Everything you need to know about the Emergencies Act inquiry

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Jordan Heath-Rawlings It was extremely clear, even as it was going on, that one day we would learn an awful lot more about just what the hell happened in Ottawa. Their freedom, all the rights that have been taken away from our youth and all these maths that are starting to affect their mental capabilities. They’re not looking at people’s livelihoods when people get fired from their job. We need our lives back now. Eight months after the occupying convoy left the City, an inquiry is digging into absolutely everything related to the occupation. How did it start? Was there warning? How did they stay? Who failed? Who exactly? It has only been a week and we have already heard several stunning revelations. So what have we learned? What will we learn? And will it matter in the end? Or is this all just politicking? Today, we’ve got everything you need to know about the convoy inquiry and what comes next. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawlings, this is The Big Story. Cormac Mac Sweeney is the City News reporter on Parliament Hill, which means he is our reporter on Parliament Hill. Cormac, nice to talk to you. It’s been a while.

Cormac Mac Sweeney Good to talk to you again, Jordan.

Jordan You have spent the past week covering the Emergency’s Act inquiry. There’s a lot of news out of this and we’re going to try to walk through a bunch of it, but maybe you can just begin by explaining how it works. What is it trying to discover and who’s doing this inquiry?

Cormac Mac Sweeney Well, essentially, they’re trying to see whether the use of the Emergencies Act was justified. They’re really trying to get to the heart of the reasons behind it. But it’s not just that. They’re going to look into the powers that were used by the federal government and invoking this act, and police, of course, in trying to deal with the emergency of the convoy protest and whether the use of the powers granted to police were justified as well. And of course, they’re going to have to look into the context around all of this. And so far we’ve been hearing a lot of testimony about the lead up to the convoy’s arrival in Ottawa and mainly focused on city operations and what the city and police were expecting at that time. And so all of that context is going to be gathered through likely more than 60 witnesses testifying up until the end of November. And then there are going to be these panel discussions that take place with some experts. After that, the commission is basically going to get down to the real hard work of compiling all of this data and they have, I think, more than 60,000 documents that they’re pouring through and they have to compile all of that together and decide whether what the facts are, how things happened and whether or not the reasonings to use the Emergencies Act were justified.

Jordan And they will issue a final report, I believe it’s at the start of February. They have to submit it to the government and then they have to table it into the House of Commons, I believe, by February 20. Who’s on the commission? Like, who’s doing the asking?

Cormac Mac Sweeney The Commissioner is Justice Rouleau and he has a wealth of knowledge and experience. He’s been a justice in several different provinces and territories, I believe. He said he’s a part of the bar in New York as well. And he said at the start of all of this that this is not technically a courtroom, but he’s going to be treating this commission almost like a court and he has the option as well to jump in and ask questions of the witnesses. And how it works, really, when it comes to the witnesses testifying is there are lawyers who are commissioned lawyers, so they’re unbiased, they’re just trying to get down to the facts. And those commission lawyers do the initial round of questioning to try and determine the facts with each witness and get the full story. Then after that, there are what we call interveners or people withstanding. So that includes the likes of the City of Ottawa, Ottawa Police, the federal government. A couple of provinces have been granted standing as well, the convoy organizers, there’s a lawyer representing them as well. And so those people get to cross examine each witness as they step forward, if those lawyers decide to. And it’s the lawyers who do the cross examination, not, you know, the people themselves. And so after the initial round of questioning from each commission lawyer, it’s the people with standing get to jump in and ask questions as well for a certain limited amount of time. And they try to put, I guess, whatever spin they want to try and put on it for the people they’re representing to build up their case as well. And so it’s quite fascinating to see this unfold because you get different perspectives, questioning the different witnesses, you’re hearing at times conflicting testimony as well. And you have these commissioned lawyers who are trying to just get to the bare facts so that we know what happened. And I think the Commissioner said in his opening statement at the start of all of this, this is a fact finding mission and he wants to discover the facts of what happened around all of this.

Jordan So what kind of power does the justice and the rest of the commission have to do that? You mentioned 60 plus witnesses will be testifying. Can they compel testimony from other witnesses, force them to appear? Is there consequences for that? Or is it, is it like, please come and talk to us about this?

