The majority of the federal records connected to the Freedom Convoy were not disclosed in the 2022 inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act against protesters, and will not be made public for years, according to a report by the privy council.
The records labelled confidential by the Public Order Emergency Commission include 16,632 classified as “secret” and 372 as “top secret.”
Only commission lawyers and the judge leading the inquiry had complete access to the documents, according to the report.
“The commissioner and counsel had access to all information produced to the commission,” said the report. “Given that the commission was an independent commission of inquiry, the Privy Council Office cannot comment on how specific documents were used by the commission. These questions would need to be posed to former Commissioner Justice Rouleau.”
The 31,844 documents have been put into the national archives and could remain there for years, according to the report.
“Will Canadians have access to the documents which were not published or otherwise referred to publicly and if so, how, when, and where?” said the report. “Following an archival assessment of the Commission holdings by Library and Archives Canada the Commission records of historical value will be transferred to the archives for long-term access and preservation.”
Once the documents have been “processed” members of the public will be able to submit requests to access the material, according to the Privy Council.
Documents that have been released to the public show that cabinet members made false claims about the violence of the protests and that police had asked for the Emergencies Act to be invoked.
“There was no serious violence in Ottawa, the main reason for the Emergencies Act,” RCMP Deputy Commissioner Brian Brennan wrote in a Feb. 21, 2022 email.
“It is not an ‘extremist’ movement,” wrote Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Patrick Morris in a Feb. 22, 2022 memo. “It is not comprised of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The actual leaders are not violent extremists with histories of violent criminal acts.”
In the decision, the judge said he agreed with the government that the convoy situation in Ottawa needed an urgent resolution. However, he said there were other Canadian laws that could have been used to deal with the protests, adding that the provincial governments of Quebec and Ontario could have handled the situation without federal intervention.
Ottawa invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, 2022, in response to the Freedom Convoy protest, which saw protestors and their vehicles encamped in Ottawa to demonstrate against COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
