Not long after hundreds of vehicles entered Ottawa to protest COVID-19 restrictions last January, the highest ranking public servant in the city pushed back against the idea they could have been easily prevented from doing so.
“It’s a bit naive for somebody to believe that the police and the city should have just prevented the protest from happening,” said Ottawa City Manager Steve Kanellakos in a text message on Jan. 30.
Trucks associated with the Freedom Convoy started arriving in Ottawa on Jan. 28 and settled in the downtown area over the weekend, with thousands of supporters joining in.
Kanellakos had sent the text to his colleague Kim Ayotte, general manager of Emergency Services at the city, and he was commenting on a news article about Ottawa residents being displeased with the protest.
The text message was mentioned during proceedings of the Public Order Emergency Commission.
Kanellakos testified before the commission on Oct. 17 and defended the initial police assessment about the size of the protest that was about to enter the city, as well as the right to protest itself.
“From my point of view, and I’ve been doing this a long time in terms of dealing with emergencies, it wasn’t unusual to have a variance in the views of people who thought it was going to be bigger, longer, smaller, there were all kinds of opinions on what that would be,” said Kanellakos.
“The only information we could rely on was Ottawa Police in terms of reliable information at that time.”
Kanellakos was reacting to evidence brought forth by the commission’s counsel which indicates Ottawa had information that a potentially large numbers of trucks would enter the city with the intent to remain for an extended period of time.
Counsel presented an email sent presumably from convoy organizer Canada Unity to the Ottawa Hoteliers Association in late January, saying 10,000 to 15,000 convoy participants are seeking accommodation in the city for a duration of 30 to 90 days.
“The Canada United truckers would like to extend its offering to all the hotels in this region, this is a peaceful convoy of hard working individuals from across this country to show our government that its not okay to discriminate and enforce unlawful mandates to all Canadians,” said the letter.
Despite this piece of information, Kanellakos said the initial assessment from the city and police was that the protest would take place over the weekend and last possibly until the following week on Wednesday (Feb. 2).
‘It Went Quite Well’
After the first weekend of protest, Kanellakos said “we all thought it went quite well.”“There wasn’t any violence, people were protesting, it was managed, there were no major incidents that weekend, other than honking” and a disruption to neighbourhoods.
“Was there any extreme violence or anybody seriously injured? No,” said Kanellakos.
The city manager also addressed suggestions that trucks should have been prevented from entering downtown Ottawa.
He said the result could have been Hwy 417 being blocked by people parking their trucks, which would have disrupted the entire city. Instead, concentrating trucks in an area made it more manageable for police.
Despite the heavy influx of trucks and protesters into the city over the first weekend, Kanellakos told the commission there wasn’t a strong effort to try to prevent more protesters or convoys from joining on the subsequent weekend.
“I think they [police] were trying to guide them and prevent them from entering certain areas, but there was still the notion that we can’t prevent them from their rights to protest and come in, and that’s the posture that was taken for that second week.”
The agreement was never fully actioned, with Kanellakos blaming protesters and protesters’ representatives blaming police.
A few hours after the agreement began to be implemented, the Liberal government declared a public order emergency on Feb. 14 to remove the protest through coercive measures, such as the freezing of supporters’ financial accounts, and police action.
The police operation started on Feb. 18 and was completed by Feb. 20.
The Public Order Emergency Commission has been established as required by law after the Emergencies Act is invoked and will conduct public hearings until late November.
