind of thing?
Because the goal was to be able to assist if we could.
Maybe if I can just add, I think that, you know, we also looked at, can we reimburse?
If they find them privately, can, should we reimburse that?
So it was, it was, and I kind of pushed back a little bit on that this rarely happens.
In a case where the process comes through and it goes to the minister, and I've known of other cases where it was like, no, we can't assist, the minister's office will often flag it to us and we'll ask questions about, well, have we explored this?
And I can remember other instances where that was a case where we just pushed more to find other solutions.
In the kind of narrow band of the RFA process, they may not have thought of.
Okay, that's fair.
The request for assistance that we're dealing with in the Commission, it's the only one that we've seen this pattern in, but that's fair explanation.
Okay, I'm going to want to shift gears now and talk about what you were hearing during this process with various stakeholders and interlocutors, both nationally and internationally.
So, Mr. Clough, I'll start with you.
We know you had a few conversations with a man named Juan Gonzalez, who's the special advisor to President Biden.
Can you tell us about those conversations and what you were hearing from him?
Yes.
So I heard from Juan Gonzalez.
He is part of the national security team in the White House, and we'd interacted on a few files before the convoy protests.
And he reached out, I believe, on Wednesday, February 9th.
At that point, it was a request to connect national...
Security Intelligence Advisor Jody Thomas with the White House Homeland Security Advisor to urgently discuss the Windsor blockade, but also other border blockades that were in effect at that time.
So Juan and I had a bit of back and forth about that.
That then led to a number of conversations, some of which you heard about this morning from the Deputy Prime Minister.
But there were various interactions between the Prime Minister's office, PCO, several ministers' offices, and their counterparts in the United States in the White House and different departments in the United States because they became seized with the border blockades that were impacting them quite significantly.
So you mentioned that we heard this morning from the Deputy Prime Minister that she was hearing a lot of concern from officials in the United States about what was going on and some encouragement, if we can put it that way, to bring a swift end, given the impact this was going to have on Canada-U.S.
relations and trade.
Were you hearing similar concerns from the people you were talking to in the United States and or in other countries?
Absolutely.
And the concern was not only about trade, economics, dollars and cents.
It was for sure.
But there was also a discussion in many of these conversations, including between the Prime Minister and the President, that...
For example, the United States also saw some convoy activity.
I think it was dealt with quite quickly by the Americans, but they saw a trucker protest heading to the Super Bowl.
There was one that was trying to be assembled to head to Washington, D.C. So these were part of the conversations as well.
It was viewed as a shared problem.
But for sure, the immediate issue was the blockades at various border crossings, especially Windsor, and how do we sort these out quickly?
And we understand you also had some conversations with Ambassador Hillman, Ambassador to the United States.
Can you tell us about those conversations?
Well, she was one of the key principals having interactions with the White House and various departments in the United States.
And the substance, you know, one example of substance within those conversations.
Was how can we introduce measures to end the blockades or at least dissuade them from growing and from new ones from popping up?
For example, there was discussion of potential immigration measures or penalties placed on people who conducted unlawful activity at these border blockades.
There was definitely discussion of whether the United States could provide tow trucks to help, given it was virtually impossible to get tow trucks on the Canadian side of the border.
So that's the kind of thing that was discussed.
Did that ever end up happening?
I don't know.
So the immigration measures, I don't believe the United States implemented any measures.
We did in the Emergencies Act.
In terms of tow trucks being provided by the United States, there might have been some in Detroit, Windsor provided by Detroit or the government of Michigan.
I'm not sure about that.
Mr. Brighthead, Ms. Telford, were either of you having conversations with international counterparts?
No?
Not during the occupation or when the blockades were on.
For months afterwards, I can say, including up until recent summits, though, this is a topic that continues to come up.
With counterparts from various countries.
And the Prime Minister also had calls during the occupation with other world leaders where this was a topic that was coming up because they were watching what was happening in Canada and concerned that they were starting to see the same thing in some of their countries and they were concerned about copycat situations.
So this has been an ongoing conversation with international leaders.
Okay.
I would just add as well another feature of all of the conversations between The Americans and us, including the call between the Prime Minister and the President, was the fact that a lot of the support for the unlawful activity here in Canada was coming from the United States in terms of money, in terms of people, and in terms of political support from some of the most prominent US political figures.
Millions of dollars came in from the United States, according to published reports.
Chiefs slowly announced that there were American citizens who had traveled to join the occupation in Ottawa.
So that was also a feature of the discussions here.
The flooding of 911 phone lines here in Ottawa came largely from Americans, as announced by Chiefs slowly and the Ottawa police.
So this was very much a shared problem, and we were talking about it in that sense.
We've heard about some of that already at the commission.
You speak of the foreign funding, and we explored that a bit this morning with the deputy.
Prime Minister, and it was found in the end that there were millions of dollars coming from the United States, from private donors.
So there was no foreign state funding coming in.
Would you agree with that?
Yes.
Okay.
And we've also established that there was little information available to the government at the time of the convoy of how much money was coming in from the United States.
That wasn't really information that was available to the government at the time.
Would you agree with that?
It definitely became more apparent as time passed, and I totally agree with you.
It is cloudy and unclear, and it's concerning that it happened.
But one example I would give, I mean, we felt quite strongly at the time that it was happening.
And proof of that, I would say, is when GoFundMe paused the account, you saw some of the most prominent American political figures attack GoFundMe.
And they didn't do that for no reason.
They did it because it was clear to them and it was clear to us that a lot of the funding was coming from Americans.
Okay.
So you've taken me to what I actually wanted to ask you about, which is one thing we haven't heard much about so far is political commentary coming from the United States.
So you mentioned prominent political figures who are weighing in on all of this.
Can you tell us about some of that, some of what you were hearing or observing on that front?
The issue there, there were a number of examples from senators, from governors, from the former president.
And the issue there is not that...
Individuals and politicians aren't allowed to comment on politics and policies in other countries.
It happens all the time.
But the concern for us was it was direct encouragement for unlawful activity that was hugely damaging to the country, including the border blockades.
So that's why I raise it here, and that's why the President and the Prime Minister spoke about it.
It was the support for unlawful activity.
Okay.
Mr. Clerk, can you please pull up Mr. Clow's notes again?
So that's ssm.nsc.can402941.
remarkably effective note taker.
Now, it's going to be a little challenging to find the page here because we don't have a date for it.
So just keep scrolling down.
Until you see talked about the Emergencies Act.
So scroll down again, please.
Scroll down.
Keep scrolling.
Keep scrolling.
Keep going.
I think it's just after this.
Keep going, please.
Keep going.
there's a lot of blackout in this so it's a little challenging Oh, we're at the FMM already, so it must be before that.
I think I saw it a few pages up, yeah.
Can you zoom out a little bit, please, Mr. Clerk, so we can see?
Thanks.
keep going up a little bit.
So, a little bit further up.
A little bit further.
So, I think you see.
Yeah, there we go.
Okay.
So, first question.
We don't have a date on this because it's sort of, there's some blackout before that, but do you remember the date of this, Mr. Klaa?
I believe it was February 9th.
Okay.
So, it's a meeting on February 9th, and...
This is various things happening over the course of the day.
Why don't you tell us what was happening?
So, February 9th was...
There were a few conversations going on.
I don't specifically remember what meetings at what times, but I did write down and it was reported to us that Minister Blair had spoken to the clerk about the Emergencies Act.
And that was in the lead up, I think, just one day before the incident response group meeting where the Emergencies Act was discussed in some detail in addition to other things.
So this was just a report to us that...
That conversation had happened between the minister and the clerk.
Okay, so around February 9th, we're getting to the point, as we know, where the federal government felt a need to perhaps intervene in the situation and bring this to a close in some way.
So as you say, Blair spoke to the clerk and talked about the Emergencies Act.
On the options, can you just read your handwriting there?
Didn't commit.
On the options, emergency could be peace if that sounds like we have authority.
And then a reference to Nathalie Twain, the Deputy Clerk and Fort Justice.
So I see this as discussions are happening about how we can help, what more we can be doing.
And the emergency act could be a piece of that.
Okay.
And we know that the following day, the Prime Minister convened the first incident response group meeting.
Yes.
So I'd like you to tell us a bit about that meeting, the decision to convene the IRG and what that meant in the Prime Minister's eyes, in your eyes, and what an IRG really is.
I think as the Clerk may have spoken to already, and I think as these notes show too, the meetings were becoming...
Increasingly frequent with added ministers and different departments getting involved because of the request for assistance amongst a growing number of blockades now as well as protests in different parts of the country and the occupation of course is now really entrenched in Ottawa.
And so as we were having these meetings, the clerk, I believe, advised the prime minister, though it made good sense to the group of us at the time as well, that it was time to formalize our structure moving forward and that we were at a point of national crisis.
And that's what the incident response group is put together for.
It was a group that was, it was a cabinet committee that was created.
I believe in the first mandate of the government midway through, and it is chaired by the prime minister.
It does not have a set permanent membership.
It is convened with the ministers appropriate to whatever the incident is that is being discussed.
And the thing that makes it very different from other cabinet committees is where in another cabinet committee that It tends to be policy focused and a little longer term.
This is obviously dealing with something in real time and something that's...
Crisis-like in nature.
But the structural difference, too, is that officials lead, in many ways, the conversations within the IRG meetings space, and they are right at the table.
So whereas at a cabinet committee meeting, the ministers would be sitting around the cabinet table and the officials might be sitting to the side, they may very well be making presentations, and then the ministers would be discussing those presentations, or they might speak up.
To make clarification when their ministers call on them for that clarification.
At an IRG meeting, the...
The principal presenters are officials.
And so whether it's the NSIA, whether it's the commissioner of the RCMP, whether it was the head of CSIS, depending on the incident in past, it might be the CAF and the chief of defense staff.
And then the ministers are called on by the prime minister to add anything that they might see as not having been covered, to add any thoughts they have on the basis of the information that's been presented.
But they are all sitting around the same table, which makes it quite a different meeting than really any other.
And what's the purpose of that?
Why is an IRG structured like that with direct input from officials?
I think for a number of reasons.
It's their expertise and getting it in real time to the prime minister and to the ministers.
And things are moving very quickly.
And it's...
So it's an efficiency and an effective kind of tool to bring everybody to that same table and convene the leadership of the different security agencies for whatever the security incident is and to hear from people directly.
Okay.
So essentially you remove the sort of the layering up and instead the Prime Minister has direct access to all of the inputs that you may want or need.
As do all of the other ministers, because they then get to hear directly from the heads of the different agencies or law enforcement heads.
Okay, fair enough.
So we've been through the content of many of the IRGs.
One theme I want to pick up with you is something that was eventually brought to the IRG on February 12th.
There has been a discussion at the Commission throughout, which was the idea of whether the Prime Minister or anyone from the federal government should engage with the protesters and attempt to bring this to a close through either some sort of negotiation, some engagement, some speaking.
So the first thing I'll bring up on that point is Mr. Clerk, it's pb.can.401184.
Okay.
Thank you.
or might be 1844 sorry Ms. Dulford, this is a text exchange on February 6th between you and Minister Manichino, so it's early days.
As I said, the theme of interaction, negotiation is something that came up.
Okay, can we scroll down please, Mr. Clerk?
Keep going.
keep going.
Page eight, please.
Okay, here we go.
So if we can blow that up, it's really hard to read, but you'll see notation here.
Lawyer, arbitrator, mediator, author.
Suggested by Anne McClellan as a possible interlocutor.
Again, I think it's a long shot for the reasons we discussed.
Also, I noticed after we hung up that we didn't even spend a moment on politics and readiness.
Okay, so that part of it may not be all that relevant.
Do you remember this text exchange, Ms. Delford?
Now that I see it.
Okay.
And do you remember the idea of discussing a possible interlocutor at that point and what was going on?
Can you fill that in for us?
Look, I think over the course of right from the beginning of the occupation, when it became an occupation, there were numerous people who were trying to suggest anything they could to try to find a way to assist.
And I think that's what Anne was doing here.
And I've received and I believe it's it's part of the documents as well that you've.
You've received, I received suggestions from numerous other people as well.
MPs were raising names with us.
There were suggested names of MPs from other parties who were coming forward wondering if they could help.
There was a lot of people that were trying to find a way to figure out if an engagement could work.
And no one was able to take it past that first thought.
No one could figure out who they should talk to.
There was no clear leadership on the other side.
There was no clear understanding of what they would even be talking about.
The police were already, as we were being informed through the incident response groups, they were already engaging at a certain level.
And so it wasn't clear what this engagement strategy would be, let alone if it could have any effect.
And I think there's a difference, too, between engagement And negotiation.
And the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, the government, wasn't prepared to negotiate public health measures that were rooted in science.
I also am not sure, and I think a lot of people weren't sure at the time, that really that that's what this was all about.
And so figuring out what the topic of the conversation could be, let alone who it could be with that could have any effect on changing the circumstances, when no one could answer that question, really these conversations didn't move past the initial suggestion of, I wonder if.
Okay, so at this point, this is part of the conversation.
We're still in sort of early days of the protest, and I think what you're taking us to now is what's come to be known as the engagement proposal, and we've heard some evidence on that.
And Mr. Clerk, you can take that one down, please, and pull up.
Following.
SSM.nsc.can402958.
So, Ms. Telford, I think what you've just been referencing has been canvassed before the Commission a bit, and it's Deputy Minister Stewart's engagement proposal that he prepared with the assistance of Marcel Bowden from the OPP-PLT.
And this is now the evening of February 11th.
It's a text that Minister Mendicino sent to you saying, hey there, we got some very last-minute and thin paper tonight on an engagement strategy.
From my deputy minister, apparently socialized it with several people, including the Ontario government, not me.
We'll just scroll down and see the rest of the text, please.
He says it's unclear whether PCO or CMP or Ontario supports this, but he's flagging this as a concern about information flow.
And then he says at the bottom, sorry, but had to let you know, Marco.
Can you tell us a bit from your perspective?
We've heard Minister Mendicino's perspective on it, but what was your perspective receiving this text?
And do you know why Minister Mendicino was essentially apologizing, saying, sorry, I'm just letting you know about this?
When the IRGs began convening, just the day before, I believe, One of the things that was stressed at the first IRG or in and around the IRG really was just the need for appropriate information flow and for regular and constant information flow.
And so I believe that's what he's saying sorry for there is he's letting me know that there's this information that is now floating around that has already gone to some people and it had not kind of followed the usual channels.
And I think he was sorry that it was the hour that it was that we were all trying to grapple with what to do here.
But I had also just received the paper previously from the clerk, I think, about an hour before the looks of this.
And so I wouldn't read too much into the story.
And we were much more focused on the draft and ultimately what was decided later that night after I...
I talked with the clerk, and I then called the prime minister, and the prime minister agreed to put it on, with the suggestion that was coming from the clerk, he agreed to put it on the agenda for the IRG the next day for discussion.
And we've seen that it ended up on the agenda, and I think you just started to tell us a little bit, but maybe you can finish that answer, why ultimately it was decided not to pursue that engagement strategy.
In some ways, it's what I already touched on, which is this was one more proposal that was not yet at the place that one could act on.
There were too many unanswered questions.
There was no clarity in terms of who the discussion would be with on either side of the discussion and what the discussion would be about and what it might result in.
And so, you know, while everyone, including the Prime Minister, was encouraging everyone to put every option on the table, and it's why this was put on the agenda ultimately, there wasn't anything further to pursue on this at that time.
Okay.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
You can take that one down.
So we're going to skip a little ahead in the chronology again.
The following day, February 13th, is obviously key.
There's the incident response group meeting in the afternoon, followed by the cabinet meeting in the evening.
The decision coming out of the IRG is to have the cabinet meeting, and then the decision coming out of the cabinet meeting is to have a first minister's meeting to consult on whether or not to invoke the Emergencies Act.
Mr. Clerk, can you pull up ssm.nsc.can402941?
It's Mr. Clough's notes again, this time at page 22. So when Minister LeBlanc testified a few days ago, we went through some of the comments, the record of the readout of the First Minister's meeting and some of what was expressed by the provinces.
And these, I believe, are Mr. Clow's notes of that same meeting.
And I'm wondering whether we can go through a bit of these, and Mr. Broadhead, maybe this is best directed at you, but whether you can fill in a bit of the context about what was being expressed during the first ministers' meeting by these various premiers, and whether or not, in your view, it coincided with what you've been hearing up to then about solving the problem of the convoy.
Sure, I'll start and then my colleagues can add.
I think it was quite consistent with what we had heard before, but I think it was a very robust conversation.
We had the ministers, Minister Lamedi and I believe Minister Mendicino or LeBlanc and the Prime Minister speak.
Then the Prime Minister went across the country.
In terms of making sure he heard from each of the provinces and territorial premiers.
I think we had known, not specifically on the Emergencies Act, but we had known from conversations with Ontario what they were kind of feeling generally.
We had heard from a lot of the provinces.
So I think it was quite an interesting conversation, I think.
