QUESTIONING POLICE OVERSIGHT AND INTELLIGENCE

On day five of the inquiry, October 19th, we started hearing from executives within local and provincial policing and intelligence bodies. Shockingly, these interviews only proved more damaging to the running narrative.

COUNCILLOR DEANS

First up was the Chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board, Diane Deans. Deans led the seven-person civilian oversight team for the Ottawa Police Service at the time of the protest. Much of her cross-examination was spent discussing and reviewing emails and notes from January and February. These showed the Ottawa Police Service, Police Services Board, and city council were caught in disarray and infighting. Conflict, suspicion, a lack of trust, and poor communication looks to have been rife.

Deans said the police were leaving her and the Police Services Board in the dark. Chief Sloly, she suggested, was telling her, “‘We’re not getting any messages from intelligence agencies that it’s other than a protest. We expect them to be gone on Monday.’” Despite that, we see a Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau Situational Awareness Bulletin from January 26th, two days before the arrival of the first trucks. It reads:

Once in Ottawa Freedom Convoy 2022 organizers have stated an intent to remain at Parliament Hill until the Federal government concedes to repeal all COVID-19 public health restrictions and mandates. … There is no expressed departure date for when participants will disperse or the action will end.

Deans indicated she and the board knew nothing of this report or anything of the sort. She also said the police chief had indicated from the start that “there wasn’t a police solution” to the protest. She noted her own and the board’s growing concern about limited local resources and the lack of a serious strategy for ending the protest. Of the broader community, she spoke of “a growing lack of faith in the city, in the police service, and just about everyone, to get this job done.” Deans spoke of the entire operation not working smoothly together, not being a well-oiled machine. She said “there were a lot of people, in my estimation, working at cross-purposes here.”

Deans was then asked to recount how Chief Sloly’s resignation came about on the 15th of February. She described city council proposing a motion to ask Sloly for his resignation. Deans’ sense was that they wanted to do so, and in a public forum, to make it appear to the public that they were attempting to do something substantive and not standing idly by, as their job often requires. “I was very opposed to that” she said. She described divisions within council and then spoke of the police department. “[T]here was what I would describe as some sort of insurrection from within that was happening, and there was always some tension in the ranks with Chief Sloly, right from the beginning. … I don’t think he ever felt entirely supported by his senior command, or by the rank and file inside police.”

Deans then explained how a CBC reporter contacted her with regard to an “extremely damning” story coming out about Chief Sloly (at the height of what everyone in the media was calling “the greatest crisis in the city’s history.”) The piece was about his behaviour within the force, about him being a “tyrannical dictator.” She also described how infighting was raging during the crisis. Apparently Sloly informed her that a deputy chief had to be sent home for a number of days, due to her getting “caught up with some of the wrong elements”, and the Incident Commander leading operations being replaced several times in just two weeks. Deans testified that, by her assessment as chair of the board providing civilian oversight of police, that “there seemed to be an intent to use this crisis to undermine the chief further.” By contrast, Deans argued that the board never lost faith in Sloly. She said the decision of the board to look into options for removing Sloly were only prompted by the pending CBC article. “Yes, it was related to the allegations that CBC were going to run with,” Deans testified. We heard that the article was to run on the evening of February 14th, and that by the morning of the 15th Sloly had resigned.

Deans then explained that as all this was taking place, Ottawa’s mayor and his team within council were looking to unseat her as Police Services Board chair. Deans revealed that she didn’t trust the mayor and had been secretly recording their conversations. (Which she then dropped as a surprise piece of evidence.) To suggest how irrational and chaotic all this was, she shared that, at the height of the crisis, “we had hired a brand-new CEO, we had one of our deputies suspended from the service, our chief had just resigned…” and then were looking to remove her, the city’s first female police board chair – which they did so on February 16th, the day after Chief Sloly’s resignation. (Relatedly, the city’s first and only Black council member, Rawlson King, stood with Deans, announcing his own resignation following the council’s vote to oust Deans.)

