Declaration of Emergency Committee on May 10th, 2022

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Did the RCMP seek advice from anyone or request to use the Emergencies Act in the Coastal GasLink site attack, or were you told that it was too political and that it would interfere with the government's actions?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No, we're not interfered with by the government. That was a crime in progress.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Well, my question, though, is, did you ask anyone, even your own legal department, for advice on whether you should be invoking the Emergencies Act at Coastal GasLink? That was a violent attack. There was millions and millions of dollars in damage. A booby trap was set around the officers. People were threatened with axes. It was a violent attack and it was crowdfunded. We know this. Did your organization seek advice or request it?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

With regard to any advice that I got from my legal department, that would be under solicitor-client privilege, but there was no advice—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

If you're the client, you can revoke that if you wish.

My question is just whether you asked for advice. I'm not asking for the advice; I'm asking if you sought advice.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Okay.

Just so you are aware, and in fairness to you, as you may not be aware of this, but I do know that your organization did seek legal advice on that.

Commissioner, did you offer any advice to the Minister of Public Safety or any government minister respecting the Emergencies Act?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I can't speak specifically to any advice that was done in cabinet. What I can say is that each and every day during the convoy I provided a situational report of what happened from—

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Would you undertake to provide those situational reports to this committee?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Anything that we had in paper was given to PCO. They are the keepers and the distributors of all the information regarding this event.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

Yes or no, section 5 of the RCMP—

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Mr. Motz, I'm sorry, you couldn't see me, but I was waving to tell you your five minutes was up.

[Glen Motz, Conservative, Medicine Hat—Cardston—Warner, AB]

I'm sorry. We need an alarm, I think.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Just look this way. We'll get to you.

Next I'll go to Madame Bendayan.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

To the witnesses, thank you for being here. I'll start off with a very recent and concerning example of what members of the Conservative opposition have been saying. The member for Carleton, Pierre Poilievre, has recently indicated that the RCMP were taking orders from the Prime Minister's Office and from ministers' offices. At a recent leadership event, Mr. Poilievre stated that he believed what he saw was the Trudeau government “seizing the bank accounts of political enemies”.

I wonder if you could comment on that. At last week's meeting, we had the pleasure of welcoming witnesses from FINTRAC and the Department of Finance, all of whom testified on the record that the government was in no way involved in the freezing of bank accounts directly, that it was the RCMP working to provide information to the banks, where necessary. I'm hoping you can clarify what the RCMP's role was in that, and also clarify, to the best of your ability, what the government's involvement, if any, was in the freezing of bank accounts.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

We weren't involved in the actual freezing of any bank accounts.

I will pass it to my colleague from federal policing, but what I can say is that what we did was that we gathered the information from the various police agencies, and because we have previous relationships with the various banks, we facilitated providing information to the banks. It was their decision as to whether they would freeze or not.

Going to your first question, at no time were we directed by the government.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you.

I am going to turn to the situation at the borders, which was of grave concern to me ever since these illegal blockades. It is my understanding that the blockades at the border, at Emerson, Surrey, Coutts and elsewhere, were not cleared until after the invocation of the Emergencies Act. You're free to comment on that, if you will.

Also, from an economic perspective, we are talking about the border crossings that are responsible for, literally, billions of dollars worth of trade going back and forth between the United States and Canada. To my knowledge, in the history of our country, no such blockades have ever existed. Again, you're free to comment on that.

My question for you is, do you feel that the deterrent effect of having invoked the Emergencies Act was useful? I'm looking at a statement by RCMP Sergeant Paul Manaigre, who indicated that in his dealings with people at the blockades of our international trade corridors, it was indeed very useful to encourage people who were blocking our borders to leave voluntarily. Would you agree that the Emergencies Act had that effect?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Yes, I would agree with what Paul Manaigre said, in the sense that when we have protests, it's all about reducing the number of people there so that if we ever did have to enforce, it would be safe. We heard from people saying, “I'm leaving because I don't want my account to get frozen”, or, “I'm leaving because I don't want my truck to be towed”. We had people actually saying that in both the Ottawa situation and across various other protest areas.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Just to be perfectly clear, they were not saying that prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No. What I can say is that especially in the Ottawa context, what we did is that we tried to reduce the footprint of the number of people there via conversations through our liaison teams, police liaison teams. We tried to reduce the footprint and to get people to be motivated to leave. Of course, there were people who left after the weekends, but again, a lot of people would show up during the week. There was a group who never left the entire time. There were authorities within the Emergencies Act that served as motivators and as deterrents to people coming back in.

[Rachel Bendayan, Liberal, Outremont, QC]

Thank you.

I'm going to touch very briefly on the topic of children being involved in these illegal activities.

I understand, again, that the RCMP has commented on the fact that the Emergencies Act provided additional authority to you and to security in order to ensure the safety of children.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

The Emergencies Act had the authority to prevent children from being brought into the situation, and of course, if we were ever going to go towards enforcement action, enforcement action and children...it just doesn't go well together—

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Commissioner, I'm sorry to cut you off, but Madam Bendayan's time is up.

We'll now move to Mr. Fortin.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I thank you for your presentations, Ms. Lucki and Mr. Vigneault.

My question is for you, Ms. Lucki.

Thus far, I understand from your remarks that, about a week before February 14, you had discussions concerning a possible declaration of a state of emergency.

First, could you tell me who you had those discussions with? What was discussed, exactly? What were the sources of concern? What elements suggested that a proclamation could be issued declaring a state of emergency?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

First, most of any of the discussions that we had were within the deputy minister community, so of course there were representatives from Customs, Transport, Public Safety—I'm trying to think who else—anybody who sort of had parts of the situation..... I think it was PCO and Justice. So we would discuss—