We did learn a lot, and just to use a couple quick examples, some of the issues around supply chain that Newfoundland and Nunavut brought up and concern from the Premier in the Northwest Territories about a blockade, concerns from Premier Horgan about RCMP being stretched too thin as they were.
A contingent had been sent to support another part of the country.
And it really kind of showed that the national nature of it and the kind of variety of issues folks were facing.
And even the folks who were, I would say, more concerned, such as the Premier of Alberta or the Premier of Saskatchewan, even they had said things like, well, I won't quibble with the use of the Emergencies Act, but I'm worried about...
Inflaming folks, which was something we were concerned about, had talked about at IRGs, was a real cause of discussion.
And same with Premier Mo, who said, you know, the six things you've mentioned sound reasonable, but I'm worried about inflaming.
So, you know, and even, you know, Premier Legault talking about, you know, the Cirque du Québec and...
You know, and the dynamic between the CERCE and the RCMP and us having to kind of, you know, discuss where those boundaries were with them in calls Mr. LeBlanc mentioned after with Minister LeBlanc, I believe it was, really showed, like, it was a very meaty conversation, I found, but not one where I think we were...
I'm shocked by what we were hearing because of the outreach that had happened in advance.
I would just add that this was, I'm not sure there's a Prime Minister in Canadian history that has had as many First Minister's meetings as this Prime Minister has because of the pandemic.
And so they were such a regular occurrence.
And this group of Premiers know each other quite well because of that.
And while, you know, there are...
Perhaps sometimes more pointed and more partisan statements made in public facing environments in these meetings that they have.
And I think you can see that in the notes and in the descriptions of it.
They really they are thoughtful conversations and they do come at things differently.
There's no doubt they have different regional needs and we're facing different things in different parts of the country.
As Premier King, I can still remember saying, you know, toward the end, he was one of the later speakers, as per the notes, and him saying to the Prime Minister, I know you don't take this lightly.
And this was a thoughtful conversation.
And because they really were grappling with, you know, even those who were concerned about the potential for inflammation if the Emergencies Act were invoked, even those who were concerned about it in their specific regions understood there was a broader national Potential national need here and that the Prime Minister had the authority ultimately and the need to do this.
And so even those who were showing some reluctance from their...
Kind of premier perspective of their particular province.
We're showing an openness or a recognition, as Premier Kenney did, and sort of saying, I won't quibble with you on whatever you have to do with the Emergencies Act, ultimately.
And I think that speaks to, they'd had an FMM just...
A couple of weeks prior to this, that was solely focused on before all of this had started, as part for the course now during the pandemic.
Because we need to remember the time we were in, which was the height of Omicron.
And so they'd actually had an FMM, I think it was January 10th, where they were talking about the new mandates that the provinces were having to put into place.
And we were looking to support them on that front.
So this is a group that has navigated crises for a couple of years together, in many, if not most, of their cases.
That's helpful context in understanding comments like you just brought up.
Premier Kenney's saying, I don't quibble with the use of the act.
Mr. Cloud, do you have anything to add on this front?
I think it's been well covered.
I would just emphasize, I know it's been addressed here and elsewhere in the past couple of weeks, but Premier Kenney's comment on this phone call that there was a potentially violent, hardcore...
Group of individuals at the center of the Coutts blockade who were ready to die for a cause.
And we had heard that through other reports and from our own officials, but it was a recognition that's just one example of the very serious potential for violence that was posed by many of these demonstrations.
Thank you, Mr. Clerk.
You can take that one down.
So we know that what happened after the First Minister's meeting, which lasted about an hour, There was then, I believe, a call with opposition leaders, and then at some point that afternoon, the Prime Minister received a decision note from the Clerk, and fairly shortly thereafter, took the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
One thing I wanted to ask from your perspective was, any consideration given in any of this to holding a debate before Parliament?
Not to decide, of course, but to...
Engage in a debate over whether the Emergencies Act should be invoked.
So there was an emergency debate about the convoy and the demonstrations about a week, about I think exactly a week before the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act itself contains parliamentary process and provisions.
That debate and the vote in the House did happen.
But the decision to invoke on February 14th was made.
After a series of discussions and inputs, the FMM that morning being a critical one, the opposition leader call being a critical one, the view was time was up and it needed to be enacted right away.
And recognizing that the parliamentary process is built into the act and was to come in the days ahead, we thought that that was robust.
So essentially that conversation didn't happen because it didn't have to.
There was already a parliamentary process built in.
Yes.
Is that fair?
Okay.
And I just want to turn briefly now to the topic of revocation of the act, which I know is skipping ahead again.
Mr. Clerk, if you can pull up Mr. Clough's notes again.
I don't know what we'd do without Mr. Clough's notes here.
SSM.nsc.can402941, page 28. The only thing missing from the notes is clear page numbers.
Always number the pages.
So this is February 19th.
It's a staff call.
And right at the bottom there, you say Parliament's job is to confirm or revoke.
Doesn't impact changes, I believe.
After revocation, what happens to frozen accounts?
So that's a topic we've explored a bit with finance.
At what point do we withdraw based on what inputs?
So is it fair to say at this point, this is a discussion of almost first principles.
We don't really know what the criteria are to revoke.
We need to figure out what those criteria are.
Is that an accurate reflection?
It's hard to say for sure what that specific note refers to, but there was progress by that point, the February 19th.
We were far from out of it.
There were still a lot of situations.
There were still many threats.
And if I remember correctly, Ottawa was, there may have been the beginning of action, but it wasn't done.
So definitely at the IRGs and on staff calls and in other conversations, we were beginning to ask ourselves, okay, how long is this needed?
And it was always understood and it was made clear by the Prime Minister.
This should only be in place as long as it's needed.
So we were constantly asking ourselves that very question.
What do we need to assess and what will feed into the decision to revoke?
And there was no, I think what I was saying was there's no playbook for it.
So it was essentially a discussion from first principles of trying to figure out what these criteria should be.
If we could scroll down a bit, please, Mr. Clerk, to the following day, you'll see IRG.
Not that one, February 20th.
Let's keep going.
So the first notation there says IRG February 20th RCMP /officials public brief on how long emergency act is needed.
Now we're going to take this down and bring up a different document, Mr. Clerk, which is SSM.CAN.NSC40.
This isn't something that's recorded in your notes, Mr. Cloud.
What I'm going to bring up is Commissioner Luckey's key messages from that date.
So it's an RCMP document and I'm going to take you through and ask you whether your recollection is that that was expressed during the IRG.
So there we go.
So the key messages are: As I said yesterday, the situation across the country remains concerning, volatile, and unpredictable.
We are continuing to see a range of protest events and solidarity actions across the country with Port Sventry and legislatures the key targets.
I want to underscore two key bottom lines off the top.
First, as it relates to Ottawa and Ontario, there is an operational need to maintain access to these powers to ensure that we can finish what we started and prevent any...
Even for the next two to three weeks.
And then after that, it is important that we retain the ability to maintain the perimeter, restrict travel, and ensure we can continue to choke off financial support and other assistance to the protesters in Ottawa.
And then it goes on.
Do you recall this having been expressed at the IRG, that the Emergencies Act should stay in place by the RCMP, by Commissioner Lucky, for another two or three weeks?
My colleagues may have stuff to add, but I don't know if it was conveyed on the 20th, but that was definitely a message right up to the revocation that the RCMP believed that the powers were critical, and they argued that they should stay in place for a period longer in order to prevent additional blockades from starting or from people from returning to the ones that existed.
Okay.
Ms. Delver, Mr. Broadhead, do you have anything to add to that?
No, that's...
Okay.
And as we know, that's not what happened in the end.
The Act was revoked three days later.
So is it fair to say that that input was received but not followed by, in the end, the government?
Important to point out is that both for the invocation and the revocation, the RCMP was one of many inputs.
So for sure, this view would have been considered and was considered.
But ultimately, the Prime Minister and...
The IRG decided to revoke when they decided to revoke based on many different inputs.
Okay, one thing I wanted to ask you as well about the revocation decision is there have been some suggestions that the motion to confirm the declaration of emergency had been passed through the House of Commons but was up for vote in the Senate and that part of the timing of revocation may have been due to the some Perhaps lack of confidence around whether the Senate would confirm the declaration.
Can you speak to that?
So, quite the opposite, actually.
And yes, I am aware of that suggestion, that perhaps there was an attempt to revoke before the Senate got to its vote.
We actually wanted the Senate to move as quickly as possible, and I think it did too, but as it was reported to us...
The Senate was delayed in convening partly because of the Ottawa, very significant continuing Ottawa demonstrations that were happening right on the Senate's doorstep.
They did begin their debate at a certain point, but that was not considered when it came to revocation.
The decisions around revocation was, what's the situation?
Is this act still needed?
Are these powers still needed?
We would have liked the Senate to have its vote.
But I will also say I know of no reason to believe that the Senate would not have endorsed it.
And I do believe that, I'm not sure about this, but I do believe that this commission has seen evidence that the Chief of Staff to Senator Gould, the government leader in the Senate, was doing vote counting, and they were quite comfortable that they were in a good place.
Anything to add on that point, Ms. Dufford, Mr. Brada?
No, I completely agree with what...
Brian was just saying, and I would just add that it was extraordinarily important to the Prime Minister that he be true to what he set out in the beginning when he invoked the act, and that it wasn't going to last one minute longer than absolutely necessary.
And so that was the entire motivation behind when the revocation happened.
The same way safety and security was at the core of every meeting he was having throughout.
The politics and parliamentary issues were on a completely separate track from that decision making.
Okay.
Those are actually all the questions I have for you, since given that the Prime Minister will be here tomorrow, your boss will be speaking for himself.
Those are the questions that I have for you this afternoon.
But before I sit down, is there anything that we haven't covered here today that you would like to say, now that you have the opportunity?
I think we're good.
Nope.
Pretty quiet.
Okay.
Thank you.
Commissioner, those are my questions.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
I think probably this is a good time to take a 15-minute break and let everyone get up and stretch.
And so we'll come back in 15 minutes.
Thank you.
The commission is in recess for 15 minutes.
La comisión le ve porque has been it.
Thank you.
Order alert.
The Commission has reconvened.
Okay.
Now the next stage.
First, I'd like to call on the Government of Alberta, please.
Good evening to this panel.
My name is Stephanie Bose.
I am Counsel for the Province of Alberta.
I just want to start with the statement in the PMO Institutional Report, which indicates that PMO staff engaged with Premier Kenney's Chief of Staff, Ms. Livingstone, on February 5th and 12th.
I just want to confirm that during that time, the PMO did not discuss the possible use of the Emergencies Act during those engagements.
Is that correct?
It was not me having those conversations, but that is my understanding, yes.
Okay, thank you.
And with respect to the First Minister's meeting, Mr. Broadhead, you were asked about your understanding of the various positions of premiers at that meeting.
I'd like the clerk to pull up ssm.nsc.can50625.
And these are some expanded notes prepared and produced by the Government of Canada describing that meeting.
Once we have them up, I'll ask the clerk to please scroll down to page 3. Okay, so we can see here that there's some further notes about the comments of Premier Kenney at this meeting, and I'll just walk through some of these right now.
He starts by describing the situation in Cootes and how it went from 1,000 trucks on a rolling protest to 900 going home with 100 staying behind.
And then down to a group of 40, which he described as a core group.
Then you'll see him describe the arrest at the border and indicate, we believe the situation has been secured.
And further down there, have procured on market for equipment and have drivers in place, unless an unexpected surprise should open border crossing today.
A little farther down again, would be problematic to declare emergency today to take momentum of arrest last night.
Declaration risks further radicalizing thousands of sympathizers in Alberta.
Know you have a lot of serious issues to balance off, including in Ottawa, that I am suggesting this could create a net negative for Alberta.
If we need to seize or compel people, we are prepared to use our own Emergencies Act.
So you would agree that it's fair to say that the Premier's position at this first Minister's meeting was that invoking the Federal Emergencies Act was neither wanted nor needed in Alberta, correct?
Yeah, I would say he was definitely clear that he did not believe it was needed in Alberta at that time.
Okay, thank you.
And I'd like to switch tracks with you and ask about what was done to prepare the Prime Minister for the February 13th Cabinet meeting and specifically where his inputs of information came from.
So I'm going to ask you, you can answer yes or no, whether the PMO was responsible for providing the Prime Minister with the following information.
And that's about the status of the RCMP operation in Coutts.
Was it the PMO that was responsible for providing that information to the Prime Minister?
No.
How about the status of Alberta's acquisition of tow trucks from the private market?
The Privy Council leads these briefings that you're referring to.
Okay.
So I'll just name off a few more, and maybe then you can tell me if there was anything in my list that the PMO was responsible for providing the information to the Prime Minister.
And those are the status of the protests in Windsor at the Ambassador Bridge, the status of opening of the Ambassador Bridge, the status of the OPS operational plan with respect to the protests in Ottawa.
Or that Commissioner Luckey was of the view that not all tools available through existing legislation had yet been exhausted?
We may have added information if we'd heard it through ministers' offices or through open source information, but the briefing on all the matters would have been led by the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Deputy Clerk of the NSIA.
Okay, thank you.
I would just add that we heard at various points in the weeks leading up to invocation of the Act that action was about to be taken in some of the places that you mentioned.
And on the point about RCMP stating that not all tools have been exhausted, that was obvious to everyone.
In various locations, law enforcement had tools that they weren't able to enforce.
Because there were other more serious issues preventing that, and that's partly why the decision was made to invoke the act the next day.
Okay, and so you would agree that the Prime Minister had that information as well, that there were tools available, but that they weren't being used?
As I said, that was obvious to everyone who was watching what was going on on the ground.
Okay, thank you.
I would like the Kirk to please pull up ssm.nsc.can40.
And this is a record that Commission Council has taken you through in some detail already.
There's just a few places where I was hoping you could help me read some of the writing.
So, Mr. Clerk, if you could please scroll down to page 12. Actually, this is not something that I need clarification on the writing on, but something I do have a question on.
Let me just make sure I'm in the right place here.
So if you see on the right-hand side, there's a note beside Brenda, and I'm assuming this is Commissioner Luckey.
Is that correct?
Yes.
Okay.
And she indicates with respect to Coots.
They were almost gone, but a pastor incited them to stay, was 250 vehicles, now down to 40, and weapons are in the protest, need to go slow here.
Was the Prime Minister part of this conversation?
Yes, he was.
This was the February 10th incident response group meeting.
Okay, good.
Thank you.
And then if we go to page 23, here's where I'll need your help interpreting the writing.
Thank you.
So we can see about a quarter of way down the page.
There's an arrow and it says specific.
What's the next word after that?
To be honest, I can't read it either.
The quality of the photocopy is not strong.
Okay.
So specific something, draft list, using the money as a...
What's that next word there?
As a hook for the national stuff.
So this was a reference to there we knew and we heard on the FMM call that some premiers and some people felt that the act should not be provided applied nationally.
And this comment referred to needing to underscore in the communications that part of the reason the act needed to apply nationally.
So that it would apply to financial transactions across the country, given many of the demonstrators were from across the country.
And I think you just said that this was about needing to refer in the communications.
What communications are you talking about?
So this was February 14th, 12.30 p.m. after the FMM, as preparations were underway for a potential prime ministerial announcement later that afternoon.
The Prime Minister took the decision to invoke the act later that afternoon, and he went out and announced it.
Okay.
Now, I'd like to talk a little bit about that announcement.
if we can go to SSM.can402665.
So, we're going to go to SSM.
And if we go to the very last email in this record, there's a discussion of a press conference that was, at that time, scheduled for noon on February 14th.
And we'll see the time of this email is listed as February 13th, 8pm.
Now, I'm not sure if this is one of the emails that's caught.
With the time difference related to Greenwich Mean Time.
But it's either 3 p.m. or 8 p.m. on the 13th.
In either event, that's before the cabinet meeting, correct?
I can't confirm the timing of the email, but it could be.
Okay.
And it indicates that there was going to be a press conference the next day.
With the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister Blair, Minister Mendicino and Minister Lamedi.
There's a bit more discussion in other emails, including that Minister Lamedi is there just to answer questions and that only the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister will provide comments.
Is this because that was the press conference that was intended to announce the invocation of the Emergencies Act?
So what I would say is, at this point, There were numerous statements being made by the Prime Minister and other ministers to media, sometimes in the form of a press conference.
My recollection was this was planning for a statement of some sort.
And yes, given the Emergencies Act was under consideration, it was a scenario at that time that they could be making announcements about the Emergencies Act the next day.
But the decision had not been taken at that point.
So you'll see that it says, as you know, the presser is to provide an update on the federal government response to the blockades as well as the Ukraine.
And I'll take it from your answer that there was some anticipation that maybe it might be about the Emergencies Act.
But what other announcement was going to be made about the blockades the next day?
There could have been any number of measures taken.
And that was the examination going on exactly at that time.
What tools could exist?
Is it going to be enough?
Decision was Emergencies Act had the tools required, and that's why that decision was taken the next day.
And I understand that part of the DMO's role is to prepare speeches for the Prime Minister.
Is that correct?
The DPMO?
No.