Further cross-examination from Kittredge asked Deans about requests for ‘additional resources’ during the crisis. She said, to the best of her knowledge, all requests for resources were exclusively seeking more personnel, boots on the ground. Kittredge continued, “While we’re heard that the Criminal Code, existing by-laws, et cetera, may have been somewhat limiting, the OPS didn’t express to you any specific need for additional legislative powers, did they?” Deans responded, “I do not believe so.” They clarify that, during the protest, the city was able to amend local idling by-laws very quickly, perhaps on the order of a day. Kittredge asks, “Would It be fair to say that if the OPS required further by-law amendments, these would have been put in place very quickly?” Deans: “Yes.” He asks if she feels “the crisis was mishandled by police and all levels of government, wasn’t it?” Deans: “I think we could have done better.”

SUPERINTENDENT MORRIS

Later in the day we heard from Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Morris, Commander of the Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau. Everything he had to offer came as a shock to me. Commission Counsel Brousseau began asking Morris about his position and the bureau. They also discussed how the bureau takes information from the RCMP, CSIS [Canadian Security Intelligence Service], INSET [Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams], the Department of Defence, and other services to inform their Hendon Strategic Intelligence Reports, a regular situation report disseminated to 32 agencies and roughly 200 individuals therein.

Then they got into specifics about intelligence gathering and reporting related to the convoy. Morris explained how “the narrative was that people who felt a certain way were a small number of people, et cetera, ‘the fringe’ so to speak.” He disagreed with that assessment. He suggested all the information gathered, and intelligence rendered from that, indicated to the intelligence community the contrary. “We definitely felt there was widespread support” asserted Morris.

Providing another firm contradiction to commentary suggesting no one knew the protest was coming or what it would look like, we are shown parts of an intelligence report from January 20th, more than a week before the convoy’s arrival in Ottawa. It notes that, due to their numbers, the convoy will “almost certainly disrupt the movement of vehicular traffic and goods on Canadian highways and, possibly, at ports of entry along the border…” The report also notes “some participants in these convoys may attempt to disrupt the business of government…” A later paragraph highlights that “…there does not yet appear to be an exit strategy for departing Ottawa: the intent appears to be to remain in Ottawa until all COVID-19 mandates and restrictions are lifted.” Morris added that this lack of exit plan and their assessment that “the demand could not be met” convinced everyone that “this would be a long-term event.”

Morris explained that the Canadian intelligence community were continually making assessments of the numbers of people and vehicles as well as the types of vehicles involved and potentially involved. Of course, they were also monitoring the mood, behaviour, and plans of those involved. All this was to determine the possible impacts of the protest. As you would expect. Morris explained that weeks before the convoy arrived in Ottawa, agencies had everything from low-value open-source information-gathering operations to sensitive, high-value, covert surveillance ones all informing their intelligence reporting. Morris explained how the information coming from monitoring in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba all indicated broad public support. He said there were almost unanimous intelligence reports from across Western Canada of people lined up on the sides of highways and on overpasses, even in bad weather, as well as people providing convoy participants with food, water, and money along the way. The holding of related events and collection of many millions of dollars in donations online seemed to confirm the impression of the intelligence community that there was very broad support for what they saw as a grassroots movement. This intelligence assessment came as a shock as it is in stark contrast to what local and international media reported from before it began through to today.

Morris added that, on the risk assessment side, though they were aware of heavy machinery (such as compressors, digging equipment, and all-terrain vehicles) in advance of the convoy’s arrival, they had no intelligence to indicate protestors intended to use those for anything protest-related. He later affirms that, when all was said and done, none of this heavy machinery was used to cause any damage. Morris offered a related aside. He said, “Now, also in terms of being armed – I want to be clear on this – we produced no intelligence to indicate that these individuals would be armed.”