Cormac Mac Sweeney While this is not technically a courtroom, the commission does have certain powers in terms of trying to get testimony. Of course, they’ve politely asked a lot of people to come talk to them as well. But I double checked with the Commission, they do have the power to issue illegal summons, to direct people to come and testify if they need to do that. So it does have the power to try and get to the facts in some way and force people in. Now, if somebody decided they didn’t want to take part and ignore the legal summons, I’m sure there are possible consequences behind that. But so far that doesn’t appear to have been an issue at all. But nonetheless, in terms of what consequences there could be at the end of all of this, if, let’s say, the Commissioner decides that the government was unjustified in its use of the Emergencies Act, this Commissioner doesn’t have the power to issue consequences or punishments in any way whatsoever. And the Commissioner made that clear as well at the start. He said, I’m not a courtroom that will decide whether there’s criminal liability or anything like that. That’s not the role of the Commission or the Commissioner. But public shame is a big thing, especially in politics. And so if it was discovered that, let’s say, the federal government was unjustified in its use, that could be a big political problem for the Trudeau liberals. If it finds that they were justified in their use and it was reasonable for them to invoke the Emergency’s Act to deal with the chaos and the crisis that was happening in the capital as well as some border crossings across the country, then they can say confidently that they did the right thing here, that it was needed and justified. And that really might mute a lot of the criticisms of the use of the act moving forward. Maybe not, but at least it gives them the defence that they had to do this to clear out the protesters and restore order in the city of Ottawa. And I think as well, we do have a number of court cases that are ongoing right now with some of the convoy organizers. So in terms of where this may go, it’s going to be interesting to see whether any of the testimony, any of the facts that come out of this process end up making their way to the criminal cases that are against some of the organizers. Now I want to say as well that nothing has been proven in court against those organizers. A lot of the organizers are still going through the process so we want to respect that. But I can only imagine that some of the big names that are facing some legal issues around this might use some of the facts that are uncovered here within their own case.

Jordan I want to get you to take us through some of the main things the Commission has covered so far. I realize we’re not going to get to everything that’s been going on for a week. I believe right before we started you called it kind of information overload every day. So let’s just focus on some of the highlights that people might need to know about as this commission continues. And let’s start before the start of the occupation. What have we learned so far about what Ottawa knew was coming and what they expected?

Cormac Mac Sweeney Yeah, we’ve heard a lot of public statements from people within the city of Ottawa and the Ottawa Police that they had never seen anything like this and they weren’t prepared because they couldn’t have predicted how this all would have turned out. But there’s been evidence presented to counter that really. We learned that the hotel association here in Ottawa had contacted the city and said, look, we’ve got information from an organizer who called us and said that they are looking to potentially book up to 100 rooms in the city of Ottawa for the protesters and that they want to book this for 30 days at least. Could be as much as 90 days. Well, and so the hotel association went to the city and said, hey, we got this information, this seems big, we want to know what you’re going to do about this because it’s going to impact our partners and things like that. And the city passed that information on to Ottawa Police. This was days before they arrived, I think it was about three days or so before they arrived. And essentially we heard from some city officials who said that they trusted the police and the police in their point of view, believed that this would be over by the Monday of that first weekend, that it would only be a couple of weekends and then a couple of days and then everyone would basically go home. We’ve heard that from countless people that that’s what then Police Chief Peter Sloly was telling people. But we’ve also just got information just before we were speaking, there was an OPP memo that had been presented as evidence. And this memo from the Ontario Provincial Police says that the organizers have stated their intent to remain at Parliament Hill until the federal government concedes to repeal all COVID-19 public health restrictions and mandates. So that doesn’t sound like it’s going to be just one or two days as well. They warned of possible involvement of ideologically motivated extremists. So it’s stunning as well to see these warnings that were ahead of the convoy’s arrival and the reaction from the Ottawa Police. Who we haven’t technically heard from in terms of testimony yet. We haven’t heard from the former Police Chief Peter Sloly or others within the Ottawa Police Force yet. But nonetheless. It’s stunning to hear this information that there were warnings that were taken right to the people who had to make these decisions. And yet the trucks were allowed to still roll downtown into the capital. Occupy the streets in front of Parliament Hill and around all the buildings in the parliamentary precinct. Given the security concerns that were raised by the Ontario Provincial Police and the warnings that were coming from different levels. City officials again say that they just trusted police who were collecting information from a wide variety of sources. But there are many questions and police have said for some time that they couldn’t interfere with the right of the convoy protesters to demonstrate to protest. Although back in February, when those comments were first made, many experts of the Constitution said, you know, that’s not technically right. Under the Constitution, yes, they have a right to protest, but they have no right to bring a vehicle onto the street and block traffic. That is not a constitutional right. So many questions still around why the streets were not closed or what the reasoning was behind that and whether that reasoning even made sense given what was happening. I think it’s fair to say we’ll be hearing a lot about the Ottawa police over the next few weeks of this inquiry and maybe it’ll turn into finger pointing.