The Prime Minister's office and PCO prepare speeches for the Prime Minister.
Sorry, I thought in the institutional report that there was mention of drafting speeches by the Prime Minister's.
Oh, I'm sorry, by the Prime Minister's office.
Yes, absolutely.
Okay, I'm sorry, I misspoke there.
Just to let you know, I think you're over your time, so you're going to have to wrap up pretty soon.
Okay, I'll just finish this area.
Did the Deputy Prime Minister's office draft a speech for the Prime Minister for the press conference on February 14th?
I'm not aware.
You're not aware.
Okay.
Thank you.
Those are all my questions tonight.
Okay.
Thank you.
Next call on the convoy organizers, please.
Sir, before I begin, I have an issue that I need to address.
As you know, and I've made applications several times, The disclosure in the record is entirely deficient.
We've been trying to deal with these redactions.
There's still redactions for parliamentary privilege, which the government has not removed.
There's no legal basis for, as you've already ruled, to redact any document on the basis of parliamentary privilege.
There's also the issue, as I've re-raised by email as well, the issue with the notes of this witness.
The process that was used in dealing with that needs to be reassessed.
These are important witnesses.
I need rulings and so does everyone here.
The rulings on the redactions are so important and, for example, Ms. Jodie Thomas testified and said that she supported the invocation of the Emergencies Act.
But there's a note that we got after we fought for the one redaction we got that said Jody Thomas did not.
And it was put up on the screen.
It was notes taken.
It had one Section 39 redaction on it.
So if that's a Cabinet document, we can assume Cabinet knew about it.
And it states that Section 2, no violence, and they were trying to come up with a way how to make this work anyway.
That would have been very helpful to have when she was on the stand under oath.
This is happening constantly.
There is thousands of documents.
If you can, I'm not looking for a speech.
I understand there have been issues about redactions.
I believe that one is one I ordered disclosed, and I believe you questioned somebody about it as recently as yesterday or the day before.
I am not sure about the redactions, certainly for, just to qualify, the redactions with respect to parliamentary privilege.
I didn't say it doesn't exist.
I said it was novel and that the arguments presented were insufficient, and I ordered the three redactions disclosed.
We received something, I think it's yesterday, or maybe it was even today, and I apologize, I haven't yet ruled on it.
That's true.
But I do my very best to make decisions.
I try my very best to make them intelligent and thoughtful, and that sometimes is not done immediately.
So that's sort of how I can respond to those points.
So, sir, I can make it very easy, and we've written your counsel for a set of them.
So the law is such that where a redaction is sought on the basis of irrelevance, It is not the onus of the person seeking to have it redacted on the basis of its relevance.
It's the onus on the person seeking for it to be redacted.
And the purpose for that is that all of the documents given to us are subject to the implied undertaking rule.
So they don't become public until a ruling on their relevance is made.
Okay, well, I'm not in a position to rule on that.
I suspect that's the mode.
The request you made either yesterday or today, I don't know which.
And I'm sorry, I'm not in a position to rule on it right now.
So what I'd like you is if you could proceed with your examination or that would be, I think, ideal at this stage.
And I'll do my best to deal with the motion of the redaction issues as soon as possible.
Okay.
But I just want to put on the record that throughout this entire proceeding, all counsel here.
And we're on national television.
This is supposed to be completely transparent.
This is the purpose of this.
I'm doing my very best.
It's not your fault.
It's just the fault that nobody's ordering DOJ to actually produce what they're obliged to do.
That's something you can deal with in another forum.
I'm doing the best I can here.
I think we've gotten a lot of disclosure through our issues, and we're dealing with those issues that are raised as they are raised.
We dealt with the ones you raised, I believe, at the end of last week, made some orders, confirmed some of the redactions, and we'll deal with your most current application.
Order that the redactions for parliamentary privilege, because I can tell you, I studied that area in and out.
And the reason no one could provide you an authority for the purpose of a redaction on the basis of parliamentary privilege is it doesn't exist.
And parliamentary privilege is, of course, an ancient doctrine.
And if you would just order the production of the records without those redactions, it would remove a whole bunch of them.
If you would order the production of all relevant records with respect where relevant is claimed, those records are then subject to the implied undertaking rule.
And there's no national security issue with those.
If they were, Section 38 would be claimed.
There's no Cabinet confidence, so Section 39 is not claimed.
And that has been the law.
It's time immemorial.
How can you contest if something's relevant if you don't know what it says?
And my problem is that this witness is now on the stand.
One of the documents is key in my submission.
It is the notes of Ms. Jackson, which is the office assistant to this witness.
There are redactions therein on the basis of irrelevance, and there are redactions therein also, I believe, on one of the other grounds.
And I've sent a written motion, if you will, email to your counsel.
We've been asking for these things and asking for proper production throughout this proceeding.
All Council are in agreement that we don't have proper production, sir.
Well, I'm not sure you can speak for all Council and I'm sure they can speak for themselves as to whether or not you've been asking for this a long time.
I'm not aware that you asked about those redactions.
But maybe I don't have the records.
Anyways, we're going to have to stop this.
And despite your belief that the law is always very clear, my experience of 20 years is, that's why judges are around.
So if you could proceed, otherwise, you know, we're not going to get anywhere.
So if I could bring up the notes of Ms. Jackson, which are at...
about a second.
S. SM.CAN.7719.
Okay.
So, Ms. Telford, Sarah Jackson, she's your office manager, is this correct?
Yes.
All right.
Scribe and does scribing for you when you're in meetings?
No.
All right.
So the notes that she takes, she has, if we can scroll down.
And down.
Right.
So that says KT call, and I take it that's you?
KT usually does refer to me.
Right.
So she's taking notes of a phone call she has with you.
I don't know.
You don't know.
So that's on February 4th.
Do you remember February 4th?
Yes.
Okay.
So what happened on February 4th?
Um...
Well, no, I don't remember in that level of detail.
Okay.
Is there something you're looking for in particular?
Well, I'm trying to find out because I have to build a record for this.
Do you have any idea why anything in your conversation?
On February 4th in that note would be relevant?
I don't know.
And I take it when you spoke to Ms. Telford or sorry to this individual at the time there was no lawyer present.
Was there?
I don't know what this call is.
Okay so can we scroll down then?
So you see there the government has claimed solicitor-client privilege.
Okay?
And you don't remember speaking with a lawyer on February 4th, do you?
As I said, I don't know what this call is.
Right.
So how would the government know, if you don't know, that this is solicitor-client privileged?
They couldn't, could they?
So it's redacted, and this is the problem, sir.
You have irrelevant, irrelevant...
Is there a question?
Yes, and so if we can scroll down.
Okay.
And in that note, on February 4th, I know you don't have a good memory, but in your conversation...
That's a...
No, I know good memory of February 4th.
I know she doesn't have a good memory of it, but it wasn't an insult.
Blair's current strategy, Emergencies Act, right?
So I take it you're understanding, she's writing down what you're saying, and you told her that Blair's current strategy is the Emergencies Act.
So it was Minister Blair's strategy to invoke the Emergencies Act on February 4th.
That's your understanding, isn't it?
No, that's not my understanding.
So what was Blair's current strategy Emergencies Act on February 4th, 2022?
I can't speak to what's written here.
You don't remember?
No, if you wanted to pull up notes of mine from February 4th, that might be helpful, but I can't speak to these.
Do you have notes from February 4th?
I have notes from a lot of days that have been provided.
You've been provided?
Okay.
Have you provided all of them to the Department of Justice?
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
And would you say that you provided notes from each and every single day?
From any day I have notes on.
Okay.
And...
With respect to this meeting, do you remember what you and Ms. Jackson were talking about?
I unfortunately don't know what meeting she's taking notes from here without more context.
It may or may not even be a meeting I was in.
But obviously, you were discussing the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act came up at numerous occasions, as we've said earlier today.
Do you think it would assist the tribunal in this inquiry if Ms. Jackson testifies?
No, I think I can answer any questions you might have.
But you can't answer what that note says.
Is there something you're curious about that note in particular?
Well, on February 4th of 2022, Ms. Jackson, in a conversation with you, writes down Blair's current strategy emergency sack.
Right?
And you hadn't even had an IRG at that point.
I believe you've had an opportunity to speak with Minister Blair.
Yeah, and I put this to him and he said that it wasn't true.
So, wouldn't it be helpful if you can't remember?
I'm not sure that was correct.
He said that he never had...
I put the note to him and he said that that wasn't his strategy, that that's incorrect.
That was his evidence.
That doesn't mean it isn't true.
I mean, all this note says is Blair's current strategy and the Emergency Act underneath it.
On February 4th, when was the first time that the government came out and spoke that they were considering invoking the Emergencies Act?
Do you remember?
Publicly?
Yeah.
I mean, there were questions from the media where ministers were speaking about the Emergencies Act long before it was invoked.
Yeah.
And Minister Blair...
I'll discuss this with him.
On February 13th, for the first time, he went on a show and he talked about that it was under consideration from the outset.
But then when he testified here, he said it wasn't.
So was the invocation of the Emergencies Act under consideration from the beginning of the protest in Ottawa?
The Emergencies Act was something that was discussed at the beginning of the pandemic.
And it was a public conversation at that time, as well as a private conversation.
There were calls for the Prime Minister.
If we can put the document back up, please.
Perhaps it's Brian Gover for the Government of Canada.
Perhaps the witness could complete her answer to the question without interruption.
Oh no, I've just, the document went down.
I'm not done.
I apologize.
So thank you.
So, and I understand that there was a consideration of a public welfare emergency, right?
That's very different than a public order emergency.
You know that.
There doesn't have to be a Section 2 security threat, right?
And...
Are you talking about...
I'm not sure when you're talking about...
You were talking about from COVID because you said it was under consideration then.
They did look at the Emergencies Act at that time and there was a public call for that at the time and it was determined...
Because the Prime Minister was very reluctant, as he was during the occupation this past February, to invoke it.
And so there's been conversations on various occasions about the Emergencies Act over time.
So when that note's taken on February 4th, 2022, are you saying that you're talking about it in relation to COVID?
I genuinely don't know what this note is, as I've already said to you a few times.
Okay.
So if I can...
Scroll up or down.
Or up, please.
Or down.
We'll go down.
Down's fine.
Okay.
So that says flag 2KT February 10th.
And it's written in there that this is irrelevant.
What does that mean?
Why is it irrelevant?
Do you know?
I don't know specifically, but I could surmise that flagged to Katie means it's probably a bit of a to-do list of things she wanted to flag to me that were obviously deemed irrelevant to what we are talking about today.
Okay, and could we scroll down again?
And this one, where it says staff blockade, and then it has Section 39 invoked.
Do you know what that means?
I don't know why they invoked it there.
Right.
And so I take it when you were having this phone call, there was no one else present on the phone other than you and Ms. Jackson, was there?
I don't believe that this is a phone call any longer.
Well, if we scroll back up, this is the second page.
Yes, it said flag to Katie at the top.
Flag to Katie.
Okay.
And so on February 10th, do you remember if Ms. Jackson was in a meeting with Cabinet?
She is not normally in meetings with Cabinet.
Section 39 is cabinet confidence.
This is the problem.
Those are my questions.
Thank you.
If we could now call on the Ottawa Police Service, please.
Good evening.
My name is David Michikowska.
I'm a lawyer for Ottawa Police Service.
Ms. Telford, my questions, at least initially, will be directed to you.
I understand that the PMO relies on the RCMP.
Generally?
What do you mean?
Well, I guess the PMO relies on the RCMP to protect the Prime Minister and others.
Yes.
And you trust the RCMP?
You do?
The RCMP has kept the Prime Minister and his family safe.
They have.
And the RCMP takes security very seriously.
They do.
And one of the documents, I won't take you to it, but I believe the Commission took you to it.
One of the documents that you were taken to reference the Intersect Group.
You're familiar with the Intersect Group?
Can you remind me?
Sure.
It was described in that document as a group that gets stood up and is composed of the OPS, the RCMP, PPS, OPP.
You're familiar with that?
Yes.
And all of them are involved in decisions and discussions about these types of protest events and security concerns, correct?
That sounds right.
And in fact, in that chain of emails that you were taken to, there's reference, and it was on January 25th, Ms. Powers indicates that the key will be tomorrow's intersect meeting and how law enforcement will pre-mobilize.
So you're obviously aware that the RCMP, whom you have a lot of confidence in, is monitoring.
Yes.
And on January 27th, and I won't pull it up, but I'll give the reference for the record.
It's pb.can401844.
There's a series of text messages, I believe.
Between Minister Mendocino and yourself, and you indicate that the RCMP, or he indicates to you, that the RCMP on January 27th says that the current estimate is about 2,700 trucks, but the numbers could fluctuate.
Do you recall that?
That sounds right.
And there's another document from the PMO.
I believe it's from Ms. Power.
She's the issues advisor.
She's one of several issues advisors, but she holds the file for public safety.
And so there's an email from her on January 28th.
Again, the reference number is SSM.can.nsc402795.
And she gives some more data as to what the status is.
One of the things that she references in that report on the latest numbers is Project Hendon.
And we've heard a lot about Project Hendon.
Was that something that you were familiar with as well?
Not at the time.
I'm sorry?
Not at the time.
Okay.
Subsequently, you did hear about Project Hendon.
Is that right?
During the inquiry, I've heard a fair bit of it.
Right.
And so she's referring to, so obviously, the RCMP, I'm assuming, has access to the same Hendon data as the other security services.
Fair assumption?
I couldn't speak to what information they had access to.
Okay.
And so what we see when we look at all of these documents that I'm referring to is the numbers of vehicles, of trucks in the convoy in the last couple days before it arrives is a constantly fluctuating number.
Nobody seems to be able to get a full grasp on it.
Is that fair?
It certainly felt that way.
And certainly nobody...
Even the RCMP, up until that day, the Friday, were saying that this protest was going to become an occupation, correct?
I will say in those updates that were coming from Mary Liz Power, and they were more than once daily by the end of the week, there were some references, and I do believe this commission has seen, in those emails, and I think it was attributed to Op Intersect, that this could be a prolonged demonstration.
But you are right, there was a lot of uncertainty about what was coming.
And so you understood that even the law enforcement community couldn't predict exactly what occurred and what did in fact occur.
Fair?
I agree this is a challenging situation for everyone.
And you wouldn't fault the RCMP for that, would you?
No.
You've talked about what you saw on social media in the days leading up to it, and CSIS has told us that analyzing social media is rather complex and requires more than simply scrolling through social media.
You wouldn't have any reason to disagree with that, would you?
I think it's a fair statement, but there are some things said on social media that represent Clearly, the views of the person expressing it.
And in this case, in this demonstration, there were statements made on social media about threats of violence, threats to individuals and aims and motives that they had.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to cut you off, but I have a very limited amount of time.
My question was more related to the numbers of people that are coming on social media, because what Mr. Vigneault said is it is difficult to tell.
It's a challenge, I think he said, to know when someone moves from the online space to physical space and the social media is full of misinformation.
I think it was challenging for everyone, and that's why it was important to bring everyone together at various points.
I think a number of people, including Mr. Vigneault, have spoken about how figuring out the social media space is something that needs to be done coming out of this.
Right.
And you recognize, just moving on to another area, you recognize that police, and we've heard from a number of ministers, that police need to have operational independence from government.
Absolutely.
And that police have to make operational decisions.
In real time for reasons that may not be evident to the government or to the public.
Fair?
Of course, and that's something we took very, very seriously.
And again, you respected that operational independence.
You wouldn't want the police, whether it's the Ottawa or OPP or the RCMP, to take action without considering what impact that action would have on officer safety or crowd safety or children in the crowd.
Of course.
And in fact, one of the lessons of IPRWASH that we've heard is that governments should not be allowed to influence specific law enforcement operational decisions.
You'd agree with that?
Fair?
IPRWASH was actually something I asked after and we got a verbal brief on very early on.
I think it was actually even before it all got, before it became even an occupation because it was something we were very preoccupied about respecting.
And it's because decisions, those type of operational decisions, belong to the police based on their expertise and their discretion, correct?
Yes.
And there's nothing to suggest that the Ottawa Police Service did not exercise their discretion legitimately and in good faith in this case.
Is that fair?
Fair.
The situation we've heard in Ottawa was, I'm going to use a word that we've all heard a lot in this, was a volatile one.
You wouldn't disagree with that.
It was extremely volatile.
And ultimately that situation was diffused.
But you'd agree with me that diffusing a situation like this one is something that takes time.
In fact, the Prime Minister, in a conversation with the Governor General on February 5th, specifically made that point when he said it's going to take time to defuse this.
You wouldn't disagree with that, would you?
I believe that conversation was a ways into the occupation already.
So I don't think I can agree or disagree with whether or not these things always take time.
And ultimately, in addition to time, it took a massive amount of additional resources as well, correct?
It certainly did in this instance.
Let me just finish off my remaining minute or two.
Negotiations, you understand that before police execute a tactical operation, they will try and diffuse a situation and try to negotiate, right?
These were things we were briefed on, yes.