Later, when talking about protests popping up in places other than Ottawa, and whether or not there was a threat to national security, we are shown an email (from February 8th, into the second week of the protest) between Morris and inspectors Barclay and Walker. It reads, in part, “I agree with the potential for [threats to] officer safety and public safety but INSET and CSIS concur…there are no national security concerns. Confirmed today.” Morris lingered for some time on the topic of the potential for the Ottawa protest and other associated events to evolve into a national security threat. He talked about a “potential concern in terms of sovereignty in our border crossings, and our economic integrity in terms of trade and national security in that regard. It might also have to do with analytical assessments of threat to reputation by virtue of coverage in the international media…” He is clear to note that, though the potential existed, there was no intelligence of a threat.

Morris indicated those in the intelligence community were less concerned with the convoy and more with the potential for a lone wolf (what Morris calls “an independent asymmetric threat”) who might attempt to manipulate or exploit the situation. Morris affirmed that, though the protest impeded traffic, as many do, protesters did not prevent the activities of government nor block access to Parliament. He confirmed that American involvement or influence, though a real potential and serious concern, never transpired. He testified that the convoy and protest was a lawful and peaceful event with no serious threats or acts of violence.

Brendan Miller, counsel for the convoy, started his cross-examination by asking Morris to confirm that he saw no intelligence that the convoy intended to commit or support acts of espionage or sabotage. He did not see any such intelligence. Morris was asked if there was any intelligence about any form of “foreign influenced activities” involving a threat to any person. There were not. Morris was asked if he saw any evidence of “activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat of a use of” acts of serious violence against persons or property, “with the purpose of achieving a political, religious, or ideological objective within Canada or a foreign state?” (Miller is drilling at the legal definition of terrorism.) Morris said that he did not. They get into further discussion of the definitions of terrorism and extremism. Morris indicated that he had a problem with those words and how they get used. He told the inquiry that, to start, the terms are far too subjective and then people are far too enthusiastic to employ them as labels for anyone they disagree with.

An email between Morris and OPP Deputy Commissioner Cox, from February 2nd, near the start of the protest, expresses the superintendent’s ethical and professional concerns about things he and his bureau are being asked to do. In the email, Morris starts by saying that the bureau is “increasingly receiving request for information, intelligence, open source scrapes, background checks etc on a wide array of societal actors.” Morris writes:

On the ethical front, several requests do not relate to the parameters that the state/police should consider in intelligence operations. The potential “targets” are not engaged in criminal activity nor do we have reasonable grounds to believe that they will be. They may oppose governmental policy and engage in protest.

On the professional front many requests are received as a culmination of an email chain with many different departments, entities, persons, etc. weighing in on the requests in the form of partial sentences or merely utilizing the forward button and expressing urgency. As a result, the request and rationale are provided out of context and with no parameters in law. Just yesterday, this occurred with input from a regional health office through multiple levels of government about an activity that was not occurring.

There appears to be an incredibly heightened appetite for any/all information on entities that cause discomfort to the status quo – be they companies, school boards, government authorities or political leaders. And this appetite is being articulated in irresponsible ways – attaching urgency to requests.

I am concerned that “success” is seen as satisfying intelligence requirements and requests quickly – as opposed to satisfying the correct intelligence requirements to the correct actors. I have acted to prevent/slowdown these requests and/or the responses to them. Often, in times of social turmoil, anxiety breeds fear and demands for information. I am reminded, and cognizant, of the mass demand for information on “terrorists” that succeeded 9/11 (resulting in the O’Connor Commission; and the McDonald Commission in relation to the RCMP Security Service over-zealousness that resulted in the creation of CSIS.

Perhaps my biggest concern is police leaders and municipal, provincial and national government leaders demanding/requesting information to satisfy a request without understanding the wherefore or the why.

