Declaration of Emergency Committee on Oct. 27th, 2022

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Thank you.

Thank you, Senator Patterson. We welcome you to the committee.

I want to come back to the question of jurisdiction.

Mayor, you can talk about this.

The Police Services Act—to my knowledge, since it's been a while since I opened it up and looked at it—would normally say that the police service of jurisdiction would be Ottawa. If there's a requirement in an important investigation—normally it wouldn't be a city the size of Ottawa, but if a smaller department had a major case—then the Crown could step in and ask that the OPP take over the investigation, as an example. That's within the act, as far as I'm familiar with it.

When you look at it now, in reflection, do you see that there should be a provision or some agreement between the three levels of government that would look at how you do an integrated command at the front end of an incident like this, that it would be mandatory versus left to the police agencies to decide?

[Jim Watson]

I think that's a very good point. I think it would be covered under what Mr. Kanellakos indicated would be the post-mortem that we're going to do. I agree with you; we have to do it sooner than later because we might see one of these incidents happen sooner than later. It's also about people's memories. The longer you wait, the more difficult it is to remember what happened on that specific day or that specific hour, who called who and so on.

Certainly, our obligation, particularly for Mathieu and me, who are both leaving politics, is to make sure that our successors are never put in a position where we have this kind of horrific experience, whether it's a lack of coordination by all three police forces....

We all share the blame. The buck stops with me as mayor. I take responsibility that we let down the people of Ottawa. We have to do better.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Maybe to Mr. Kanellakos, at the government level—I'm thinking of your counterparts in the provincial government and at the federal level—again is there something that should be...?

People, the public, would think that these people would naturally work together in this case, but it wasn't necessarily the case. Should that be something that is either covered by agreement or legislatively?

[Steve Kanellakos]

What was evident and something that we haven't had to deal with necessarily in the past.... The only other time I can remember is after the shooting of Corporal Cirillo.

There is no memorandum of understanding between the federal government and the City of Ottawa in the federal precinct for how to deal with an emergency of this kind of scale. Even at the provincial level, there are mechanisms with their emergency operations and ours, back and forth, but there isn't a memorandum of understanding, any kind of documentation or pre-work that has been done to understand how we will come together to lead an incident that escalates and scales up so that we can quickly mobilize.

To his credit, Deputy Minister Rob Stewart called me after the first weekend and said that we should talk. I didn't know who Rob Stewart was. He became a key link for me into the federal government and brought the deputy minister of community together with us and the police chief, etc. Eventually it expanded to the RCMP commissioner, OPP commissioner, etc.

That became an ad hoc thing where we came together to discuss situational awareness and what other steps we could take to try to mitigate what was happening. To me, from a lessons learned viewpoint, I've been thinking a lot about these things as they happened. I think it's a pretty fundamental course of action that we need to have for the nation's capital.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

On that, then, I suspect that it would be helpful to all of you to understand the role of each of the governments and document what that means in advance in a situation like this. There were multiple incidents that were taking place when the events in Ottawa were going on. I think the commissioner of the OPP testified to this today, that he had the whole province, and there were a number of different.... We had all kinds of things going. You could only stretch a provincial police service so far. Like the Ottawa Police Service, they were on their knees when they finished. We need to recognize that.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

We have completed the third round of questions and are now beginning the fourth and final round.

Mr. Brock, you have the floor for four minutes.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

We talk about takeaways or lessons learned. One thing I've reflected upon about this particular incident is the extreme naïveté demonstrated by so many organizations, from police organizations to government officials to you four gentlemen—specifically Mayor Watson. You all felt that this was going to go away within 48 hours.

This was organized for weeks prior to these truckers and their supporters arriving in the city of Ottawa. They were coming from the west coast, from the east coast and from everywhere in between. Given that their mandate, which was widely shared across all kinds of social media platforms, that they weren't leaving until all federal mandates were removed, how could anyone be so naive to think that in 48 hours, someone who's travelled from Vancouver, British Columbia would just say, “Okay, my point's been made” and then return?