And in fact, you'll recall that the Prime Minister and Minister Blair met with opposition leaders and provided a briefing on February 10th.
And at that briefing, the National Security and Intelligence Advisor specifically said law enforcement activities are in line with negotiations with organizers to ensure there's no violence.
That makes sense to you, doesn't it?
Yes.
And she also indicated that Minister Blair talked about the importance of negotiation by the police.
And you wouldn't disagree with what Minister Blair said?
No, and I believe this was the first call with the opposition leaders that was earlier on in the occupation.
Is that right?
I'm not sure if it was the first or the second.
I'm pretty sure it was the first.
Now, we talked about the engagement proposal that was prepared as a framework for negotiation.
And I understand that Deputy Minister Stewart on February 11th advised that that engagement proposal had been prepared and validated with the OPP expert, Marcel Baudin.
Do you recall that?
I know he worked with somebody in the OPP.
And in fact...
Chief Slowly had earlier on also requested an interlocutor be used as a method of achieving a breakthrough.
You're aware of that?
I'm not sure.
And one of the rationales, and I'll just finish off this point, if I may, Commissioner, one of the rationales that you mentioned in your witness statement for why the engagement proposal went nowhere was what happened in Windsor.
And when I looked at the record, there's an indication in a document that we'd seen previously.
it's pbnsc.can402963.
Deputy Minister Stewart said that the reason the letter from Ontario Minister Jones didn't have much effect was owing to the late hour of the day in which it was given out and the enforcement starting the next morning.
You wouldn't have any reason to disagree with that, would you?
I do believe that's what the Deputy Minister said.
Right.
And after the engagement proposal was discarded as an idea, nobody went back to the police or Marcel Beaudin and said, hey, what else should we do?
Is that fair?
It wasn't discarded as an idea.
There was nothing to act on.
I do think those are different things.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Those are my questions.
Thank you.
If I could now ask for the CCLA please.
Good afternoon.
My name is Kara Zwiebel.
I'm counsel for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
Mr. Commissioner, my friend Mr. Honor from the Democracy Fund has given me five of his minutes, and he's going to limit his questioning to five minutes.
So I have 15 now, by my count.
Okay.
So I want to ask you about a theme that my friend Mr. Michikowski was just asking you about around sort of this question about The proper relationship between police and government.
And I would imagine that as both, you know, employees in the Prime Minister's office and obviously residents of Ottawa, it might be difficult to sort of separate the fact that you're looking at what's going on, both from a policy perspective, but also living through it.
You live here.
I don't.
Oh, you don't live here.
I live in Toronto.
Oh, okay.
So some of you live here.
Now, I know you have access to briefings from the RCMP.
I'm not sure if you get briefings or sit in on briefings from any of the intelligence bodies.
But I think we've seen some documents that also sort of...
Show you doing a bit of your own, you know, getting information, as we all do, from media sources, from social media.
So, for example, can we pull up SSM NSC CAN 402940?
And I think, Ms. Telford, this is a text message between you and the Prime Minister.
I think it's a tweet from a reporter.
An admission police, this is February 2nd, an admission police cannot control the situation.
This is a complete mess and textbook mismanagement.
They allowed the truckers to set up shop next to the PMO in West Block and where tens of thousands of people live and now realize the problem they helped create.
Unbelievable.
And I think this is the Prime Minister writing to you.
The PPS, I think that's Parliamentary Protective Service.
Our CMP guy in caucus said as much.
He said he didn't want to let them onto Wellington, but it wasn't his call.
So are you sharing this with the Prime Minister as just sort of, here's what's happening on the ground, here's what people are talking about, here's what's in the zeitgeist?
In a manner of speaking, you'll find throughout a lot of the texts that I submitted.
A lot of different tweets, as well as information from the Prime Minister's executive assistant who lived right in Centre Town and was keeping him posted on what it was like on the ground.
Okay.
And then can we also pull up SSM CAN 407729?
nine.
I forget that they're also here, but I can't really see them.
So over here, again, I think, can we just scroll down just a little bit?
So this is Evan Solomon.
Just walked through the protest on Parliament Hill tonight, and I spoke to two guys carrying fuel containers past police.
The police chief said protesters would not be allowed to bring fuel to, I think that's trucks, but these two said police aren't bothering them at all, no enforcement.
And I think this is you.
Sorry, can we scroll up?
Was this one of your texts?
No, it's not, actually.
So what you can't see there is that also in this chat is the prime minister's executive assistant or was executive assistant at that time.
Okay.
And so that's an example of what I was just describing.
Okay.
And can we scroll down?
So saw this type of thing happen when I left Hill.
Gas coming in and cops were just standing, looking at them walk by.
We've heard evidence in the commission that at some point protesters started filling jerry cans with water as a bit of a tactic so that it looked like the police weren't doing anything about gas being brought in, but in fact it was water.
Is that something that you were aware of or have you heard about that during the course of the commission?
I've heard a number of things to do with the jerry cans over the course of the commission.
Is it fair to say that what you were seeing, both on social media and in the media and on the ground here in Ottawa as residents, or part-time residents maybe, weren't sort of matching what you were hearing from the police, from briefings from the RCMP?
I think especially in the early days, there were a lot of different numbers coming from what we were seeing on social media, what we were seeing reported from mainstream media who were, you know, walking around and doing their own counts, as well as what was coming in from different law enforcement agencies.
Okay.
Can we go to, Mr. Klaus notes, SSM NSC CAN 402941?
It's page 11 of the PDF.
And if you can make it just a bit bigger.
So I think I don't think we have a date on this, although I think based on where it's placed in the document.
We're maybe, I think it's after the note that you identified, Mr. Clow, as being on February 9th.
This is February 10th.
Okay.
So February 10th.
So this is, I think, is this the three of you?
Or is this the other JB?
It's the other JB.
Okay.
The other JB and the Prime Minister.
KT will call Clark next.
You're not being briefed by Intel officials.
Someone on U.S. side who can give best advice.
Surely someone in system, someone played out plan, and I'm not sure what RCMP, Intel, Lucky, anyone else to report on this.
So what is this?
Can you tell me what this note means, not being briefed by Intel officials?
Yes.
So that morning, so this was February 10th, there were a series of meetings that led up to the incident response group that happened later that day.
So right before this note...
A meeting, a discussion happened between the Prime Minister and several ministers, including Minister Mendicino, Minister Blair, where he was updated and went around the table, full discussion of the current situation.
This discussion was a debrief of the Prime Minister and a few of us staff members coming out of that meeting.
So you see some next steps.
Believe the comment about Intel was a reflection that we were absolutely getting a lot of information, particularly from the National Security Intelligence Advisor, but there was an interest in more of it.
And there was still an incomplete picture when you looked at the various blockades and demonstrations across the country and what was behind it and what was going into it and where was it going.
Okay, so not a lack of intelligence, but not as much as you wanted.
Is that fair?
Right.
Okay.
In your witness summary, and I can bring it up if you'd like, but there's the lessons learned sort of section or a place where you're pointing out some, you know, areas that you hoped the commission could comment on.
And one of the things you say there, the panel suggested that the commission provide further guidance on the independence of police operations.
Broadhurst, so that's the other one who's not here, sorry, underscored that the government understands the importance of not dictating police operations, and at times it was difficult to know whether the police and the government shared the same ultimate goal.
The government should be able to discuss a desired outcome, for example, to clear the occupation and blockades and share concerns about the consequences that the country would face if that does not happen.
did you during the time that the Blockades and occupation were happening.
Did you have doubts about whether the police planned to clear them?
I don't think it's a question of whether they planned to clear them, but that there were multiple occasions where we were being briefed that things were going to happen that then didn't happen.
So we found ourselves three weeks in with things continuing to escalate.
Okay, but you would say that you did believe that police and government had the same ultimate goal.
There were frustrations and maybe mismatches in terms of timing, but was there a doubt in your mind that the police, like, I know it sounds silly, but did you think that the police's plan was to just allow this to continue?
No, the concern was, do they have the tools, or is there more that could be done by the federal government provinces?
Could we support them more?
That was the discussion and concern.
Okay.
And once the Emergencies Act was invoked, I've talked to this about some other witnesses, and I think they've agreed that although government can't direct police, one of the things that a public order emergency does is communicate very clearly to police that there are certain things that the government wants to happen, and they're giving them the tools to make those things happen.
Do you agree with that?
So in this case, the government wants the flow of funds to stop going to people that are funding the blockades.
And it's giving the RCMP and financial institutions the tools to make that happen.
The government, the cabinet, the prime minister wanted the unlawful activity and the threats to stop.
And the Emergencies Act and the measures in it was the best assessment of...
What could be provided as additional tools to help the unlawful activities stop?
Okay.
And once the Emergencies Act was in place and the orders were in place, I know the IRG continued to meet, and there was some tracking of the measures, of how the measures were working, right?
There was an attempt to collect that information so that you could see what impact the orders were having.
Is that fair?
Yes.
Okay.
Thank you.
One other area I want to talk about, I understood your evidence on the engagement proposal and why that didn't go further, because there wasn't sort of a tangible plan there.
I just wanted to ask you about a different aspect of this.
And if we can pull up...
Sorry, it's...
I hope I have it here.
Yeah, SSM NSC CAN 50292.
This is one of the, I think it's an SSE meeting notes.
Sorry, let's just take a look.
Yes, SSE, and it's from February 3rd.
And if we can scroll, it would be probably, I think it's page 8. And Mr. Clerk, you might need to, oh, you don't have to rotate it.
But if you can just move it over, yeah.
So I just want to ask about these.
Some of these creative alternatives on this side of the screen.
One is Le Grand Débat.
Modeling after 2019 Yellow Jackets protests in France, the country launched a national listening exercise.
Cross-country meetings, French president attended some.
Did that suggestion make it to the IRG or to cabinet?
Was that something that was explored beyond, I guess, beyond this sheet of paper?
And sorry, what date was this from?
February 3rd, I believe.
February 3rd.
So that was the first meeting of that cabinet committee.
My assessment of this document is that it's a public service document, which is fairly normal for these discussions, to fuel a discussion.
I would say on that, I can't speak to what was discussed or whether that was addressed in the meeting, but I would say in February there was a very specific, urgent need.
And my view is that that would not have been appropriate to address that urgent national challenge that we were facing right in that moment.
Okay.
And just, if we can scroll down just a little bit, the last item there, communications shift.
Encourage shift in communication.
We hear you.
We understand.
Go home.
Question, does this legitimize protest?
What about that discussion?
Was there a discussion about, and I know we saw a text, a message that was communicated, I think, through Minister LeBlanc from Jason Kenney, saying, you know, something about calling them all Nazis didn't help.
I think here what someone's getting at is maybe we should tone down the rhetoric and try to, even if we're not going to meet with them, try to...
In a communications way, tone it down.
Was that something that was discussed or considered?
There were constantly discussions like that.
Is there something we could say, something we could do?
Just like there were lots of discussions about the engagement proposals, but the wall we would always hit is the assessment was, given the demands of the convoy, which was to drop all the mandates, we weren't going to get very far with this kind of...
This kind of suggestion.
Okay.
Last thing I'm going to ask, I know I'm almost out of time.
I just want to ask about, and if we could pull up, sorry, Mr. Klaus notes one last time.
I think the clerk probably knows that.
And here it's page 23. It's not almost, by the way.
Oh, okay.
May I get one last one in?
Thank you.
So we're at February 14th and maybe we can make it just a little bigger.
Thank you.
So February 14th, 12:30 p.m.
I'm gonna look on my paper here.
P.m. taking I think that's maybe time.
Taking time now then it says he'll depart from the hill.
To head to West Block.
Okay.
And then Jagmeet Singh, opposition leader, can do it whenever.
The part that I'm interested in is this discussion about Quebec.
And, you know, I gather that I'm not sure this is, I guess this is after the first minister's meeting.
So we know that Quebec is a bit concerned about the application of the Emergencies Act in the province.
And it says...
Without saying we're sending RCMP to Quebec.
PM called Legault.
No intention to do anything in Quebec other than Ottawa.
Pablo, I assume that's Minister Rodriguez, called to Legault.
Military isn't a part of this.
Not looking to take over.
Won't go to Quebec border.
So it seems if you don't need it, then we're not going there.
This was a...
Staff debrief following the FMM on that day ahead of the Prime Minister's conversations with the opposition leaders.
So at this time, the consideration was considering continuing around the Emergencies Act.
So this was a quick discussion of staff of things we should be considering or doing coming out of the FMM, given the Premier of Quebec communicated so clearly that he didn't want the act applied in Quebec.
That's what that discussion reflects.
It was a very brief staff discussion.
Okay.
It wasn't ever communicated to the Premier of Quebec that the act wouldn't apply there or that the police wouldn't take action there because that's not something that would have been possible given what the orders said.
Right.
The act did apply there.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you for answering my questions.
Thank you, Mr. Commissioner.
Okay.
Thank you.
The Democracy Fund, JCCF, please.
Good evening.
My name is Alan Hauner.
I'm a lawyer from the Democracy Fund.
I just have a few questions for you, and they're directed to anyone at the panel.
You were asked about political commentary from the United States.
If I recall correctly, that was something that President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau spoke about.
Yes.
Okay.
And I just want to ask you about some of the political commentary, which happened after the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and after the meeting with President Biden, which I understand to be February 11th.
The phone call was February 11th, yes.
Pardon me?
Phone call was February 11th.
Yes, thank you.
Can we pull up pb.can6069 underscore REL.0001?
This is a letter from Premier Kenney, Premier Mo, and 16 governors from the United States of America.
And I believe it's dated February the 16th.
And my friends, and correct me if I misconstrue this letter, but the signatories here are expressing concern over vaccine requirements and the impacts of those requirements on the North American supply chain, the cost of living.
And the availability of essential products for people from both countries.
My question for you is, how does a letter like this get before the Prime Minister?
Could I see the signatories?
Yes, of course.
So in general, when correspondence comes in, especially at this moment, on this issue, given the Emergency Act was in place, February 16th, Letters get to him sometimes through a normal course.
That may take some time.
Other times, letters are elevated more urgently.
And this letter here, I assume it's important because we've got 16 governors from the United States.
It's our biggest trading partner, our best ally.
Notably, it's signed by the governor of Montana.
Of course, Montana is right across from Kutz, Alberta.
Did this letter get to the Prime Minister?
Do you know?
So I can't recall if this got to the Prime Minister, but I would say the views expressed match the views that we heard from a lot of people, but the government did not agree with that.
Okay, thank you.
Can we pull up pb.can.401045-rel.0001?
And the document we're going to see here, it's not dated, but...
The top words are congressional reaction, and it contains a number of tweets, including a tweet from Matt Rosendale.
He's a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Montana.
And this is supposed to be after the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and he says that he led 63 Republican colleagues in support of the truckers protesting COVID-19 mandates and urging President Joe Biden to work with Canada.
To lift the mandates on essential travel at the border.
Do you know if this was ever brought to the Prime Minister's attention?
This specifically?
I can't speak to that.
I don't know if it was brought to his attention.
Okay, one more document.
SSM.nsc.can50172.
And this is when it comes up.
I got the number right.
Yes, so this is an email from Deputy Jacques Adam to Deputy Minister David Morrison.
I'm not sure if they're both from Global Affairs Canada, but the email sets out U.S. political reactions to Canadian measures.
It's dated February the 16th.
And if we can just look at item number two here, we see that there are different comments.
One of the comments here is...
Canadian trucker is being fired and now targeted as terrorist by your woke government.
And it is attributed to a U.S. House of Representatives member.
And there are other remarks from other politicians which are somewhat uncomplimentary towards our country.
Do you know if this document was ever brought to the Prime Minister's attention?
I don't believe this document would.
This looks like an internal document at the Department of Trade.
But, Prime Minister, we were all well aware that these views were being expressed by a certain segment in US politics.
Okay.
Thank you very much.
Those are my questions.
Thank you.
Next, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, please.
Thank you.
My name is Jenani Shen-McGunathan and I am counsel for the Canadian Constitution Foundation and my questions are for Ms. Telford.
So we know that there were three IRG meetings that took place on February the 10th, the 12th and the 13th.
And while cabinet ministers were present at this meeting, at these meetings, it's not a meeting of the entire cabinet, right?
Correct.
And we do know that there was a meeting with the entire cabinet that took place the evening of February the 13th, right?
That's right.
And the following morning on February the 14th, there was a meeting with the first ministers.
And then later that day on February the 14th, or at some point that day, there was a decision made to declare the public order emergency.
Later that day, that's right.
Thank you.
And so I just have a few questions about cabinet meetings.
Does the Prime Minister's Office advise the Prime Minister on the agendas for cabinet meetings?
Usually the Privy Council Office, led by the Clerk, puts forward an agenda for a cabinet meeting and actually usually...
John's team here will go back and forth with them a bit on it in case there's any insight, particularly into time management of the meeting, but they will present that to the Prime Minister.
Okay, so it's fair to say, though, that you have some input.
The Prime Minister's office has some input into the agenda.
Input would be fair, yes.
All right.
And who ultimately decides the agenda at cabinet meetings?
