Police face off with demonstrators in a protest organized by truck drivers opposing vaccine mandates on February 19, 2022 in downtown Ottawa after the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act. (Photo by Alex Kent/Getty Images)
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A senior officer from the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) involved in planning the takedown of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa last winter says that invoking the Emergencies Act was not necessary to clear the protest.
“We had some help with [the provincial declaration of emergency] and the Emergencies Act, but in my humble opinion, we would have reached the same solution with the plan that we had without either of those pieces of legislation,” now-retired Chief Superintendent Carson Pardy told the Public Order Emergency Commission on Oct. 21.
A summary of previous commission interviews with Pardy says he believes police “would have done so within the timeline that the [Integrated Planning] Cell was contemplating before the federal government declared an emergency.”
At the time of the Freedom Convoy protest of last January and February, Pardy was the commander of the North East Region of the OPP.
He ended up contributing to, and approving, operational plans to deal with the Ottawa protest.
Pardy, who has experience in managing large-scale protests and major events, was put in charge of leading the Integrated Planning Cell on Feb. 7 to assist the Ottawa Police Service (OPS).
Pardy painted a picture of an OPS exhausted and in disarray at that time, which was requesting police resources from other jurisdictions without having a specific plan for their use.
Other testimonies in front of the commission this week revealed the OPS assessed the protesters would be gone after the first weekend.
Instead, the OPP predicted they would be there for the long haul given some had driven from western Canada, they were supported through very successful crowdfunding, and it assessed their demands would not be met.
The trucker-led protest was demanding the lifting of COVID-19 restrictions and arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 28. It was dispersed on the weekend of Feb. 18, after the Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.
The commission was established by law to review the invocation and is conducting its public hearings until late November.
Tow Trucks
A recurrent theme since the Emergencies Act was invoked and during the commission hearings is the issue of the availability of towing companies to remove the heavy trucks parked in downtown Ottawa.
The Liberal government says tow trucks could only be obtained by compelling towing companies through the Emergencies Act.
The commission heard towing companies were reluctant to get involved out of fear for their safety or due to their support of the protest.
Pardy said special authorities were not needed to tow the trucks. “We tow vehicles every day,” he said.
The Emergencies Act “complemented police’s ability to tow vehicles in a timely manner, but police would have done so anyway,” says Pardy’s interview summary.
While saying the act was not needed, Pardy nevertheless said he was “thankful for it.”
“We used it to the best of our abilities to incorporate it in our plan.”
Former Colleagues in the Crowd
Pardy also commented on the make-up of the Freedom Convoy protest during his testimony, saying the profile of the protester was “none like I’ve ever seen in my 36 years career.”
He said two retired officers who had worked for him were among the protesters.
“We saw children, we saw a lot of crestfallen police officers in the crowd, military, nurses. So it wasn’t your normal group of people that you’re dealing with,” he said.
“Were there still concerns from our perspective on extremism? Absolutely. But we relied on and trusted the intelligence as it came in on that regard.”
His former colleague Superintendent Pat Morris, the intelligence chief for the OPP, testified before the commission on Oct. 19.
He said neither CSIS nor the RCMP’s national security investigation team saw the protest as a threat to national security.
“In terms of producing intelligence, we found no credible intelligence of threats,” said Morris with regards to threats of violence.