They were there to speak to a government official. That didn't happen. I wanted to throw that out for consideration.

We've heard on a couple of occasions from my colleague Mr. Virani, who took two opportunities to describe the actions of a certain member of Parliament.

I listened very carefully to your responses, Mayor Watson. Clearly, your indignation with respect to that member of Parliament was very evident. You commented that the particular member was giving it “credibility” and that it was “salt to the wound”.

I didn't hear that same indignation when the Prime Minister of this country was the origin of, the genesis for, the anger that many people had about mandates. That's the same Prime Minister who called these people “extremists”, “racist, misogynistic”, those with “unacceptable views”, those who “don't believe in science” and those who take up space.

Were you concerned about the Prime Minister using that language, Mayor Watson?

[Jim Watson]

No. What I was concerned about was seeing swastika flags and Confederate flags—

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

That's not the question. Were you concerned about the Prime Minister's language?

[Jim Watson]

No, I wasn't.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

Obviously not, because you used that same language yourself. You called those protesters “yahoos”.

[Jim Watson]

Yes.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

They were “disgraceful” and “despicable”, engaging in “unacceptable behaviour”. The vast majority of these people were not being respectful.

They weren't just outsiders, Mayor Watson. These were people who live in your city—

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair. The member asked a question and did not allow the witness to answer.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

He did answer.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

The five minutes are for a member of the committee who has the floor.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Witnesses deserve a modicum of respect.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I agree with you. If there is a lack of respect, I will intervene. I think each of you should use the time remaining to you as you see fit. If one of you wants to speak for five minutes, I can't interrupt, unless there's a lack of respect.

I have thus far found the tone a little harsh, but haven't felt that there is really a lack of respect.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

He asked a question and didn't allow the witness to answer.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I'm going to allow Mr. Brock to resume.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

May I proceed? Thank you.

People who were there to support those truckers also included residents of your city. Were they yahoos as well? Were they those who were holding unacceptable views? Were they engaging in unacceptable behaviour?

I think the answer is obvious. No, they were not.

But you had no problem answering the question because it was important for you to set the agenda. It was important for you to maintain your liberal ideology. We all know about your background, Mayor Watson. We know you're a former federal staffer to a Liberal member. We know about your member of Parliament status in the province—that you were a minister. We know all about that.

I'll bet you didn't critique the Prime Minister when he took a knee when protesters were on the Hill during COVID. You probably said nothing about that. Of course not.

You were also criticized—

[Arif Virani, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, I don't understand the relevance of this questioning. I don't appreciate the tone of the member.

He asked for a respectful tone by members of the committee. I think the witnesses also deserve respect for their testimony. He doesn't need to agree with it, but he doesn't need to be disagreeable in the way he's phrasing his questions.

[Jim Watson]

Let me just clarify one thing, Mr. Brock—

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Please wait a moment, Mr. Watson, a point of order has been raised and I'd like to deal with it.

I understood your intervention, Mr. Virani. As I told Ms. Bendayan earlier, I think that the tone may be harsh, but that there have not been any disrespectful comments thus far. I am therefore going to allow Mr. Brock to finish what he has to say.

Over to you, Mr. Brock, you have one minute left.

[Larry Brock, Conservative, Brantford—Brant, ON]

You were criticized after your testimony at the commission by a member of the press. The headline read “Watson wanted to protect Trudeau, embarrass Ford during convoy”. We have testimony from your city manager, Mr. Kanellakos, who basically put on record that you were quite hesitant about even engaging in the whole thought about having a mediator, because what would that do to Mr. Trudeau's reputation? What would that do to the reputation of the federal government? His exact words were:

He was very reluctant. His initial reaction was we shouldn’t and thought that doing that was going to put pressure on the federal government in terms of, you know, if we meet with them, someone else would have to meet with them, 'Kanellakos said'.

The article also quoted Justin Trudeau as saying: “'Doug Ford has been hiding from his responsibility on it for political reasons,' Trudeau said”.