Jordan First though, before we talk about who comes next and what those arguments will be. You mentioned that the convoy was allowed to roll in and set up and I understand I only heard a little bit of this, that there’s been a lot of testimony from Ottawa themselves who were living in what they called the Red Zone. What kinds of things do they describe and what’s it like listening to that testimony?

Cormac Mac Sweeney Well, I’m one of the people who lived close to the protest site. I had trucks that were parked not far from my home. So hearing the testimony from some of these people is kind of like reliving some of it. But I was not in the hardest hit area where these trucks were. But we heard from somebody who’s a visually impaired former lawyer who said that she couldn’t sleep at night. There was the haunting that was happening nonstop. She couldn’t get around the city because of her visual impairment. She needs to use the sound signals at intersections to get across the street safely. And she couldn’t hear those with all of the noise that was happening. She had diesel fumes pouring into her home. She says she still suffers traumatic reactions to things like the smell of gasoline that triggers something in her physically as well as horn honking. She says she’s very jumpy whenever she hears a horn. And we heard of chaos and lawlessness as described by some of these residents. Another woman, Zexie Lee, who is a public servant who had launched the injunction to get the horns to stop honking she says it was just chaos in the streets. And she said she didn’t see police doing anything, sometimes not even seeing police at all. And she said she was harassed. She talked about people having masks ripped off. She said that she was verbally harassed as she was walking through the streets. She describes an incident where she says that somebody had bumped their truck into her as well. She said that she often had to get around urine and feces because people were relieving themselves in the streets.

Jordan So there was a lot of talk about the chaos that was the downtown streets of the capital at the time of the convoy protest. And it’s been months. So I think a lot of our listeners may forget exactly what it was like down there and what the scene was. But it was some of the first testimony that we heard that really sort of set the tone of what it was like before we started talking to city officials about the decision making around all of that. What do we know yet and what have the police said for themselves so far? I know they haven’t officially testified, but is this just going to be a bunch of finger pointing between Ottawa city officials and Ottawa Police saying you said this, we thought that, etc, etc. You know, I think the best way to describe it is a tweet from Chris Naughty, journalist with the National Post Media. He had that spiderman meme. It was city, federal government, province ops, everybody’s pointing at each other.

Cormac Mac Sweeney That’s essentially what it is at the moment. What we’ve heard is people trying to cover themselves in some way, but there’s been a lot of evidence as well that’s been presented, so maybe they don’t have as much cover than they normally would if we didn’t have access to all the text messages, emails, teams, chats that all of these officials were having at the time. We’re also hearing about audio recordings of conversations and things like that. So there’s a lot of evidence here. So it’s not going to be easy for officials to gloss over certain things or try and find the normal political cover that they would have. But nonetheless, we’ve seen city officials sort of point towards police saying they were the lead on dealing with all of this. We’ve heard city officials talk about how the province wasn’t there for them and it was basically Mia for the first two weeks of this protest, then also criticized the federal government. And we’ve heard from the lawyers representing these different elements to basically build up their defenses as well and asking questions that are clearly designed to get the answers those lawyers are looking for to help defend the parties that they represent. It is important to note though, that the Province of Ontario is not represented at this really much at all. There are only two provincial officials with two ministries. I think it’s the Solicitor General’s Office and the Ministry of Transportation who will be testifying as far as we know, and the Province of Ontario decided not to ask for standing in this. So they don’t have a lawyer who can then turn around and question city officials about provincial actions in all of this because they chose not to have standing in this. So right now, the province has been a bit of a punching bag for some city officials and they don’t really have a way within this inquiry so far to really counter a lot of that narrative. So it will be interesting to hear what these officials have to say. And I will point out as well that we had a surprise witness the other night that was not scheduled as a part of those original 65 witnesses that we had on the witness list. Which goes to show that as evidence unfolds, the Commission does have the power to invite more people to come and testify as they see fit if they need more answers.