Like, who has the final say?
The Prime Minister.
And does the Prime Minister's office advise the Prime Minister on which non-cabinet officials attend cabinet meetings?
No, not really.
I mean, the clerk of the Privy Council would be the person who would advise and...
We're advised on officials in terms of who should attend, and then there's usually a few from the Prime Minister's office who attend, and the Prime Minister agrees with who those are.
Okay, so does the Prime Minister's office offer any input in terms of suggestions of who could or who should attend these meetings that are non-Cabinet members?
Only of our own team.
Okay.
And who ultimately decides which non-cabinet officials attend these cabinet meetings?
I think I just said that, but I'll try again.
So the clerk in terms of officials on the public service side, and ultimately it's the prime minister who decides who he welcomes in the cabinet room, but the clerk will advise and...
And sign off on a list from an official's perspective.
And then there's usually some representatives from the Prime Minister's office.
Okay.
But the Prime Minister, I take it, has the final say of who attends?
Of course.
All right.
And does the Prime Minister's office advise the Prime Minister on what information should be shared at these cabinet meetings?
Again, the Privy Council office.
And so it's the clerk who will...
And her teams who will put together the information.
And we may have some supplemental or additional information from a political perspective that we may provide in a briefing ahead of Cabinet.
But the documents come from the public service side.
Okay, so leaving aside the physical documents that are coming in, it's fair to say, though, that the Prime Minister's Office has some input into the kinds of documents that are provided at the Cabinet meetings.
Yes, I mean, we'll provide feedback.
Sometimes they'll ask us from the public service side what our thoughts are around, especially as it relates to meeting flow and what might be most useful, that kind of thing, for the ministers.
Okay, and I take it it's fair to say that it's, again, the prime minister who's got the ultimate say of the information that's provided at these cabinet meetings?
Yes.
And in terms of documents at the cabinet meetings, I take it you also have...
The Prime Minister's office also provides some input into the kinds of documents.
I think we've already touched on this, the documents as well.
Yes.
Okay.
And so in terms of the February 13th meeting, the evening meeting with the full cabinet, who sort of set the agenda for the cabinet meeting?
Same process as I just described.
Okay, and did the Prime Minister's Office offer any input for the agenda for that February 13th evening Cabinet meeting?
So things were moving very quickly that day, and we were on the brief ahead of the Cabinet meeting, and so I imagine we probably added some thoughts in terms of how the meeting might flow, but that would have been the extent of it that day.
Okay, and what about the information that was provided at that February 13th evening cabinet meeting?
Did the Prime Minister's office offer any input on the information that would be provided?
I'm not even sure if we would have at that time.
I don't recall doing that, no.
Okay, what about the documents at that February 13th evening meeting?
Did the Prime Minister's office offer any input?
Sorry, I'm not sure I know the difference between the last one and this one.
I thought we were just answering about documents.
So same answer.
So information, it could be things that are said vocally out loud to the cabinet members versus physical documents that are provided to the cabinet members.
So as I said a couple of times in the briefing ahead of cabinet, we will provide our insight, our advice, our best advice and feedback.
In terms of how the flow might work and just ways of approaching different things.
But that's really the extent of our involvement in preparation for the meeting, whether it be documents or information.
And again, I guess it's fair to say for that February 13th evening meeting, it's the Prime Minister who had the ultimate say over the agenda, the information that was provided and the documents that were shared.
Is that fair?
Yes.
And just my last few questions I have.
We've heard about this assessment from CSIS, an assessment that ultimately concluded that the situation did not amount to threats to the security of Canada as set out in the CSIS Act.
Was this a threat assessment provided to the cabinet members at the February 13th evening meeting with the full cabinet?
I am not sure whether it was part of the documents.
I think the deputy clerk and clerk, I think their testimony was on this.
They led that process, so I would refer to their testimony.
I don't recall anything more than that.
But none of you know?
Okay.
What about an alternative threat assessment?
You know, a threat assessment that's different from the CSIS threat assessment.
Was that provided?
Was any such assessment provided to the cabinet members at that evening, February 13th meeting with the entire cabinet?
So all of these assessments were provided to the incident report, the IRG, earlier that day.
And then that was really rolled up and reported out to cabinet in the evening.
Okay, so, but the members of the IRG meeting, you know, it's not the entire cabinet.
Right?
Correct.
And so I'm just asking about the actual, was there a document with a threat assessment that's different from the CSIS threat assessment?
Was there a document that was shared at that February 13th evening meeting?
I can speak to that.
And can either of the other two of you?
I'd refer back to the Deputy Clerk's testimony.
Okay.
And we've heard about this legal opinion that was created that talked about how the definition of threats to the security of Canada and the CSIS Act has a different interpretation when applied to the Emergencies Act.
I'm not asking about the content of that opinion.
I just want to know, do you know if that legal opinion had been provided at that February 13th evening meeting with the entire cabinet?
Thank you.
I'm not sure what we can say.
I'm not sure what we can say on that.
I think there's some cabinet confidence issues there.
So I don't see anyone objecting and I think someone can correct me if I'm wrong, but the input that's provided to cabinet in terms of what information was provided is not covered by cabinet privilege.
I'm not asking about what was discussed or the deliberations.
I just want to know if that legal opinion had been provided.
At that February 13th evening meeting with the entire Cabinet.
Commissioner, it's Brian Gover on behalf of the Government of Canada.
The Government of Canada maintains the objection that you heard yesterday from Government Council then about solicitor-client privilege pertaining to the information provided by Attorney General, Minister of Justice Lamedi.
Okay, so I think we're stuck on that.
And just so I'm clear, that objection means I can't ask whether that opinion had been provided during that meeting?
Sorry, I can't see anyone.
Yeah, I'm just waiting for an answer.
Brian Gover, you may not, consistent with maintaining the objection, inquire into the content.
Of any advice given by the Minister of Justice and Attorney General.
And the question is, does that include the fact of the opinion or not?
My friend may inquire as to whether an opinion was expressed.
The fact of the opinion, not the content.
So to be clear, I was never asking about the content of the opinion.
Was the fact of this, you know, was this legal opinion, the fact that this legal opinion existed and whatever its content may have been, shared at that February 13th evening meeting with the full cabinet?
I'm not sure.
From a document perspective, there were certainly discussions around it.
Okay, and the final question I have is, there was this Ottawa Police Service POU plan.
Was that plan shared to the Cabinet members at that February 13th evening meeting with the entire Cabinet?
We had heard at various points In the lead up to the indication that there were plans or action was about to be taken in various situations, including Ottawa.
Absolutely, that was part of the discussion and consideration.
The fact that action had not been taken up until that point, and the assessment was that was because law enforcement did not have the tools they needed.
Okay, but was that plan, the document...
The plan, you know, there's a document that's called the OPSPOU.
Was that document shared with the February 13th cabinet members?
It's hard to comment because we don't have the document.
I'm not sure what document that is.
Sure.
I'm not sure how much time I have left permission below.
I can just bring up the document just to ask them if this was something that was shared during that meeting.
You're over time, so if you want to put up the document, that'll be...
Yeah, that's fine.
I'm not sure they understand what it is.
A POU plan is a public order unit, which are the police officers who go in on a police public order process.
So I can't speak to that specific, but Cabinet was definitely aware that on February 13th, when they were discussing...
The situation in Ottawa was worse than it had been at any point.
And the threats of violence, the actual violence, was terrifying.
That's what was discussed at Cabinet.
Okay, but you can't say whether a document had been shared during that meeting.
And I just want to be fair to the witness.
Sorry.
It's P-B-N-S-C-C-A-N 407734.
That's the document.
and I'll just ask them if this is something they've recognized and whether they know if it was shared.
Just on that page.
So I take it from shaking your head now we need an audible answer.
That's not familiar to me.
I've never seen this.
Okay, thank you very much.
Those are all my questions.
Next is the City of Ottawa, please.
Good evening.
My name is Alyssa Tompkins.
I'm a Council for the City of Ottawa.
I just want to ask you a couple questions about some comments in the witness summary.
So Mr. Clerk, if we could bring up the witness summary, it's WTS however many zeros, 83.
And if we could go down to page four, bottom of page four.
So I'll start by directing my questions to Mr. Clow because these comments are attributed to him, but obviously the others can add in.
So there's a comment here at Mr. Clow noted that the city was clearly struggling to manage the occupation and that this was reflected in most conversations and media reporting and reaction from residents.
So Mr. Clow, did you understand that The response to the protest was a police-led operation?
Absolutely, I understand that.
Okay, so you understand that the city cannot direct law enforcement as to operational matters?
When I said city there, I believe I would have meant the city holistically.
So all of it, the sum of its parts, clearly the situation in Ottawa was out of control, and that's what I was referring to.
Okay, so in terms though of it, you understand it was managed by the police though?
Which reports into the City of Ottawa.
I mean, all of this is, the different levels are relevant here.
Okay, so the police, you understand there's a police services board that is independent from the city?
So I've answered the question.
My comment was that the City of Ottawa was out of control, especially in the downtown.
Okay.
Okay, I just wanted to be sure that you weren't suggesting the city itself could be doing more.
I'm not speaking to...
I wasn't here, or am I now speaking to specifics of the arrangement within the City of Ottawa?
Okay, and if we could just go to the next page, please.
And again, it's you, Mr. Clough, referring to a meeting you had.
And I think if we were to actually look at the footnote, I won't take you to it, but I think it's at February 3rd.
And it's noted that one issue identified in the notes of this meeting was the fact that the request from Ottawa did not come from Ontario.
And it was unclear whether provincial resources had first been exhausted.
So this is prior to the letter from the mayor.
So we're in the first week.
And I just...
Commissioner Lucky and Minister Blair have both testified that it's in fact very common for the city of OPS to reach out to the RCMP directly because of Ottawa's status as the national capital.
I just want to make sure you don't have any evidence to contradict them that this was actually quite a normal process at this point.
I don't have any evidence of that effect and I stand by what appears here.
Okay, thank you.
Those are my questions.
Okay, thank you.
next is the ottawa coalition please Good evening.
My name is Christine Johnson.
I'm counsel for the Ottawa Coalition of Residents and Businesses.
I want to ask you a few questions this evening about your experiences in Ottawa and also some of the experiences you were hearing of staff members that you work with in Ottawa.
And I understand, Mr. Broadhead, that you live in Toronto and we're not here for the Ottawa protests.
So I will direct my questions.
That's clear.
Okay.
So I will direct these questions to Ms. Telford and to Mr. Clough.
So you were both here living in Ottawa during the demonstrations?
Yes.
And in the witness statement, and to save time, I don't think we need to pull it up unless I hear otherwise from you, but your colleague, Mr. Broadhurst, noted that at least some protesters engaged immediately in illegal activity by blocking and occupying city streets, defacing public property, harassing residents.
Was this also your observation that this kind of illegal activity was occurring as early as the first weekend in Ottawa?
Yes.
And Mr. Clerk, I will ask for you to pull up a document, SSM.can.00007737.
And as this is coming up, I can advise that this is a set of text messages.
That we see at the top, it says Katie and JT.
I presume this is a text between you, Ms. Tilford, and our Prime Minister.
And I believe it doesn't show at the top of this document, but the way this document's labeled in our disclosure, our discovery database, it also says it involved Phil Pru, who I believe is the executive assistant or was the executive assistant to the Prime Minister.
And you've testified here tonight that Mr. Pru lives in Centre Town?
Yes, yes.
And we see here, you can see faintly at the top, these are texts shared on February 2nd.
And it looks like, Ms. Telford, you share a tweet from City Councillor Catherine McKinney describing the situation in Centre Town.
And then we see this blue box below.
And I'm not sure, do you recall if this was from Mr. Prue or was this from our Prime Minister?
That would be Phil Prue.
Okay.
And he says, yep, the honking wheel spinning went on late again last night.
It was all day yesterday again.
I put earplugs in at times during the day yesterday to make it less aggressive.
It has already started again this morning.
They have some periods of calm now, but then start non-stop for a period of time.
It is enough to absolutely drive you absolutely nuts.
The truck horns especially, they sound like they are right in the middle of your home.
So would you agree that this statement seems to convey that for residents living in the heart of Centre Town, the honking could be heard very loudly inside homes and not just on the street?
That's certainly what he was conveying.
And did you hear about this experience from other residents as well through your conversations with city councillors, citizens groups?
Yes, we were hearing it from local members of parliament and they were hearing it from many other constituents.
We were hearing it from staff.
We were hearing it from members of parliament who were in town.
It was...
And everyone was, from a staff perspective, was having to work from home during this period, or almost everyone was.
So there were a few essential staff able to go in, but both because we couldn't access our offices because of the occupation, as well as Omicron, we were working virtually during this whole period.
Right, and on that point, I think I saw in the witness statement that there was actually a direction at some point that staff should work from home for their safety, and it was mentioned that this was never done before.
It was never communicated that staff should work from home for their safety before.
That was unusual and significant.
That's right, for a demonstration.
Staff had been advised to work from home during COVID pandemic at different periods, but for a demonstration, as far as we can recall, we've never had to send a notice like that saying stay away.
And in terms of safety concerns regarding staff, we saw in your witness statement there was mention of a particular incident where a convoy participant threw coffee at a pregnant staff member.
Do you recall that incident?
That's right.
And do you know if this incident was reported to police at all?
I'm not sure.
Are you aware that there were incidents of threatening and assaulting?
Assault of nature going on that were not, in fact, always reported to police at this time and where they were.
Residents were not always receiving feedback that these complaints are being followed up on.
Yes.
Okay.
Those are all my questions for you this evening.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Next is the Ontario Provincial Police.
Good evening, it's Chris Diana, counsel to the OPP.
And Commissioner, I can advise that I've been gifted five additional minutes from the Windsor Police Service, for which I'm very grateful.
I may not need that time, but I appreciate the gift, and if I need it, I will use it.
Yeah, and if you don't use it, they don't get it back.
Won't be my concern at that point.
I wanted to ask about Nipper Wash.
You mentioned Nipper Wash in your witness summary, and as far as who answers this, it doesn't really matter, whoever has knowledge.
I was going to bring up your witness summary, but I don't think that's necessary.
You referenced that there was a verbal briefing.
You said that in your evidence-in-chief.
And I wanted to ask you about that verbal briefing.
What did that come out of?
Why was there a verbal?
What do you mean?
Yes.
So, as I think I mentioned earlier today, it was actually something that I raised.
Very early on in all of this, perhaps because I worked at Queen's Park once upon a time, but it was something I was just very conscious of and wanted to make sure we knew where all the lines exactly were.
And the deputy clerk, who's a former deputy minister of justice, made sure to get us information on that.
Right.
And the reason I wanted to ask was because, I mean, that's very preemptive of you, but were there any concerns that you had about comments that had been made by anybody at that time?
No, it was literally day one that I asked these questions.
And when you say day one, like the first day, the day of the arrival of the protesters, approximately?
It might have even been just before.
It was the very first meeting I was in talking about these kinds of things and hearing about potential how the police were going to be handling things.
Were any members of Cabinet asking you, how far can we go as far as police?
Because understandably, there was some frustration that we've heard about police enforcement.
No.
If anything, everyone was extraordinarily cautious on that front.
All right.
Mr. Clerk, if you can bring up PB.CAN.1870.
Mr. Cloud, these are some text messages I believe that you were involved with, so I'd like to ask you because I think you may have some specific knowledge.
All right, and it's not entirely clear from the text themselves, although the description of the text in the database suggests that this may have been a text exchange with Chief of Staff Mike Jones, who I believe is the Chief of Staff for Minister Mendicino?
Yes, that's from Mike Jones to me.
Okay, and so I wanted to ask, and that's what I thought based on the content.
So this is an email exchange you had, sorry, a text exchange with Mike Jones on February 6, 240.
Do you remember this exchange?
I do, yes.
All right, and so Mike Jones writes, he expresses some concern about OPS enforcement and concern for the safety of the PM.
I assume he's referencing the Prime Minister there?
Yes.
And he says he wants to go out and say that OPS needs to get control over the situation, and if they need more from OPP, they should make that clear, but they should get working on removals.
Within the next 24 hours.
Now, I take it that when he says he wants to go out, he's referring to Minister Mendicino.
Is that correct?
I would assume so.
Do you know if Minister Mendicino or anybody else actually went to OPS with that kind of direction to try to remove people within the next 24 hours?
So, first thing I'll say is these updates came in.
There was a lot happening.
There were a lot of conversations going on.
So, you'll note I didn't...
Even have a chance to reply to this, or I didn't reply to it, but I would have received the update.
My recollection is that did not happen, what is proposed here, and I don't want to read too much into the specifics of what is written here, but absolutely, as Katie said, we were always incredibly careful and aware that politicians don't direct the police.
Right.
And when you say we were aware, are you talking about the prime minister's office or are you talking about all of cabinet?
Both.
This was discussed and mentioned on various occasions throughout the convoy.
And is it because people were expressing concerns about police enforcement?
It was because this clearly policing was a central part of this.
And a lot of us are aware of issues from the past.
Everyone here is aware of IPRWASH, for example.
