Commissioner Paul Rouleau made it clear at the start of the inquiry that its focus will remain squarely on the decision of the Federal Government to proclaim a public order emergency. As weeks of sworn and cross-examined testimony bring the events of last February into sharper view, we have yet to see any evidence of the essential precondition for such a declaration: terrorism.
Convoy inquiry reveals another Canadian intelligence fiasco
… Bizarrely, CSIS, RCMP and OPP have for years failed to understand and master the power of social media. They monitor the obscure hate sites peripatetically. They fail to see patterns, share findings, or dig into identities and connections. Shopify does a better job at it than Canadian security agencies. Perhaps we should retain them.
It is the absence of an aggressive outbound social media strategy that is even more astonishing. No agency smacks down misinformation, calls out lies and disinformation, let alone offers a more Canadian view on issues from race to terrorism. The reason may be that they fear to be seen to be “political.” No other NATO country’s spooks are so meek, they use surrogates.
Robin Sears … NDP Hack
The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) said on Jan. 26 that it was being targeted by a “disinformation campaign” by detractors of the Freedom Convoy and also threatened with violence, an internal email reveals.
Then-OPS chief Peter Sloly wrote to his team that there was information from his organization’s corporate communications and the Ottawa Police Association (OPA) that “there is a disinformation campaign from the counter demonstration element targeting OPS and OPA as being complicit in support of the trucker demonstration.”
… “It was our hope that Premier Ford and Minister Jones would agree to appear before the Commission voluntarily,” the letter reads.
“However, given that the repeated invitations were all declined, the Commission has issued summons this day to Premier Ford and Minister Jones.”
The commission has the legal authority to call witnesses to testify before the inquiry. A spokesperson for the Ontario attorney general’s office said the government will be challenging the summons, arguing that Jones and the premier are covered by parliamentary privilege.
OTTAWA – From blocking gas supplies to protesters to closing interprovincial bridges, former Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief Peter Sloly kept making “very damaging” promises of enforcement against the Freedom Convoy that the force was never actually able to deliver.
That’s according to acting OPS chief Steve Bell, who succeeded Sloly as head of the force after Sloly resigned in the days before police massively mobilized and cleared out the protests on Feb. 19.
The size alone of the so-called “Freedom Convoy” protests wasn’t what rendered them unmanageable for local authorities, according to Ottawa’s interim police chief — it was the “unlawful” activities and “trauma” that resulted for the community.
Speaking to the Public Order Emergency Commission during a hearing on Monday, Steve Bell said Ottawa’s police service is used to handling “prolonged” and “protracted” protests.
A Honkocaust of trauma!
OTTAWA — Ontario Premier Doug Ford and former solicitor general Sylvia Jones have been summoned to appear as witnesses at the public inquiry examining the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act.
Commission lawyers said the summons was issued Monday after both Ford and Jones, who is now the health minister, refused multiple requests to appear.
Ottawa police knew ‘Freedom Convoy’ participants could get guns as deputy chief defends his force’s response, inquiry hears
OTTAWA — An Ottawa police “threat assessment” of the approaching “Freedom Convoy” last winter flagged how some unnamed participants had access to guns and that weapons had been seized from travelling protesters in “two cases at least,” according to a document tabled at the Emergencies Act inquiry.
And yet, Ottawa Police Deputy Chief Steve Bell defended the local law enforcement agency’s preparations for the convoy protests in testimony Monday, saying that despite Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) intelligence that the protest convoy travelling across Canada to Ottawa could stay for a long time, the local police could not have predicted the demonstration would turn into a “violent” and “traumatic” occupation around Parliament Hill.
Canada’s Emergencies Act is culturally and historically significant to the nation.
Its previous iteration, the War Measures Act, was invoked only three times.
Two of those were during the First and Second World Wars.
There are two distinct narratives about last winter’s Freedom Convoy emerging from the current judicial inquiry into the Trudeau government’s imposition of the Emergencies Act.
Let’s call the first narrative – the one being peddled by politicians and “progressive” journalists at the time – the Panicked Version. The other narrative – the one from more sober officials, police commanders and intelligence services – could be labelled the Realistic Version.
The parade of witnesses appearing at the federal government’s inquiry into the “Freedom Convoy” is painting a picture of what happened before and during the three-week occupation of downtown Ottawa last winter.
It’s also a window into politics and relationships, and has revealed some fascinating facts.
On Friday, Feb. 4, Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) Supt. Craig Abrams was at his command post watching Ottawa’s then chief of police Peter Sloly speak to reporters on live TV.
It was the eve of what was expected to be a second weekend of mayhem in the capital, with hundreds, perhaps thousands of anti-vaccine mandate and anti-government protesters ready to descend on the city to join those already encamped downtown, creating what Sloly described as an increasingly volatile and potentially dangerous environment.
OTTAWA — The OPP commissioner told MPs in March that force intelligence concluded the Freedom Convoy posed a “threat to national security.” His own head of intelligence told a public inquiry otherwise Wednesday.
Documents tabled at the public inquiry investigating the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act also appear to contradict information provided by acting Ottawa Police Service chief Steve Bell to MPs regarding firearm-related charges against Freedom Convoy participants.
A special joint parliamentary committee has voted to block the release of uncensored documents that detail the federal government’s rationale for invoking the Emergencies Act against the Freedom Convoy.
Sponsored by Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin, the motion that federal agencies “be required to provide the committee with unredacted versions of those documents” was defeated in a 6–5 vote, with Liberal MPs and Liberal-appointed senators voting against it on the night of Oct. 20.
The Ontario Provincial Police’s intelligence division suggested that the force consider “covert” surveillance into an anti-government group ahead of the Freedom Convoy’s arrival in Ottawa, newly-released documents reveal.
The suggestion came as part of the OPP’s Project HENDON, a more than two-year rolling investigation into “criminal extremism” and “large-scale protest” movements in Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The article cites the Trudeau subsidized far left extremists at Antihate.ca so you know it’s garbage. Still that the OPP is actively surveilling people for “islamophobia” among other crimes of opinion is concerning to anyone who values freedom. We are all criminals now living in a surveillance society.