Jordan So Premier Doug Ford, Ontario’s Premier, has said that he has not been asked to testify, which is why he’s not testifying. But the big question is, will that change?

Cormac Mac Sweeney I actually asked the Commission if they’ve asked him to come testify and they say they don’t talk about who they’ve asked to come testify, aside from the original list that they’ve submitted to the public.

Jordan So how do we get from where we are now talking about what we knew and when we knew it, and the pointing fingers that you just described to the actual meat of the inquiry, which is, as you mentioned off the top, why the Emergencies Act was needed and was it justified? How do we get from all these details to those big, I don’t know, philosophical questions really well.

Cormac Mac Sweeney The Commission has designed its witness list in themes, essentially. And so they said right off the bat, the first thing they’re looking at is going to be what happened in the city of Ottawa. And so they’re going to be calling a lot of different witnesses at this certain stage to try and figure out the decision making, the incidents that happened within the city of Ottawa. Then they’re going to start to look towards the borders and the blockades that happened there. A couple of border mayors as well as provincial officials may be testifying in regards to those blockades and then they’re going to start to move towards provincial and federal responses. And of course, we’ll also hear from the convoy organizers who have been called to testify as well. And I think it’s through a lot of that. We’re already seeing a lot of the questioning. You know. To try and build up the defense for the Federal Government. At least. Where you hear things like Ottawa’s Mayor saying absolutely the Emergency’s Act was needed and that even though he didn’t request it. He said when it was invoked. He was so happy and he said almost immediately tow trucks were outside ready to go outside of his City Hall. And he said he later sent a letter of thanks to the federal government for taking that action in order to clear out the protesters. So you’re already seeing the elements of defense that are coming out through some of the testimony. The convoy lawyer is trying to establish that not all of the avenues that were available were exhausted, therefore the Emergencies act likely should not have been called. At least that’s sort of where I gauge his arguments to be heading in terms of trying to point out, well, did you try this, did you try this? And I assume during the closing statements of the lawyers at the end of all of this, they’re going to argue that not all of the options were exhausted before the federal government decided to take this unprecedented measure and invoking the Emergencies Act. But I think the heart of the matter is really going to come later on in the process, probably mid to late November, when we start to hear from the federal government. We have several ministers who will be testifying. The Prime Minister himself has said he’s agreed to testify at this committee. And that’s going to be key to getting to the heart of this matter. We also have a lot of evidence that is being put forward that we would never have access to, as I mentioned earlier, a lot of text messages, conversations, transcripts of one on one conversations. We discovered just the other day that the Prime Minister said to the Mayor of Ottawa that he believed Ontario Premier Doug Ford was hiding from his responsibilities for political reasons through the inaction of the province to deal with this convoy protest. You would never get that sort of insight and hear those sorts of details in any sort of investigation like this. It’s stunning the amount of information that we’re getting access to right now. And it’s only been, I think, three other commissions of inquiry in Canada’s history in which the federal government has waived cabinet confidence to make details like this available to the public. So it’s fascinating to see. And I think that’s where, when we hear from the Federal government, that’s where we’re going to get to the heart of the matter. And that’s where a lot of the lawyers, depending on what their position is, are either going to be grilling those federal politicians hard about whether this was necessary or not, or getting the defenses that there was nothing else that could be done in the Emergency Act had to be invoked because you mentioned political reasons that the Prime Minister hinted at.

Jordan I have to ask you, obviously the stated goal is to get to the bottom of why this happened and what happened, but you have these lawyers who are advocating for information to use to help their clients on the political side of this. I know Ottawa has an election coming up on Monday. I know this occupation itself was the source of huge tension between the federal liberals and conservatives back earlier this year. How much of this inquiry is going to be engineered or twisted for political point scoring at the local level?