So we were highly sensitive right out of the gate that politicians do not instruct the Yes, and I would have asked, to be clear, I would have asked Minister Mendicino, but we didn't get this in time for me to do that, which is why I'm trying to understand from you whether or not Minister Mendicino or anybody else actually contacted anyone from Ottawa Police Service or even the RCMP to say...
We want people gone.
We want them gone quickly.
I have no knowledge of that.
Okay, but you would agree.
But I don't believe that happened, no.
Certainly.
And it sounds like the Prime Minister's office was very aware of Epperwash, which is great.
And I'm sure you would agree that if that had been communicated to the police service, that would have been inappropriate, correct?
If what is written here is a faithful and accurate description of what appears to be written here.
I do agree direction should not be given to the police by politicians.
And you would have no reason to doubt that, you know, what his chief of staff was saying, you wouldn't have a reason to believe that wasn't what he was hearing from his own minister, correct?
I have no reason to believe that, but I can't and shouldn't speak to that.
I do actually believe this text message was put to Minister Mendocino this week, but that really would be a question for him.
Do you know, when you talked about the briefing that was done on IPRWASH, Were the ministers involved in that briefing?
I mean, it sounds like there were a number of discussions, but Ms. Telford, you mentioned there was one briefing in particular at the beginning.
Was that a cabinet briefing?
No, that was something we received on our request, but it was something reinforced on numerous occasions throughout the process.
And again, when you say we, I just want to make sure I drill down on who are we?
Are they the politicians, their staff members?
Who is we?
So we, within Prime Minister's office who are here, we were briefed early on on our request, but then the principles were repeated on numerous occasions, certainly through IRGs and through other discussions throughout.
I don't think there was anyone that I worked with who was not conscious of the need to be cautious.
Correct.
Thank you.
And just to confirm, for the record, it was put to Minister Mendocino.
We all make mistakes.
So, Council for former Chief Sloley please.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Panel, Tom Curry for the former Chief of the Ottawa Police Service, Chief Slowly.
Just a few questions, if I can, please.
These events have been described by probably everyone who has appeared here as unprecedented, and certainly in your collective tenure in the Prime Minister's office, that would be true.
Yes.
And the circumstances were also...
I think she slowly described the volatile nature of the events here in Ottawa and you share that view.
Yes.
I think he may have described or others have described a tinderbox risk of violence present always, it seemed, and growing.
Yes, and we saw it ourselves as well as had it reported to us, the threat of violence both to people and property.
It was significant throughout and escalating.
And although it may not have been clear at the outset of the demonstration and the protest, but as it evolved, did you come to understand that there were significant limitations on the ability of the Ottawa Police Service to manage it with its own resources?
It certainly seemed that way.
And were the briefings that you received always through RCMP officials, briefings on police operations or updates, did they come from Commissioner Luckey?
Yes, though also the Deputy Minister of Public Safety, the NSIA, would have different parts to the briefs as well.
Understood.
So just a couple of things, if I can get, and I think they're Mr. Clow's notes.
So could we please just get your help with a couple of things?
This is for our registrar, SSM NSCCAN 2941, please.
Thank you.
Thank you.
If that, yeah, thank you.
Just on the, on, just a little larger.
Thank you.
So this is just to situate you.
Do you see February 3rd, 1115?
Yes.
And you've looked at some of these notes previously.
It says it looks like OPS won't move.
Weeks, not days.
Weekend reinforcements problem.
Behind the scenes, two deferential.
I want to just confirm this as need bad cop.
You've got to...
To use the tools you have, whether to change public message is different.
Those are references.
Do you know what those are references to?
Is that reference to the idea that at that time, at least, someone was expressing the view that police were taking a standoffish position with the demonstrators?
I think that's a fair assessment of that comment.
Just in the second one, a second set of comments, just as to this, RCMP, does it say through OPS under bus at caucus?
Yes.
Yes, it does.
How do we get right people on the path to driving somewhere?
Any way to get, well, and you talked about that earlier.
Is that, to the extent that you can recall this, is that an indication that the RCMP was...
Was pointing to OPS as the police of jurisdiction responsible for doing this and that they weren't taking sufficient action at that time?
Or can you help us?
That's me recounting from a national caucus meeting that, I believe that morning, where there was a presentation given to caucus members.
The large part of the discussion was actually around personal security and security of the building.
There were significant concerns for members of parliament being able to get from the airport to downtown, let alone from downtown up on the hill, and actually getting off the hill was a bigger problem than even getting on it.
But also as part of that, it was discussed, or caucus were told, that if it had been up to anyone other than the OPS, that they would not have allowed the trucks onto Wellington, and that they had given that advice and it wasn't taken.
Did you learn at that time from anyone in that briefing from RCMP that some RCMP officials had seen and reviewed and approved the OPS plan in advance of the protest?
They did not get into that level of detail with Congress.
Could I ask you just to look, please, at page 7 of this record, Mr. Registrar, just for a couple of other things.
No, of course, I've got to...
check it out where it was.
About the middle of the page, you see there's a reference to, this is obviously a cabinet, it looks like it might be a cabinet committee briefing, but it says about the middle, 250 RCMP assisting, some holding back for surge.
There's reference to the Ambassador Bridge up above.
Did you come to realize as this evolved that there was some misunderstanding about how many RCMP officers were made available to OPS at any given time, matter of shift counting and the like?
Did you learn that?
There definitely appeared to be some confusion over several days about the numbers.
Right.
I think the mayor of the city of Ottawa had said that...
What was represented as the number that had been deployed to Ottawa was smaller than the number that had been represented to the public and so on.
I believe you said that, yes.
And then just a couple of other lines, if I may.
OPS trying to reduce violence are taking some steps.
And then there's a likening to Ottawa's strategy to...
Is that a reference to the idea that there was a plan in place to try to dismantle the occupation, but that it was going to require significant additional resources?
It could be, but I don't know that.
This was an update from the NSIA to the Prime Minister that Sunday evening on February 6th.
Right.
And then, Mr. Commissioner, your indulgence for one more question with Mr. Klaus Benefit, page 12, if you don't mind.
Of course, you were following this as this page is coming up.
You were following this across the country.
These, as you've described, Ambassador Bridge and the like.
If you look at, if you scroll down a little bit, Mr. Registrar, there we go.
I just want your help with this.
Brenda, of course, you've described as Commissioner Luckey.
Certain references to RCMP Ottawa team headed to Windsor, York, Waterloo, OPP.
Plan is to remove by morning because auto workers counter-protest.
We've heard some evidence about that.
Mayor wanted to remove Chief, so then Chief sent letters.
Is that a reference to letters that were received by, I think, either the Prime Minister or Minister Blair requesting resources from RCMP?
Do you recall that?
I'm not sure what that final line refers to, but this looks like a discussion of an update we received.
This was February 10th at the IRG that Windsor action was anticipated the very next day.
Thank you.
And then the last, very last thing.
On February 5th, Chief Slowly noted at a Police Services Board meeting that, quote, something has changed in our democratic fabric, and we do not have the legislation or the resources to manage such situations.
We do not have the justice system framework or the needed coordination between all levels of government to predictably manage these demonstrations going forward.
You described a threat to national security.
Do you share those views?
Largely, yes.
Thank you.
No other questions for you.
Thank you.
Okay, next is the City of Windsor.
Good evening, Graham Reader for the City of Windsor.
We have no...
Questions we've ceded our time to the Government of Canada.
Okay.
Government of Saskatchewan, please.
Good evening, panel.
My name is Mike Morris, and I'm counsel for the Government of Saskatchewan.
Mr. Broadhead, just at the outset, I want to make something clear.
At the first Minister's meeting, Premier Moe expressed the view that the Emergencies Act was not wanted and not needed in Saskatchewan, correct?
I believe he also said the six items sounded reasonable.
Maybe sounded reasonable, but wouldn't be perceived that way.
Is that fair?
I think that's fair, yes.
And certainly did not want the Act to apply to Saskatchewan, correct?
I think that was clear from the Premier, yes.
Okay, thank you.
I'd like us to take a look at a document.
So I'm going to ask the clerk to pull up.
SSM CAN 406920.
And while we're waiting, I'll let you know that this is an email from Ms. Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council, to actually everyone on this panel at 8:24 a.m. on February 14th.
So we can see there 8:24 a.m. from Ms. Charette.
Good morning, all.
There's something that's privileged, but then she is detailing work that seems to be going on.
Other products in train, FMM script with Q's and A's, comms, news release, and BG, which I expect means background, decision note for PM.
Then at the end, she says others still in the machine.
Mr. Broadhead, when she says others still in the machine, can we take that as they were being worked on at that time?
It's not a very common phrase.
I don't totally know what she was referring to here.
Well, she says only one I have seen is FMM script.
And then she says others still in the machine.
So I take it that means those are in progress.
Would that be fair?
I don't really want to speculate on what the Clerk of the Privy Council was thinking about that.
Okay.
If we could go on to a different document then.
Well, before we do, does anyone else have a view on that that they're able to express?
Are you specifically asking others still in the machine or just the whole statement?
Yes, absolutely.
It could mean a number of things.
I don't think we can speculate.
Okay.
I'm going to ask the clerk to pull up the email that was referred to by Council for Alberta before.
It's SSMCAN402665.
And this is the email thread that was entitled Presser Tomorrow.
Presser Tomorrow.
And I'd like us to go down to the bottom of the second page of the PDF.
Right there is good.
We can see an email from a person named Vanessa at the PMO to a number of other people including others at the PMO indicating presser tracking for 4 p.m.
This is not to be shared publicly until FMM over and PM updated itinerary is available or is out please.
And her email there, of course, is at 11:05, I believe, if we just go up.
11:05 a.m.
So my understanding is the First Minister's meeting would have been going on at that point.
Ms. Telford, was the purpose in delaying the announcement of the press conference so that the premiers would not be offended?
No.
There was a lot of work happening concurrently at the time and to be ready for whatever scenarios and whatever decision ultimately the prime minister came to.
And so Vanessa, who you named there, who's our excellent deputy director of communications, was making sure that all those tracks were heading in the right direction.
At any point, things could have been stopped and things could have changed just as they were.
Okay.
I'd like us to go to the middle of the first page of this PDF, and it'll be an email at 1.43pm.
There it is.
From Vanessa again to David Taylor and others stating, we just finished speech prep with PM.
Alex is editing his remarks and will be able to share with this group as soon as he is done.
I gather at this point in time, 1.43pm on the 14th, the Prime Minister has already rehearsed his speech that he's going to be giving at 4.30pm.
Is that fair?
Speech prep is our shorthand for going through his remarks, which we would have definitely returned to again that afternoon.
And so that means they would have done a once-through with him on what things could look like.
Okay.
He wasn't rehearsing two versions of a speech, was he?
One where he was announcing the invocation of the Emergency Act and another where he wasn't.
Was he?
To be clear, I wouldn't call it rehearsing.
The words speech prep literally mean preparing a speech.
And so they would have been discussing what would have been going into the content and whether he was comfortable with where the drafts were at at this point.
Okay.
We heard evidence from the Clerk of the Privy Council some time ago and her evidence was that the decision note was sent from the PCO to the PMO at 3:41 pm on February 14th.
We can pull up a document if you need me to or I can just ask you to take my word for it.
And if that's the case, are you familiar with the decision note?
I gather you've likely seen it before.
Is that fair?
We're familiar with the decision note.
Okay.
A fairly lengthy document with a number of appendices, correct?
Yes.
And if it was received at 3.41 p.m., do we know at what time it would have been?
Returned with the Prime Minister's initials to the PCO?
It was at some point between receipt and when the Prime Minister made the announcement.
Okay, so it's obviously sometime before 4:30 in the afternoon then, correct?
That would not have given the Prime Minister much, if any, time to have read all of that material.
Would you agree with me?
Well, a couple of comments.
One, he did read the note.
Two, the start time of the press conference may be a bit absurd to dig in on the minutes, but the minutes are important here.
I don't know that it started precisely at 4.30.
I think there might have been some delay there.
But after it was received, the Prime Minister did review the note, signed the note, made the announcement.
And that signing of the note came after the FMM, came after the opposition leader consultation, and that was the Prime Minister.
Making the decision there before he announced it.
I'm going to ask each of you a very similar question.
Ms. Telford, what I'd like to know is when you found out that the Prime Minister would be announcing the invocation of the Emergencies Act at the 4.30pm press conference.
And how?
He and I would have been discussing the possibility throughout the day.
Until he signed the decision note, there was...
There was nothing confirmed.
Okay.
Do we know when the announcement went out to the press gallery that the conference was going to be held at 4.30 p.m.?
I don't know what time that went out.
Mr. Clough?
I believe it went out earlier that afternoon, around or shortly after 1 o 'clock.
And the decision at that point to issue the itinerary was to notify media the Prime Minister would have something to say.
And it is absolutely possible that the Prime Minister could have decided not to proceed down this path before he addressed the media that afternoon.
And it happens not infrequently on an issue that scenarios are planned, a track may be on a certain track, but a decision, a different decision is taken at a certain point, even at the last minute.
So no, the decision was not taken until shortly before it was announced to media.
Okay, I'll explore that just briefly if I can.
Let's call the Emergencies Act Track 1 and let's call whatever the other decision could have been Track 2. Was there material prepared for a Track 2 presentation at 4:30 p.m.?
If a decision was taken not to invoke the Emergency Act on that day, the remarks and announcement would have been changed.
You're well over your time, so you're going to have to wrap up.
Last question, but was there any draft material prepared in the event that the decision was to not invoke the Emergencies Act?
I'm not sure if there was.
You would be familiar if there was, though, wouldn't you?
But my point is, even if there wasn't a draft, this can be done quite quickly in order to redraft materials.
And it has happened before in different issues.
We got very nimble during the pandemic, where we were putting out advisories for things where we weren't sure what the content was going to be a couple of hours later.
And that's what you need to do in times of crisis.
I appreciate the entire panel answering my questions.
Thank you very much.
Okay, now we go to the Government of Canada, please.
Thank you, Commissioner.
And my name is Brian Gover.
I'm one of the lawyers for the Government of Canada.
And good evening, Ms. Telford, Mr. Clough, and Mr. Broadhead.
By my count, Commissioner, I believe I have 20 minutes.
With the kind donation from the City of Windsor, I hope to be substantially less than that.
That'll probably be a happy event for a lot of people, but don't feel on my account.
Well, let's see how we do.
First of all, the Order in Council sets out terms of reference directing the Commissioner to examine, to the extent relevant, the impact, role, and sources of misinformation and disinformation.
Including the use of social media.
And by misinformation, we understand that to mean unknowingly or unintentionally spreading false, inaccurate or misleading information.
We understand disinformation to be deliberately and intentionally spreading false, inaccurate or misleading information.
Ms. Telford, at any point during the convoy occupations and blockades, did you become aware of any...
Misinformation or disinformation that was affecting the situation?
I became aware of a lot of both misinformation and disinformation over the course of the occupation and the blockades.
To name just a few examples, even leading into the first weekend, one was that this was even solely a trucker.
And let alone the fact that it was solely about federal vaccine mandates.
It was quite clear from very early on and even leading into the first weekend, we knew from the Canadian Truckers Alliance, as was mentioned earlier.
And also from data that we had that over 90% of truckers were vaccinated.
We also knew that a lot of the mandates that were being talked about were ones that were actually responsibilities and put in place or imposed by provincial-level governments or even other levels of governments or jurisdictions, whether they be school boards or cities.
And then, of course, there's a lot of misinformation, disinformation around vaccines themselves.
And then personally, in terms of our office, we dealt with a number of different instances.
Our official photographer was drawn into a conspiracy theory, unfortunately, where he was being alleged to be out taking a picture of some...
Hate-filled flags.
And he, at the time, was actually in isolation with COVID himself.
There was no chance he was doing that.
We began trying to correct that.
He began receiving death threats during that period.
There was also a fake letter distributed amongst people within the occupation that was signed.
Allegedly, it was not signed by us, but it was signed using my name and the Prime Minister's name.
And suggesting ways in which we might agree to some kind of, I don't even know what, but this fake letter was corrected and actually made international news.
It was corrected on CNN at the time.
And then I personally was actually asked to stay away for quite some time from the downtown core because it started on Telegram and then moved on to other social media channels.
A story that was created that I was going to create a false flag operation and have a horse killed and then blame it on the occupiers.
So there were concerns for my security during that period as well.
And I understand, Commissioner, that the fake letter that has been alluded to by Ms. Telford can be found at pb.can.401821.
And the false flag regarding Ms. Telford and the horse is in evidence as pb.can.00001822.
Ms. Telford, how was misinformation and disinformation conveyed or distributed in the course of the weeks that we're concerned with here?
We saw it being conveyed and distributed in multiple different ways.
The letter, for example, was both screenshots of it floating around on social media, but it was actually being distributed in hard copy.
And the other things, as I mentioned, were moving from different social media platforms from one to the other.
But it was also, we were seeing people doing podcasts and YouTube videos and different things where they were disseminating this information as well.
Moving to my second area, Mr. Clout.
