Declaration of Emergency Committee on Oct. 6th, 2022

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good evening, Mr. Sloly.

I am just trying to understand the sequence. In late January and early February, the trucks gradually settled here in the downtown. I believe I understand that you did not ask to have the trucks towed.

Why were they not removed from the street as soon as they stopped and they were trying to settle on Wellington Street?

[Peter Sloly]

The red zone areas along Wellington over into Rideau and down through the parkway just west of us here were literally filled within minutes. Efforts were made to hold negotiations that were in place to allow for emergency lanes of traffic and to provide for a period of demonstration that would then end. That clearly did not transpire throughout the course of that day through the weekend.

Those red zones were essentially filled within the morning hours of Saturday—

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Yes, but why...

[Peter Sloly]

There was no further movement into those red zones, but there was egress from them when we could negotiate that, when people chose to leave.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Why did you not clear the trucks off the street from the outset?

[Peter Sloly]

The speed around which the main convoys settled in the red zone area was such that we were not able to move in with heavy tow trucks and sufficient personnel. The reactions and actions coordinated at a very high level by the early-arriving elements of the convoys were such that the level of escalations I referred to earlier increased the risk to public safety, which included officer safety.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Yes, but there were actually trucks settling in on Wellington Street, in front of Parliament. Correct me if I am wrong, I am not a police officer and I may be naive, but it seems to me that you could have called some tow truck drivers and told them to come and clear Wellington Street immediately.

I thought I understood that you had trouble mobilizing the tow truck drivers, who were reluctant or did not want to intervene. You can tell me whether that is true or not. If it is, did you take the necessary measures to get it done, to force them to come and tow the trucks?

[Peter Sloly]

Yes, sir. The issue was not access to tow trucks in the first few hours. While we didn't have a fleet of them, we had access to, I believe, between three and five heavy tow trucks that could have been staged and moved around the downtown core.

The issue was not whether or not there was a bylaw offence taking place. The issue was public safety risks associated with trying to remove large trucks in large numbers with large numbers of demonstrators, residents, business owners and other people in the downtown core.

There was a public safety risk associated with that type of intervention enforcement action that prevented us from starting to come in and tag and tow trucks. That said, the vehicles that were in those red zones were continually identified; owners were identified. It is my understanding, although I didn't see the charges laid after I left office, that charges were identified and laid against the operators and owners accordingly for bylaw offences and provincial act offences. There are a large number of Criminal Code offences that I believe are still either under investigation or before the courts.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Yes, I understand there were major safety concerns, and you are right to mention them. However, do you not think that letting these trucks settle on Wellington Street, in the red zone, presented even greater safety risks?

For example, a fire truck could not have got through, if there had been a fire, or an ambulance, if someone had been injured.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that there were all sorts of concerns of that nature that exacerbated the safety problems. Do you not think you would not have had those problems if the trucks had been cleared at the outset?

[Peter Sloly]

There certainly was a very complicated security risk assessment being done, literally on a daily basis. It was not until we were able to secure the ultimately 2,000 extra police officers that a level of scale on the policing side could match the scale and capabilities on the people side, particularly but not exclusively in the red zone.

The issue, again, was the level of public safety risk, the resources and capabilities we could bring to bear on removing that risk, versus trying to do it in an under-resourced, underprepared way, which we ultimately believed could have increased the likelihood of public safety risks, including serious bodily harm and loss of life.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Mr. Fortin, your time is up.

We will go now to the second round, and Mr. Green.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Thank you very much.

Welcome to the committee, Mr. Sloly.

This is a good opportunity for this committee to perhaps help clear the air on some inconsistencies that we've seen, both in the public discourse around this in the lead-up to your departure and what I would personally view as a breakdown in policing as it relates to the occupation and events that ultimately led to the invocation of this act.

In his testimony before this committee, when I put a question to him about your statement that there may not be a policing solution to the demonstration and that the institutions and police services were unprepared for the convoy, Minister Bill Blair said, “I accept Chief Sloly's assessment that he was unprepared for what took place in Ottawa.”

I want to give you a chance to respond to that. Were you unprepared for what happened in Ottawa, or was the Ottawa Police Service unprepared for what happened here?

[Peter Sloly]

Well, unfortunately the context in which I made my statement was clearly misunderstood.

Let me be clear, and I said it again today: Institutions, public institutions, across this country were unprepared for what happened during those weeks. That included police services and national security organizations, and yes, that included the Ottawa Police Service, but there were structural deficits across multiple institutional lines.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Within the OPS, there was reporting, at least through the RCMP, about internal documents that worried about the threat of Mounties who were sympathetic to them leaking information to convoy protesters. There were certainly first-hand accounts and livestreams of the relationship that seemed to form between them and some officers in a very co-operative way in the occupation.

In the lead-up to it, and in fact on your resignation on February 15, you stated that you were confident that the Ottawa Police Service was better positioned to end the occupation. What changed, materially, from when you took on the preplanning for this and when you resigned? Did the morale or the actions or inaction of your officers have anything to do with it?

[Peter Sloly]

Singularly, the difference in my statement that we were better prepared..., We had a significantly upgraded plan from almost a week before. That plan called for a massive incursion of resources. I had identified 1,800; ultimately, there were 2,000.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

If you were prepared and you had a plan, why resign?

[Peter Sloly]

Are you asking the reason for my resignation, sir?

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

That's correct.

[Peter Sloly]

There are a number of reasons that go into any person's decision to resign, particularly from a high-profile public office. Many of them are extremely personal to me and my family, but the number one reason was for public safety. The reason for public safety was that there were increasing levels of doubt about the capabilities of the Ottawa Police Service, lowering levels of public trust in the midst of an unfolding local and national security crisis. When trust starts to leave policing, that increases public safety risks.

As the head of the organization, I had accountability for the organization and I ultimately made a decision, for public safety, to remove myself from the equation.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Do you feel that perhaps you took too much of a centre stage?

Obviously, in policing, with the position that you're in, you would have deputies who would be operational. Which deputies would have been operational to the implementation and planning processes?

[Peter Sloly]

The operational deputy was acting deputy chief Trish Ferguson.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

What role would interim chief Bell have played?

[Peter Sloly]

He was assigned intelligence operations.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

Okay.

From my standpoint and that of many other people from the outside looking in, it looked like perhaps there may have been a scenario in which you didn't have complete command and control over frontline officers. Is that a fair or unfair assessment?

[Peter Sloly]

Our frontline officers did an amazing job in almost unhuman circumstances, with minus 35° temperatures for weeks on end. Our frontline members, civilian and sworn, did a great job as much as they possibly could in those circumstances and throughout my tenure as chief of the service.