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.
… There have been lots of moments of high-level intrigue during the past week, but it was Ontario Provincial Police Supt. Patrick Morris who provided the content most likely to be turned into a spy novel.
Since about 2019 or so, Morris testified, police, security and intelligence agencies at all levels across Canada have been keeping their eyes on a “significant amount of protest, dissent, some of which caused us reasonable grounds to suspect or believe that those issues would engage in criminal activity or illegal activity that would have a public safety impact.”
What they’re monitoring are brush fires of dissent that can explode into larger conflagrations, such as the rail blockades of early 2020 that started as an Indigenous land protest in B.C. No doubt Hendon was also keeping an eye on the 2021 election protests that dogged Justin Trudeau, which seemed to be a sneak preview of the convoy.
Pity the authorities didn’t devote an equivalent of the considerable resources expended on the Bouncy Castle uprising to hunt down the perpetrators of the Coastal GasLink terror attack or the massive hate crime arson of some 50 Catholic churches that resulted directly from Trudeau endorsing the Fake Graves Hoax.
I used to cover a great many “events” in the GTA for the blog until I realized that criminalizing dissent had become the pre-occupation of our “law-enforcement” agencies.
Back in the day the Hate Krime Kommisars at the CHRC would visit my blog every day including Christmas and how can I ever forget having the TDSB sic the cops on me for routinely embarrassing them in Libs of TikTok fashion.
I have spoken to someone who admitted to contact with the OPP unit in question and who hung about the periphery of “all sides.” Which isn’t to suggest they were compromised only that it firmed up a generally held assumption that we were all likely “suspects” in some organization’s files.
At one point I feared I was the target of an entrapment effort by another individual, someone I considered a friend.
I have always found it interesting that this person, once very active in certain circles, “disappeared” after I didn’t give him an answer he was obviously pushing for. It was such a ham-fisted effort involving so serious a matter that I believe he knew I suspected something was up. Who knows maybe he was doing me a favour in providing the nudge I needed to step back and reassess my situation and associations.
At any rate it should be clear now that if you oppose the Trudeau government you are a criminal.
OTTAWA – Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stands by his assertion that the “Freedom Convoy” had extremist elements.
A member of the Ontario Provincial Police appeared to question the claim in a document tabled at the Public Order Emergency Commission, the inquiry examining the circumstances surrounding the use of the Emergencies Act.
“I do not know where the political figures are acquiring info or intel on the extent of extremist involvement,” OPP Supt. Pat Morris wrote in an email.
A former senior officer with the Ontario Provincial Police said that while the emergency powers granted through the Emergencies Act helped police cope with the Freedom Convoy, he does not believe they were needed to clear the protesters who gridlocked Ottawa streets for weeks last winter.
Carson Pardy, a now-retired OPP chief superintendent, told the Public Order Emergency Commission that he believes there was policing solution to the blockades.
“We did not need the Emergencies Act,” he testified Friday.
OTTAWA—Senior Ontario Provincial Police officers believed it was clear that demands from the so-called “Freedom Convoy” could never be met, but “political interference and deal-making” made their jobs harder during the protest occupation around Parliament Hill.
The political and law enforcement challenges of ending the convoy protests — and turf wars — were central to testimony and evidence Friday at the federal inquiry.