You've testified in response to a question from Commission Council about communications with Juan Gonzalez, whom you described as a member of President Biden's national security team, on February 9th.
And, Commissioner, we have in evidence, and I won't take the witness to it, the text message at And Mr. Clough, in addition to the text exchange, did you have a telephone call with Mr. Gonzalez that you recall?
I believe we did speak at one point.
And when was that in relation to February 9th?
I can't remember the precise date, but the first exchange, there was an email exchange, a text exchange with him on the 9th.
Interactions continued until about the 15th or 16th.
Thank you.
The third area relates to federal-provincial-territorial consultations and the First Minister's meeting, and we have the readout at ssm.nsc.can50625, and perhaps I'll ask our registrar to display
that, please.
And perhaps I'll ask if we could go to the second page.
And you'll recall that my friend for the province of Alberta said that Premier Kenney was clear that the Emergencies Act was not required in Alberta and referred to the situation in Coots having been addressed.
Can anyone on the panel assist me with this question?
Do you know where...
The additional RCMP resources came from to address the situation in Coutts, which we've heard was the subject of a police operation in the early morning hours of February 14th.
Mr. Broadhead?
My understanding is that there was a contingent sent from British Columbia to assist at Coutts.
And in fact, at the second page, we have Premier Horgan from British Columbia.
Indicating that his only concern is that the measures would be implemented by RCMP and BC, which are already fully taxed.
Not sure where you're going to find the people.
We've already sent an RCMP contingent east.
Is that what you're referring to in that respect?
Yeah.
I would just add, what this illustrates is an example of something we heard from officials in the lead up to February 14th and the invocation, which was...
Yes, there was some progress in certain places and certain blockades, but the progress was done with the help of additional resources in certain cases.
So in BC, for example, it was definitely concerning that Alberta was cleared with BC.
Not concerning, it's good that Alberta progress was made with additional resources, but BC was facing its own problems.
There were arrests at the Pacific Highway.
There was a military-style vehicle there when convoy activity happened in B.C. So part of the concern across the country was, was there enough resources across the board to handle all of the pop-ups that were happening?
And we were seeing in increasing numbers that weekend.
And Mr. Clough, in the course of your evidence already, you've referred to this phenomenon of stretching police resources.
Is that correct?
Yes.
And this was in the context, this conversation, of declaring a public order emergency, which itself involves a national emergency.
Is that right?
Yes.
Now, you were taken, by the way, to page three and what Premier Kenney said.
And if my friend from Alberta said this, I didn't hear it, but she referred to, if we look down...
Page three would be problematic to declare emergency today and referred to what we see following the next point, starting with invoking what they see as martial law.
What we didn't hear was what's in between two sentences.
Folks at the core of this movement are not rational.
They are prone to conspiracy theories.
Have I read that correctly?
Yes.
And was that, to the best of your recollection, a feature of what Premier Kenney said during the First Minister's meeting?
Yes.
Can I add to that just the other one that I think struck me in his comments was this line at the bottom of the page that I don't quibble using the Emergencies Act.
Which is particularly interesting considering his previous roles with the federal government in that kind of national.
And I think I certainly interpreted that as an important distinction between what he felt was needed in Alberta versus what...
We knew we were looking at from a national perspective and having to take into consideration the stretched resources, the movement, the differing situations across the country.
And Mr. Broadhead, to elaborate, if you would, when you refer to Premier Kenney's previous roles with the federal government, to what are you referring?
I believe he was Minister of National Defence in particular, so that was the one I was thinking of.
Great.
And we're moving right along to the fourth area.
Could we take that down, Mr. Registrar?
And could we go to and display SSM.can.407721?
And I come to this panel because I believe this was alluded to by my friend Mr. Miller on behalf of the convoy organizers.
Assistance in interpreting what I understand to be a note written by Alex Jarek.
First of all, I've probably dispronounced his name, but did you know who that is?
Yes, he's part of the Issues Management Parliamentary Affairs team with a focus on Parliament.
So a member of the PMO?
Yes.
And if we look at this...
Maybe we could scroll down just a couple of lines.
Perfect.
Thank you.
And we see something attributed to someone named Rayal.
Do you see that, Mr. Cloud?
Yes, that's Rayal Lewis.
He's the Chief of Staff to the Government House Leader.
And this says, confident we'll win those votes, need to do more in Senate to win that vote.
Have I read that correctly?
That looks correct.
How does that accord with your recollection of the discussion surrounding the pending Senate vote around the time when revocation of the declaration...
Sir, I'm going to object.
He's misrepresenting the document.
That document is, in fact, prior to the invocation.
No, it doesn't have a date on it.
It talks about the announcement on the Monday, and it's quite clear that that record is, in fact, from prior to invocation, and it actually says in it that there's no...
I'm not sure what the date is.
Is there a date on the document?
No, the DOJ never provided a date, unfortunately.
Yeah, well, I'm just looking at it.
So it's unclear what the date is, I guess, is what you're saying.
It does say that it's before a Monday where there's an announcement.
And, of course, the announcement of the Emergencies Act was on Monday the 14th on Valentine's Day.
If I may continue, Commissioner, what I'm endeavouring to do is to ask for the panel's interpretation of this so that we clarify these areas.
Okay.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
And this continues, and this is a part that I believe Mr. Miller had referred to in his cross-examination earlier, or his commentary earlier.
NES spoke with NSIA and Jody Thomas, and then there's an arrow.
S2 of CSIS Act, colon violence not met.
New arrow, wonder if need full 30 days if Ottawa cleared, then speech Monday morning.
Are you able to help us, Mr. Clough, understand the context of this?
First of all, what does NES stand for?
So this whole page, reviewing it, this does look like it's well after.
It could be a full week after the invocation of the Act.
Clearly, they're talking about the parliamentary process.
So the first part, Real Lewis saying he's confident when the votes need to do more in the Senate.
So I addressed that in an earlier question that I know of no reason to believe the Senate was not going to endorse that.
And as I said earlier, the chief of staff to the government leader in the Senate was doing vote counting, and I believe that evidence was presented here, and they were quite confident they would win that vote.
The rest of the page looks like more parliamentary process.
And an individual caucus member.
Who is that individual caucus member?
Nate Erskine-Smith.
And whose view did you understand to be that Section 2 of the CSIS Act had not been met?
It's hard to say.
I don't know what this refers to, but there was a public discussion going on about this very fact, as there is in this commission, but I don't know specifically what this refers to in this note.
All right, well.
We've done our best to interpret that, and thank you for that.
Sir, sorry.
Well, I understand, but we don't have a date for that document.
Yeah, and he gave his best evidence, and there's not much we can do.
So please, let Council proceed.
Thank you.
The second-to-last area has to do with the process that the three of you observed, Surrounding the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
And how would you describe the process surrounding the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the evolution of the thinking of the Government of Canada on that issue?
Perhaps I'll ask you first, Ms. Telford.
I think the process was...
We tried to be methodical about it.
It was very step-by-step, and it was seeking advice every step of the way from multiple parts of government.
It was taking in a lot of different inputs, and it was doing a lot of consultation throughout.
And so actually, even in processes that often go on much longer than this one could afford to, I would say this is actually one of the more robust processes I've seen.
Thank you.
Mr. Clown, same question for you.
Your description of the process?
I would absolutely agree with that.
I don't know that I have much to add, other than as has been covered at some length here today and at this Commission, especially in those days leading up to the invocation from the IRG, and even before that, the steps that were taken were careful, considered, and there were a number of conversations involving a number of senior officials and ministers, ultimately.
Leading to the cabinet meeting on the Sunday night.
So to me, it was very methodical.
Thank you.
And Mr. Broadhead?
The only thing I would add to what I obviously agree with my two colleagues, I think watching the incident response group, and I say this as a policy wonk and somebody who spends a lot of time with cabinet committees and these processes, it really helped.
Facilitate the type of discussion.
Having the experts, the civil servants, the key folks at the table, all the ministers there, that type of open discussion, it just meant we could move at a speed that the other institutions, the other parts of our apparatus don't allow.
And so I think the combination of that and all the external advice we were getting, I think it was...
I agree that it was a very kind of methodical process.
And I think the Prime Minister was very clear about how methodical it needed to be, both before and after.
So I'll leave it there.
And finally, our last question is to you, Ms. Telford.
If anyone were to suggest that the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was politically motivated?
What would you say to that?
It was absolutely not.
It was driven at its core in every meeting the Prime Minister began and ended and it was discussed throughout.
How do we ensure the safety and security of Canadians?
And there wasn't time, space or desire to talk about anything else.
Thank you very much.
Those are my questions.
Okay, thank you.
Any re-examination?
No re-examination, Commissioner.
Okay, well thank you very much for sharing, for not sharing your thoughts, responding to questions and coming to testify.
Much appreciated and it's appreciated that you accommodated the late hour.
I'm sure it's not...
Your first late nights, but it is appreciated.
So, I think we'll take a short break to move to the next witness, and we'll take to reorganize and so on.
So we'll take five or ten minutes for a break.
The Commission is in recess.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The Commission has reconvened.
Okay, we have another witness.
Who's Commissioned Council on this?
Commissioner Jean-Simon Turnholtz for the Commission.
The witness is Kenneth.
Weatherhill, he's on Zoom, and this is just for a cross-examination by some of the parties on his witness statement.
So Commission Council don't have questions in chief.
Okay, Mr. Weatherhill, can you hear me?
Yes, sir, I can.
Thank you.
Okay, so we'll now swear you if that's agreeable.
Yes, sir, it is, and I have a Bible in my right hand.
Okay.
Mr. Weatherill, for the record, please state your full name and spell it out.
My name is Kenneth Alexander Weatherill, K-E-N-N-E-T-H, Alexander, A-L-E-X-A-N-D-E-R, Weatherill, W-E-A-T-H-E-R-I-L-L.
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 God?
I so swear.
Thank you.
Okay, so I don't have a list this time, but I understand if Council for former Chief Slowly has some questions.
Council had discussed that I would actually start on behalf of the City, Mr. Commissioner, if that's acceptable.
Normally it's the opposite, but go ahead.
Thank you.
Good evening, Mr. Weatherhill.
Thank you for making yourself available for us on seemingly quite short notice.
My name is Alyssa Tompkins.
I'm counsel for the City of Ottawa in this case.
So I just have a couple of issues that I want to discuss with you flowing from your witness summary.
So one of the issues you raise in there is the training that's available.
Two members of the Police Services Board.
So I just wanted to bring up the Police Services Act.
If we can go to document COM, I think it's 50819.
Thank you.
Thank you.
What would you like to do?
Oh, sorry.
Page 28 of that.
So if we can just scroll down, Mr. Clerk, when we get to...
I just wanted the witness...
Keep scrolling, please.
So this starts with Section 31, which is titled Responsibilities of the Boards.
And if we can keep scrolling down, if we get to Subsection 5, please.
There we go.
So the training of board members and the act provides the board shall ensure that its members undergo any training that the Solicitor General may provide or require.
Now, my understanding from your witness summary is that, in fact, the Solicitor General does not provide formal training or has chosen not to.
Is that correct?
My evidence is that the police service advisors deliver orientation training.
There's also a package that is provided to every board member who becomes a member of the board.
But when I think of training, I think of lesson plans, I think of course training standards, and I think of that.
That is not the formal training that is under, that is delivered currently in the Police Services Act.
There is ongoing training on a number of different areas that may come up that the advisors are able to help support the board.
Or help support the board to receive training in a number of different areas, such as an example of a board asking for training in harassment and discrimination and biases.
Could they get support in identifying those kinds of training plans?
Okay, so maybe it'll be easier if we just go to your witness summary, if we can go to WTS.
Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, eight, zero.
However many zeros, sorry.
always i'm sure If we can just go to page two.
Scroll down, please.
Oh, sorry, scroll up.
Okay, so the paragraph that starts with, the work of the liaison unit includes providing orientation materials for new police services board member.
That said, Solzhen does not provide formal training.
So that's what you were referring to?
Yes, ma 'am, it is.
Okay.
And so then I want to go down to the top of page three.
In this case, so as I understand your evidence, but in fact, in this case, the board did request training from the advisor, Ms. Gray, on their responsibilities during this type of incident.
And because it was during an event, you took the position that advisors were not to provide this training in the middle of an incident.
Do I understand correctly?
Yes, so the context of this is we were a number of days into an ongoing incident in Ottawa and the board approached the advisor and asked for training related to board governance.
The Ottawa Police Services Board is a very experienced board.
They've had significant orientation, they have significant experience and a large number of assets available to them.
So the position that I took in the direction I gave was in the middle of an incident is not the time to remove a board from their role and their function of governance and set them down and to provide additional training on top of what they've received and the policies that they are governing themselves by.
What I did ask was that the advisor asked for particular questions.
From the board and specifically the executive director and then we would help facilitate those questions with the appropriate answers and assist them in the interpretation of the legislation, their roles and their functions and their responsibilities.
Okay, and I'm not gonna go to that document because I took the Deputy Solicitor General to it and we'll...
The Commission already has the evidence as to what information was provided to the Board in terms of what authorities were available to them under the Act, and more importantly what was not provided.
I note here that it says...
Part of the rationale for not agreeing to provide training during the incident is that the OPSB had its own resources, significant experience through former board members on city council.
Now, I just want to be clear on that.
Surely you agree that the board and municipal council are separate and distinct entities?
Yes, that's correct.
Okay, and they're...
They're legally separate as a matter of law.
They are legally separate as a matter of law.
What I meant by that and what I continue to stand by is a board has a responsibility and the ability to tap into resources of experience that can help them guide through particular scenarios and situations without disclosing the intimate details of those situations and scenarios.
That forms part of responsible governance.
Now, you'll agree, though, that of these other resources available, other than the advisors of the Solicitor General, only one of those being the advisors of the Solicitor General has a statutory duty to ensure that the board is providing adequate and effective policing in the municipality.
So if I understand your question correctly, you're asking me if there is only one person that's listed in that entire group that has a statutory responsibility to provide adequate and effective policing?
Yes.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm just reading what's there just so you can see what I'm wondering what I'm doing.
So the board members themselves have a responsibility.
So that's one entity.
Legal counsel to the board has a responsibility to help guide the board.
And the police service advisors have a responsibility to ensure adequate and effective delivery of policing is provided through Part Section 3, Sub 2 of the Police Services Act.
But that doesn't preclude...
The board from having their own responsibilities under Section 4 and their duties under Section 31. And nobody's disputing that.
What I'm referring to is when the board could go outside itself and seek assistance, as they were doing in this case, they were seeking assistance from another body that has that duty.
and in fact the duty includes a duty to ensure that the board is doing its job.
Thank you.
Can you rephrase that question, please?
I'm not quite sure I'm understanding exactly what the question is.
And maybe it's just a matter of argument.
When they have these other resources that they can go to, and that's fine and good, but it's in the statute, there's one entity that's supervising the board.
And I put to Mr. DiTomaso, and I'll put it in argument, that the Supreme Court of Canada has said that the Solicitor General has a duty to ensure that the board provides adequate and effective police services in the municipality.
So the other entities, former members, they're resources, but they're not resources that have themselves a statutory duty.
So I'm not familiar with any case that the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled on.
With respect to responsibilities of the delivery of adequate and effective policing in the Act, there's actually three areas that I'm familiar with.
The first one is the Board and their responsibility to provide adequate and effective policing.
The role of the Minister is set out in Section 3.2 and the Municipal Council.
to provide the necessary funding in order to deliver upon the services which can arguably connect it back into adequate and effective policing.
And obviously the municipality's other role is in appointing or removing as the case may be members of the board.
The municipal members of the board not the provincial members of the board.
Thank you.
I have no further questions and thank you for your time this evening.
Thank you.
okay so next is former chief slowly's council Commissioner, Mr. Weatherhill, Tom Curry for Chief Slowly.
I understand you were interviewed by Commission Council November 17th.
Yes, that's correct.
And can you just tell the Commissioner, how long were you with the Commission Council for that interview?
Ninety-four minutes in total.
And did you have access to the information, to any information during the interview, or was it...
Well, I'll just stop there.
Did you have access to information during the interview?
I did, sir.
Including the film's...
Or recordings, at least, of the Police Services Board and Council meetings concerning the Ottawa Police Services Board?
No, sir, I did not have access to any video films.
Okay.
Now, just in terms of the chain of command at the Solicitor General's Ministry, I understand that you are the, of course, you're the Inspector General of Policing and you have a direct report to the Deputy Solicitor General.
Is that true?
Yes, sir.
That's correct.
And then reporting to you is the manager of police services liaison or the police services liaison unit, correct?
That's correct.
And then below that office are the police services advisors of whom you have spoken to my friend.
Is that right?
Yes, sir.
And the idea is that the police services advisors attend...
Some are all Police Services Board meetings.
That's correct.
In this case, the Ottawa Police Services Board was in the hands of Ms. Gray, Lindsay Gray, for the time up until February 14th.
Have I got that?
I don't accept the statement that they were in the hands of.
Ms. Gray was providing professional guidance, fulfilling her duty as a police service advisor for the Minister of the Solicitor General.
