“Criminalizing Dissent”

It’s still early days at the inquiry into Ottawa’s great convoy crisis. So it remains possible testimony will emerge contradicting the impression thus far that none of the high officials responsible for handling the situation had a clue what they were doing, or the inclination to act.

OTTAWA—Two weeks into the so-called “Freedom Convoy” occupation of the nation’s capital, outside police agencies deemed the Ottawa police response to be confused, poorly informed and lacking in leadership.

An assessment of the Ottawa police “deployment plan” on Feb. 10 by the RCMP and Ontario Provincial Police determined the response to the crisis up to then was in disarray.

We have yet to hear anything demonstrating that the government’s use of the act was necessary

Act first, ask questions later. That’s what the Emergencies Act allows the government to do.

No parliamentary debate, no sober second thought in the Senate, no transparent democratic process. Just action. New legal orders start to govern us on the sole authority of the prime minister and cabinet.

A secretly recorded conversation between Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Coun. Diane Deans about an aborted plan to hire a new police chief at the height of last winter’s convoy protest was played Wednesday at the public inquiry examining the federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to help end the crisis.

The Feb. 15 recording, which was only brought forward to the commission Wednesday morning, was entered into evidence at the Public Order Emergency Commission Wednesday afternoon. The tense call was recorded by Deans’ assistant without Watson’s knowledge, she later testified.

It appears that government and the police were the greatest threat to public order.

OTTAWA – The chair of the committee overseeing Ottawa’s police says there was “constant” infighting within the force that hampered its ability to deal with the Freedom Convoy protests and undermined Chief Peter Sloly’s authority.

The infighting within the Ottawa Police Service got so bad that it caused an operation to take down a blockade in the core of downtown to be called off even though 400 officers were ready to move in, Diane Deans told the Public Order Emergency Commission on Wednesday.

‘Recruiting ground’ and ‘martyrdom’ concerns: Insights from documents provided to convoy commission so far

Less than one week into the Public Order Emergency Commission’s hearings examining the federal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, hundreds of documents have already been made public.

While a considerable portion of the documents provided to the commission so far are copies of pandemic public health orders and statements, as well as clippings from media coverage of the ‘Freedom Convoy,’ there have also been transcripts or summaries of high-level phone calls, email and text message exchanges, and internal reports, with likely much more to come.

Ontario Provincial Police intelligence officer Pat Morris says that the OPP "produced no intelligence to indicate that these individuals (protesters) would be armed."

Morris labels the coverage of potential firearms at the protest as "hyperbole." pic.twitter.com/SCWiCgIntx

— True North (@TrueNorthCentre) October 19, 2022

Will Ottawa City Manager Steve Kanellakos turn out to be the Alexander Butterfield of the Freedom Convoy hearings going on in the nation’s capital?

Butterfield is the former White House deputy chief of staff whose 1973 testimony before the U.S. Senate committee investigating the Watergate burglary revealed that then-president Richard Nixon had had a secret audio recording system installed in the Oval Office to tape every conversation between Nixon, his staff and visitors.

OTTAWA – Midway through the Freedom Convoy protests, Canada’s spy agency worried that they were being used as a “recruiting ground” for other causes but saw no sign of foreign threat actors supporting the movement.

A first glimpse into assessments of the convoy by Canada’s secretive intelligence agencies is contained in a summary of a call between municipal, provincial and federal government officials on Feb. 6, nine days after protests began in Ottawa.