On February 14th (the same day the Emergencies Act was invoked) the OPP intelligence report said “Protesters and their supporters are unlikely to be significantly deterred by any invocation of the Emergencies Act. The potential for conflict or an act of violence is likely to increase as the Ottawa blockade continues. Local solidarity protest are highly likely to continue.” As Morris explained, many Canadians felt COVID-related legislation was unjust or violated their rights in some way and so new legislation, such as invoking the Emergencies Act, was only more of the same government overreach and would be viewed only as validation of their concerns and a net moral and psychological boost for elements within and adjacent to the convoy.

On February 22nd, the day after most protesters and their vehicles were removed from downtown Ottawa, Superintendent Morris sent a long email to OPP Deputy Commissioner Cox, detailing some significant concerns he had. In the email, Morris starts:

I believe that law enforcement in this country is at a critical stage in terms of its ethics, its operational independence and its decision-making. This is a position that some law enforcement agencies have found themselves in at previous historical junctures – the FBI in the 1950s and 1960s, the RCMP in the 1980s and the law enforcement community generally following the events of September 11, 2001.

Morris writes of not just being merely aware of but personally responsible for disseminating the intelligence related to the trucker convoy. He explains how he is fully aware of what actions have and have not been taken by various agencies as a result of that intelligence. And he shares his concerns that many “experts,” including leaders in policing, are making “outlandish, inaccurate claims … not based in any intelligence or evidence that I am privy to.” He writes of parties with no involvement and who are “far from expert” making statements that are “highly politicized, hyperbolic, self-serving and overwhelmingly informed by media editorials.” Describing the impact of that, he writes “This sensationalism is leading to a quickening pace of decision-making...” He writes about seeing a marked increase in people suggesting there are extremist elements at work in Ottawa and related events. He writes that he has not seen evidence of this nor was there evidence of such during the related recent trucker protests in Toronto or at the Ambassador or Bluewater bridges. He notes that CSIS had little to report and that “their targets were not engaged.” He explains that INSET reported no activity rising to the level of a national security threat and that if politicians have information or intelligence regarding extremist involvement, they did not get it from Canadian intelligence partners. He explains that the convoy movement is neither led by or composed of ideologically motivated violent extremists or people with histories of violent criminal acts, two classes of folks everyone is highly alert to. He writes, “The absolute lack of criminal activity across Canada, and the minimal violent crime throughout the event illustrate this.” Morris expresses his grave concern about the tone of public discourse. He explains how the conversation was “dominated by political figures and the media” providing a narrative contradicting all evidence collectively gathered and analysed by Canada’s intelligence and law enforcement community.

When asked about this email during the inquiry, Morris shared his worry about many voices – not in editorials but in news reports (which should be evidence-base and factual) – communicating about the protest or those participating as being “un-Canadian” or connected to Russian or American groups or actors. He noted politicians and folks in the media connecting the convoy with extremist, terrorist, or seditious activity. None of that, Morris affirmed, was indicated at any time by any available intelligence. He spoke of grave concern about people affixing labels to others without any evidence of any kind.

At the end of the day, Cara Zwibel, lawyer for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, asked Superintendent Morris to confirm his earlier statements. She asked directly:

Is it fair to say that at no point during the convoy protest did you receive reliable intelligence that would lead you to conclude that there was a risk to national security, that would rise above the potential threat to national security that you identified in that report?

Superintendent Morris, the senior officer heading the intelligence bureau responsible for aggregating and analysing all the available information on the convoy and protest participants, answered: “That is correct.”

How is it possible that this is the evidence coming out? How are these the facts everyone was operating with at the time? What are we seeing? This was a popular and organic movement of Canadians with grievances they wished to express directly to the federal government? People who took their complaints to Ottawa and did so without the manifestation of anything that could be called violent or extremist? How does that fit with the Prime Minister pre-empting their arrival with a public declaration that these people were a radical fringe group espousing unacceptable views? How does it fit with report after report coming out here and across the world about a radical extremist occupation sent by foreign powers to replace democracy with authoritarianism?