Police Viewed Tools, Tire Irons as Weapons That Could Be Used by Freedom Convoy Protesters

Police and protesters face off as authorities move to end the Freedom Convoy demonstration against vaccine mandates, in Ottawa on Feb. 18, 2022. The Canadian Press/Cole Burston

Weapons among Freedom Convoy protesters, as claimed by the Ottawa Police Service in past reports, could include items such as tire irons or tools, a parliamentary special committee heard on Nov. 3

“A weapon can be many things,” said acting deputy chief of the Ottawa Police Service Patricia Ferguson while testifying before the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency.

“There’s been focus on guns in most of these conversations, but a weapon can be a knife. It can be a tire iron. It can be a number of different things,” she said, as first reported by Blacklock’s Reporter.

“A weapon is any object that can be used to threaten or assault somebody with. So, knives, I think, tools, tire irons—those types of things were in the mix.”

OPS interim chief Steve Bell said in March that police found no firearms in the possession of protesters during the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa in February.

“Were weapons found? Were loaded firearms found, yes or no?” Conservative MP Dane Lloyd asked Bell during a House of Commons public safety committee meeting on March 24.

“No, not relating to any charges to this point,” Bell replied.

Bell added that cabinet would have been informed if any firearms had been found in the trucks of protesters.

‘Don’t Have a Solid Number’

Ferguson said Nov. 3 that police didn’t search every truck and so can’t say conclusively whether or not protesters had firearms.

“We did not search every vehicle that we cleared as we had to move through the city fairly methodically and quickly for the safety of our officers and everyone involved,” she said.

“Many of those vehicles were not searched and so we don’t know if there were guns in them or not.”

Senator Jane Cordy asked Ferguson, “How many and what types of weapons were seized by the police?”

“In terms of the amount of guns, if that’s what people are focusing on, I don’t have a solid number on that,” Ferguson said.

She added that there were only “threats or intimations” of guns being present in vehicles, but none were actually found.

“How many weapons had been seized based on the information reported in your threat assessment?” asked NDP MP Matthew Green on Nov. 3.

“I don’t have that information,” Bell replied.

RCMP sent a briefing note to cabinet deputy ministers on Feb. 14 saying, “Intelligence information also suggests that convoy protesters are beginning to weaponize themselves.”

However, a report on the same day by the public safety department’s Government Operations Centre described the protesters as peaceful.

“No concerns at this time,” noted the Canadian Security Intelligence Service in the report.

On Oct. 19 at the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings on the use of the Emergencies Act, Supt. Patrick Morris, commander of the Intelligence Bureau of Ontario Provincial Police, testified that there was no evidence of firearms.

“I want to be clear on this,” he said. “We produced no intelligence to indicate these individuals would be armed. There has been a lot of hyperbole around that.”