I meant that only in the sense that she was the advisor for the Ottawa Police Services Board.
And when did you first learn that the Ottawa Police Services Board was dealing with the convoy protest?
It would have been a good question.
It would have been late January into early February.
There were board meetings taking place in January when the intelligence started to surface to indicate that there was going to be large-scale demonstrations across the country and in particular in Ontario and that there was believed to be a large group of individuals that may be moving towards Ottawa.
And I was aware of that information in late January.
Right.
Now, you yourself, though, did not, if I understand it, you did not observe a Police Services Board meeting of the Ottawa Police Services Board in real time at that initial phase, at least.
Is that true?
There were meetings in January, no, but there were meetings in February where the link was provided for the general public to watch the open session, and I observed portions of that.
Okay.
And at no time during any of the meetings that you observed or that Ms. Gray observed, was any comment made either to the Police Services Board or to the Chief?
Is that correct?
Comment made by who, sir?
Well, sorry, by you or Ms. Gray, I should have said.
No, I had no direct contact with any members of the board nor the chief during that entire time.
They wouldn't have even known you were on the line.
Is that true?
Yes, I would believe that to be true.
And Ms. Gray, who they would have been aware was present, also to your observation and from reports that she gave you, did not...
speak up at any of the meetings to either the board or any of the police services members who are making presentations?
questions.
I believe that to be factual during the meetings.
I know there were conversations outside of the meetings, but during the meetings, I believe that to be accurate.
And even whether inside or outside of the meeting, to the extent that there was some question about what information was being provided to the board by members of the police service, Or alternatively, what questions were being asked by the board?
Neither Ms. Gray nor you provided any guidance to the board or the service.
Is that true?
No, that's not true, sir.
Okay.
Ms. Gray provided a document that addressed questions, provided answers for the board, and was having conversations with the executive director in relation to those questions and answers.
All right.
Fair enough.
And do I understand it that Ms. Gray and you, in your role, were content with the guidance that she provided at that time?
Yes, sir, it was.
And can I just have you confirm, just please, Mr. Registrar, ONT-1115.
Just confirm for the Commissioner, if you would, Mr. Weatherill.
Now, I hope you can see this.
Are you able to see a document if it's projected on your screen?
I should be able to, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.
Do you recognize that as a briefing note provided by Ms. Gray that summarizes the information that she recorded as having occurred?
During the February 5th meeting?
Yes, sir, I do.
And can I just ask you to just scroll down, Mr. Registrar?
Thank you.
Just stop there.
Second bullet point, you see Chair Deans stated the meeting was called to ask the Chief one question.
In accordance with the mandate for the delivery of adequate and effective policing, she asked the chief if he believes he is still able to provide, given the fluid nature of the occupation, adequate and effective policing to the city, and then asked, if not, what resources from the board or assistance can be provided.
Do you recall that that was the single-stated purpose of that meeting?
I don't know if that is the single-stated purpose.
But that is certainly the way Chair Deans reflected that on bullet number two.
And during that, I'm not going to have the time to, that was a very lengthy meeting, do you recall?
Yes, sir, I do.
And do you recall that during that meeting, Chief Slowly and I believe his senior command staff gave extensive information to the board about the status of the protest in the city of Ottawa?
And described plans and enforcement activities.
Do you recall that?
What I will say is that on bullet four, the chief committed to lay out where the service is at and what their plan is.
And then if we scroll down on that same document, the chief and the deputy discuss how many arrests they've made, how they deploy some of their officers in and around the city.
What's missing there is, I think, the crux to what the question from the chair was, is my recollection of that meeting, was around what is happening with the demonstrators, what is happening from the dismantling, where is the dismantling plan, and how are we going to return that piece of the city back to the residents?
Well, I mean, you can keep going.
It's a five-page document.
I don't have the time, unfortunately.
But there is a great deal of discussion between this chief and his senior command and the board about the fact that there are inadequate resources within the Ottawa Police Service to dismantle the protest.
Isn't that true?
At that time, what I can say is the chief makes mention of the number of officers that have been seconded and supporting from the RCMP, from the OPP, and I believe he mentioned seven other municipal services.
So this is on the 5th of December, or of February rather, and I believe the initial demonstration began the weekend prior to that.
Yes, but am I correct that certainly you as a member of the, especially with your experience in police services, this is not a mystery.
On February 5th, you knew and everyone knew that the Ottawa Police Service was overwhelmed by the protesters and had no adequate resources themselves.
To dismantle the protest.
Isn't that true?
I'm aware that there were resources on the ground supporting the Ottawa Police Service.
I have never been provided operational plans.
I have never seen operational plans and I've never seen what the true state of affairs were other than what was truly reported through the media and what I have received through the briefings.
Did you ask for them?
It's not my place to ask for operational plans, so you don't oversee operations.
Okay, well, what I just need to understand then, Mr. Weatherill, is this.
You didn't ask for them, but you've never seen them.
You're not criticizing anybody for failing to provide them then.
You're just telling the commissioner you didn't see them.
I don't think I was ever asked that question, and that's not what my summary of my evidence was.
My evidence was around the issue I think if we go to page 4 of my summary, the third paragraph down, that I found it concerning that when there were questions being asked around the removal of the demonstrators in front of Capitol Hill.
That there was no operational plan that was being able to be discussed.
And in this document you have up here displayed on the in-camera portion, it speaks to that there will be future tents work to put together an operational plan.
That was the substance of the conversations that I shared with Council as part of my summary.
Maybe we're saying the same thing.
You understood at that time, and the board understood at that time, that the Ottawa Police Service had a maintenance plan and various details about operations, but that dismantling would require the influx of significant resources.
Didn't you know that?
And the board knew that?
I don't know what the board was thinking, sir.
Okay.
I can't answer that.
Okay.
Did you attend the in-camera portion?
No, sorry, I did not.
Okay, so then I'll leave that for a moment.
A couple of quick things.
Just confirm for the commissioner, please, that this chief and his command team briefed the board January 26th in advance of the protest, and you watched that briefing after the fact.
Is that true?
I don't.
If you could produce that briefing document, I'd be able to confirm whether I saw it or not.
I can't in the time I have.
So, to your recollection, did you not ever see the briefing that was given to the board on the 26th of January in advance of the convoy protest?
I'm sorry, I don't know that.
I can't answer that question.
Thank you.
Did you see the briefings of February 1st?
In addition to February, you've told us about the 5th.
Did you watch the February 1st?
7th, 11th, and 15th briefings.
I don't have the dates of those briefings.
I know that I was in contact with the police service advisor during and after those briefings.
All right, fair enough.
So you don't know whether you attended those other ones?
Is that fair?
I can say that it would be unlikely that I would have attended the entire briefing for our meetings because they were happening at a number of last minute meetings that were being called and they're happening Really quick turnarounds at irregular hours Sure.
And understanding, you told the commissioner this, this was a critical incident and briefings during critical incidents are the exception to a board, correct?
That's not my experience, sir, no.
Okay.
Well, just real quick on the Morden report, the Ministry of the Solicitor General has never endorsed the Morden report.
Is that correct?
There's been no formal endorsement of the Morden report, but there was an all-chiefs memo that was distributed to all chiefs of police and deputy service boards.
And the direction within that...
Morden Report was that board policies were to be reviewed and updated to align with the recommendations of the Morden Report.
Well, yes, fair.
But the ministry hasn't endorsed nor the precise language that you've used or taken a position on the Morden Report.
That's correct.
Okay.
Last thing, please.
Last area.
Confidentiality is a significant value in police services boards, correct?
Yes, sir.
A chief would not be wrong to keep in mind in briefing a board issues about leaks of information and be guided by not sharing every detail of operational plans if the board is a leaky institution.
Is that fair?
So I would expect that if a chief suspected that there was a leaky board or challenges with leaking information, then the necessary steps would have been taken by the chief with the chair and /or with OCPC to address that situation.
Did you know that one member of the board had attended this convoy protest and had made donations?
I'm not familiar that a member attended or provided donations.
I recall hearing at the board meetings that a number of board members had observed the demonstration.
All right.
So you were unaware that there was one board member thought to be supportive of the convoy protest?
That's right.
No information to confirm or deny that.
Thank you.
You agree that if that were true, a board chair and a chief...
Would be well advised to be careful about information they share about operations.
Isn't that fair?
Yes, sir.
Chief always needs to consider the integrity of the investigation, the safety of the officers, the safety of the, in this case, the demonstrators and the broader community.
And if that were to be compromised, then yes, that would be the responsible thing for Chief to do.
Thank you, Mr. Weatherill.
I don't have any other questions for you this evening.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Okay, I believe there's the coalition wants to...
I'm sorry.
You're okay.
Yes, coalition.
I put the mask.
I didn't recognize you.
Here I am.
Good evening.
My name is Emily Tammen.
I'm one of the lawyers acting for the Ottawa Coalition of Residents and Businesses, and I just have a very short time with you this evening, so just a couple of quick questions.
And thank you for being here this evening.
I want to just pick up where my friend, Counsel for Former Chief Slowly, left off, and that is in relation to your understanding of what happened at the February 5th Police Services Board meeting.
And as I understand it, and I think you've accepted that a key issue at that meeting was whether or not OPS was still providing adequate and effective policing, right?
Yes, ma 'am.
And that's a pretty big question for a Police Services Board to be asking in a crisis, isn't it?
Yes, it is.
Because it implies that they may be...
Asking themselves whether they need to consider their options, maybe under Section 9 of the Police Services Act, right?
That and the fact that I think it's a responsible thing to do for a board to regularly ask the chief and ask themselves, are we in fact delivering adequate and effective policing and are we satisfying our legislative responsibility in the Police Services Act?
Right.
I mean, that's something that should be done regularly, but certainly if that question is being asked in a crisis, it's not a routine question.
It's being asked because there are concerns as to whether adequate and effective police services are being delivered at that time.
Wouldn't you agree with that?
Yes, I would agree that throughout a major event that it would be appropriate for a board to ask those questions of itself and of their chief.
And you've said that the chief didn't give a direct answer on that question.
Right?
That's correct.
But you've also said that the Chief acknowledged his inability to address the demonstration in Ottawa while maintaining his ability to manage public safety in the city more broadly, his inability to do that, right?
The Chief said out that he did have the ability.
To provide, from my interpretation of what I heard in the board meeting and in review of the board summary from the advisor, that the chief did demonstrate verbally to the board how adequate and effective policing was being delivered throughout the city.
He was asking for additional support with respect to the demonstrators in the demonstration area.
Okay, so I just want to be clear, though, because in the summary of your evidence, and it may well be that it's an error, so this is an opportunity to correct that, but on the third page in the last paragraph, just after the footnote four, it says his understanding was that Chief Slowly had acknowledged his inability to address the demonstration in Ottawa while maintaining his ability to manage a public safety in the city more broadly.
Is that your understanding, or is that a mistake?
That's right.
He's saying he needs help with the demonstration, but he is able to maintain public safety in the rest of the city.
Right.
Sorry, but he can't do both.
He can't deal with the demonstration and maintain public safety.
He's maintaining public safety.
Yes.
That's what he's informing the Board of, that he needs support with the demonstration.
So I guess what I'd like to understand is why it is that you didn't feel that this was information that the Deputy Solicitor General should be briefed on.
That you have a crisis in Ottawa, you have a board asking questions about the efficacy and adequacy of policing on February 5th.
You either don't have a direct question or you have an indication from the Chief that there's a real problem in Ottawa.
You didn't think that was something that the Deputy Solicitor General should be briefed on?
So, if we turn to Section 9, and you mentioned it just a little bit earlier, if we turn to Section 9, Sub-6, the Municipal Chief of Police, who is in the opinion of an emergency, exists in the Municipality, may request that the Commissioner have the entire provincial police give assistance.
That had taken place.
So, there was a direct line between the Ottawa Police Service and the Chief to the Commissioner, and I was very much aware.
That there was support on the ground by the Ontario Provincial Police to support the demonstration and the dismantling of that demonstration at that time.
But there hadn't been a request for the OPP to come in and assume control of policing in Ottawa, right?
That's correct.
Right.
And if the board was asking those questions, would you agree that the reason in the context of a crisis they'd be asking that question is because They're asking themselves whether they might have a duty under the legislation to themselves go to the OPP and request that the service take over in Ottawa.
So there'd be a number of necessary steps that would need to take place if the board had lost confidence in their chief.
And if the board were to reach out to the commissioner and ask for policing services, then the chief would need to be removed.
And that did not happen.
The chief had made the request.
The board appeared to be satisfied with that request and was aware that the OPP were there and supporting the Ottawa Police Service in formulating plans along with seven other municipal service and on the 5th of December, up to 257 RCMP officers.
December?
I'm sorry, February.
I apologize.
No, no, that's okay.
And just finally, I just want to understand the timing of the request by the board for training.
How did that coincide with what you heard on February 5th?
In other words, were they trying to figure out what it was that they were expected to do if they had concerns about adequate and effective policing?
They're asking for training, they're asking for advice, and they're not getting that.
Is that right?
No, I disagree with that.
They were asking for governance training.
That board is quite experienced in governance.
They wanted governance training in the middle of an incident, and that would have been irresponsible for my advisor to be there pulling a board away from their responsible duties of governance and oversight and managing the scenario from their perspective in their function and roles.
Okay, thank you, sir.
Those are my questions.
Thank you, Commissioner.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Any re-examination?
I just had one point of clarification first, just for the record.
My friend for Chief Slowly mentioned the dates of some of the board meetings.
The dates of board meetings were the 26th, the 5th, the 11th, the 15th, and the 17th.
I know that that's material but just wanted the record to accurately reflect that.
I think the difference, Commissioner, between- Tom Curry speaking- the difference between us is that I believe there's a briefing on February 1st, but we can perhaps sort that out later.
I think that's the date I gave and I believe I'm correct.
I think it might have been an informal briefing, not an official.
I just want to clarify it for the record.
In terms of questions on confidentiality, would you agree that if information is not provided because there's a belief that a Board is a leaky Board, that that would be an impediment to proper oversight function by the Board?
Yes, they would.
Yes, they would.
Thank you.
And that there should be policies within the Board to deal with that.
And the Board should be very much aware of what the necessary steps would be to advance that complaint.
And that issue to the Interior Civilian Police Commission.
And what would you suggest the proper steps would be to follow if there was such concerns?
You mentioned it, but you didn't really go into detail on what those would be.
So with the chief, there's a couple different pathways that can be followed there, sir.
With the chief being aware of it or the board itself being aware of it.
And can you maybe just describe those for each?
Of course.
Generally, if it was the chief who was made aware of it and if the chief was confident that it was not the board chair, then they would have that conversation with the board chair and give the chair an opportunity to share the appropriate policies with the broader board and address the individual that may be that leak.
If that does not resolve it, or if it's of such serious significance, then the Board Chair can go directly to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission and ask them to conduct a review and a subsequent investigation into the matter.
If the Board Chair themselves are aware of it, then it's incumbent upon the Board to address their own policies.
And if that does not correct the matter, then the Board, or if it's of significant severity that it would be inappropriate to do so, then the Board Chair would again then go directly to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission and request that they undertake a review and launch an investigation into potential misconduct of a Board member.
Okay, and so you would agree with me that a leaky board issue has to be addressed in some fashion?
I would agree that if it exists today, then it needs to be addressed.
And that it's unfortunate if they were aware of it back in February or January, whenever others were first being aware of it, that it wasn't addressed then.
Because if it's not addressed, it leads to a breakdown in the relationship.
In the oversight function.
The relationship between the board, the trust and confidence of the board, the trust and confidence of the broader community in the board, of counsel of the board, and then the entire relationship that's necessary for proper good governance of a police service.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for your time this evening.
Thank you, Commissioner.
May I just raise one very brief comment?
At this hour, why not?
I'm sorry for this, but I think you're going to agree it's important.
The Ministry of the Solicitor General knew about the leaking information from the Board.
It's in a statement that is from Mr. Weatherill's subordinate.
I just don't want you to be left without the third leg of that stool because the Ministry knew it as well.
I don't know if my friend wants to develop that.
I don't know why, if we're going into it, we don't develop it.
Thank you, and I am aware that that is certainly in the other witness statement that was entered.
Do you maybe want to address that question then raised by my friend?
What, if anything, should the Solicitor General's office be doing if they're aware of a leaky board?
So I'll start by saying I was not aware that the advisor had that information.
If the advisor did have that information...
Then the advisor, number one, should have reported that through the chain of command up to myself, and that would have been something I would have shared with the deputy.
And then the advisor would speak with the chair, speak with the chief, if necessary, and would follow the similar path of reviewing the policies and then reviewing, if necessary, moving it to the Ontario Civilian Police Commission for review.
And subsequent necessary investigation.
Thank you very much.
Okay, thank you.
So those are...
Well, firstly, thank you for making yourself available, Mr. Weatherill.
Unusual as the hour is, is very appreciated by the Commission.
So thank you.
That terminates your evidence or ends your testimony.
and we will adjourn, I think,
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