Cormac Mac Sweeney You know, when you look at the municipal election here in Ottawa, it’s surprising that it hasn’t become as much of an issue in the race as one might think. But it is definitely an issue that is going to be on the minds of Canadians Councilor Catherine McKinney. They testified during this inquiry about their actions and trying to stand up for their residents and of course, for people who live in the area who are represented by them. They are going to have this in the back of their mind when they cast their ballot, if they haven’t done so already. And Catherine McKinney is a counselor who’s seeking the Mayor’s office and Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, who testified earlier, he’s outgoing. He’s not running for re election. And so we have this open race for the first time in a few years. So it’s going to be interesting to see what happens there. But speaking larger with the provincial and federal political scenes, there are a lot of questions for the Ford government right now about what happened and why there wasn’t as much support given to the city of Ottawa during the convoy protest. And to be fair to the Premier and the provincial government, they say they believe that this was a police matter and they should not be getting involved politically because you don’t direct police. Although city officials did say that they were looking in other ways to try and get help from the provincial government and were either met with hesitation or silence. But nonetheless, I think the opposition parties are going to start to use this against Premier Doug Ford and the PC government. We may still have time before we see a provincial election in Ontario, but nonetheless, it’s one of those things that any political party will try and take advantage of for their own political gain. On the federal scene, it’s interesting, and it will be interesting to see where we go because it could be 2025 before we see another federal election. But current Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, whether you believe it’s greater or you have criticisms of it, has appealed largely to a lot of the people who were upset about COVID measures. It helped bring him to power as the Conservative leader. It was a part of his strategy, and it’s still an element within the party and within his base that he has appealed to. And he’s been vocal about his opposition to COVID mandates. And I think that that is going to be an element, whether it’s used by him against the federal government or whether it’s used by the Trudeau Liberals against the Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre. There have been a lot of public opinion polls that have shown that people across the country are not too fond of the convoy protest. So pictures of Poilievre standing with those protesters and saying that he believed in sort of what they were doing in certain ways, it might come back during a general election. So I think both the Liberals and NDP might be targeting the Conservatives on this. The Conservatives also may use it for their own advantage against the Trudeau Liberals.

Jordan So we’re back to the spiderman meme.

Cormac Mac Sweeney Yes, exactly. I just don’t think we’ve seen the end of this and I think everything comes out during an election campaign. Every party will use every tool they can to take their opponent down a notch and I think we’ll see a lot of that, especially in the federal election, whenever that comes.

Jordan So, last question, then, and calling back to the fact that this is an information overload, how often in covering this so far have you seen or heard something that makes you go, Whoa, and how frequent is that? And maybe just what’s been the most surprising thing you’ve learned so far?

Cormac Mac Sweeney One of the more incredible things that come out that just happened before we started speaking, was that Councilor Diane Deans, who was chair of the Police Services Board through much of the convoy protest before she was ousted from that role by her council colleagues. She says she called it an insurrection within the Ottawa Police Force during the biggest crisis that the city was facing. She said that there were elements within the force that were not supportive of then Police Chief Peter Slowly. He was not getting the support that he needed during the Convoy protest and during this crisis. And she believes that people within the force were using that crisis against him. And she even named a name. She said that there was an acting Deputy Chief, Patricia Ferguson, who I believe is on the witness list as well, but she hasn’t testified yet. She said that Slowly had told her that Ferguson had to be sent home for a few days because she was kind of wrapped up in some of the elements of all of this. And it’s stunning to hear an elected official say that there was an insurrection within a police force as a police force was trying to deal with the biggest crisis that it’s faced in. I’m not going to say ever. I don’t know all the history of the City of Ottawa. But this has got to be up there and it’s amazing to hear what was happening. Or at least what she says was happening. Because this is her version of events. We’ve yet to hear from the then Police Chief Peter Slowly, or from Patricia Ferguson yet, so we’ll have to wait to hear those details from them as to what happened. But stunning testimony so far. And we’re only just getting into this inquiry because this goes on for at least another month.

Jordan Cormac, thank you so much for walking us through all of this. It’s a lot.

Cormac Mac Sweeney It is indeed. Anytime, Jordan. I’m sure we’ll be chatting again.

Jordan Cormac McSweeney, Parliament Hill reporter for City News, covering the convoy inquiry, that was the big story. For more, you can head to the bigstorypodcast CA. If you happened to be in Ottawa during the convoy, we would love to hear your thoughts on what you are hoping to get from the inquiry. Do you just. Want closure. Is there something you don’t know that you need to? Or would you prefer to forget the whole damn thing ever happened? We’d love to know. You can always reach out to us. You can find us on Twitter at thebigictory FPN. You can talk to us via email hello at thebigstorypodcast CA. And of course, you can even call and leave a message. 416-935-5935. If you’re listening to The Big Story and a podcast player that lets you review podcasts and you have not yet given us a rating or a review, please fix that. Thanks for listening. I’m Jordan Heath-Rawling. We’ll talk tomorrow.