The head of the Ontario Provincial Police said Thursday that the Emergency Act was needed to compensate the towing companies that helped clean up the convoy protest in Ottawa in February, but Commissioner Thomas Carrique doesn’t think the controversial federal powers to force heavy vehicles to enter. service
“A lot of them wanted compensation, which we couldn’t offer them without making additional arrangements … so when the Emergency Act was invoked, that ability to offer that compensation was very helpful,” the commissioner said of the OPP, Thomas Carrique, in the emergency of public order. Commission investigation.
“Technically, could we have coerced them? Did we provide them with written information that implied they were coerced? Very likely. But did we actually have to direct them? No, they had willingly agreed to help.”
The issue of compelling tow trucks has become one of the key issues facing the commission’s inquiry into whether the federal government’s use of the Emergency Act was justified.
Carrique sat down with commission attorneys twice this summer before his testimony. Summaries of those interviews were entered into evidence Thursday.
In August, he found that the police were not using the Emergency Act to compel towing companies to provide their services.
“The ability to compel tow truck drivers to provide service and to compensate them was delegated by the RCMP Commissioner to [Commissioner] Carrique, but it was not used to force them to provide service”, said a summary of those interviews.
LOOK | ‘Some were reluctant’: OPP commissioner on tow trucks
‘Some were reluctant’: OPP commissioner says of tow truck drivers during convoy protest
OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique says it’s unclear whether the Emergencies Act was needed to get tow trucks to help remove entrenched protesters from Ottawa.
On Thursday, a lawyer for the commission asked if it would be fair to say the trucks “were compensated under the Emergency Act, but they weren’t actually obligated under the Emergency Act.”
“That’s how I would describe it,” said Carrique.
One of the problems the police faced during the occupation was moving the trucks and other vehicles that had been entrenched on the streets of Ottawa for weeks. At the time, towing companies expressed fears that supporters of the protests would target them. At least one tow truck operator in Ottawa reported receiving hundreds of calls, including death threats.
The federal government says the deal to insure the tow trucks fell through
An Ottawa Police Service superintendent who helped oversee operational planning in the final days of the demonstration told the inquiry Wednesday that officers should not have relied on powers granted under federal law to secure the trucks. trailer
Sup. Robert Bernier, who took over as the OPS event commander on February 10, was organizing a police operation with the OPP and RCMP.
He told the commission that the OPP had been able to secure 34 tow trucks with volunteer drivers on or about February 13, before the act was invoked, as part of its plan to end the protest.
But a lawyer for the federal government rejected that claim.
During cross-examination Wednesday, Donnaree Nygard, a lawyer for the federal government, asked Bernier if he was aware that the 34-truck commitment was not fulfilled.
“I wasn’t informed about that,” Bernier said.
LOOK | Supnt of the OPP. Robert Bernier discusses efforts to get tow trucks to clear the truck convoy:
‘I wasn’t aware’: OPP Superintendent Robert Bernier discusses efforts to get tow trucks to clear truck convoy
Government of Canada lawyer Donnaree Nygard asked Bernier, who said he didn’t know the tow trucks were available because of the Emergencies Act.
Nygard filed a Feb. 17 letter showing Carrique cited the Emergency Act in his communications with the towing companies. The letter said the OPP was “requiring” towing companies to make their services available under the Emergency Act.
“This is new to me,” Bernier said Wednesday.
A Feb. 13 email forwarded to Carrique, and shown to the commission Thursday, said seven companies with 34 heavy towing services were willing to provide services, while 57 companies with 269 heavy cranes said they did not or would not respond to the OPP.
Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Thomas Carrique will appear before the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa on Thursday, October 27, 2022. (Justin Tang/Canadian Press)
The email said the OPP was starting to look to companies in the US and Quebec for help.
“There were many challenges in identifying the number of tow trucks available, the ones that would willingly provide these services, the ones that wanted to be forced or compensated,” Carrique stated.
“There were concerns that they could back out at the last minute, which posed a risk to moving forward with the plan.”
Carrique called the compensation issue “critical.”
In a Feb. 22 letter, written after police moved in to clean up Ottawa’s streets, Carrique told Ontario Assistant Attorney General Mario Di Tommaso that the towing industry was “very reluctant” to help the police and that they were looking for “an unusually wide and high risk. compensation from the province for loss and damage”.
That request included an indemnity for future retaliation. Carrique said the Finance Minister’s approval would be needed and that it would take time.
The letter also said that securing the services of the crane companies would have required separate agreements. Again, Carrique wrote that there was not enough time to do this before the planned police operation.
Carrique was shown the letter again Thursday during cross-examination.
“You said it’s a bit of a semantic issue, but in fact, sir, the OPP required the towing companies to provide the services under the auspices of the [Emergencies Act]right?” asked Brendan van Niejenhuis, another attorney for the federal government.
“Yes, we had provided that indication in writing and if they had not provided those services we could have forced them to do so. Absolutely,” Carrique replied.
The OPP thought the trucks would be blocked from the compound
The crane issue is not the only point of contention the investigation has uncovered so far.
In March, Carrique told a House of Commons parliamentary committee that agents from his intelligence unit had identified the Ottawa protest as a “threat to national security” about a week after the heavy trucks arrived in the capital.
But the head of the intelligence unit, Supt. Pat Morris, told the public inquiry last week that there was never any “credible” information showing a direct threat to national security.
A protester carrying an empty fuel container with a broom handle walks past Ontario Provincial Police officers on Metcalfe Street in Ottawa on February 7, 2022, during demonstrations against the COVID rules -19. (Justin Tang/The Canadian Press)
“Everybody was asking about extremism. We weren’t seeing a lot of evidence of that,” Morris said.
Carrique said the OPP’s intelligence reports on the protests, called Project Hendon, noted that there was no exit strategy for the protest organizers. He said it was turned over to Ottawa police.
According to his summary of testimony, Carrique thought the OPS operational plan would ban trucks from the parliamentary grounds and instead use buses and shuttles to allow protesters access to the city center for protests .
He said he quickly realized that wasn’t the case.
“OPS did not appear to have a clearly communicated and documented operational plan and was not working toward a court order,” his summary of the testimony said.
He said he didn’t think then-Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly’s decision to make his request for 1,800 more officers public was helpful.
“He exposed to the protesters that OPS was overwhelmed and needed help,” Carrique told the commission.