Declaration of Emergency Committee on May 10th, 2022

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

Are you part of the Liberal government, Ms. Lucki?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Not at all.

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

Are you a donor to the Liberal Party?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

No.

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

Are you sure about that?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I'm sure.

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

Are you still citing cabinet confidentiality?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

Yes.

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

Mr. Vigneault, are you going to cite that as well?

[David Vigneault]

Madam Chair, if there's a specific question, I'm happy to try to answer it.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Mr. Brock, your time is up.

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

Thank you.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Mr. Naqvi, you're next.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thanks, Madam Chair.

Before I start my questions, I just want to confirm that we have five minutes in this round.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Yes, Mr. Naqvi.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay. I'm going to ask questions for four minutes. I will share the last minute of my time with Ms. May, if that's okay with the chair.

[The Joint Chair, Hon. Gwen Boniface]

Go ahead.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thank you very much.

I'll go to you, Commissioner Lucki, and build on the conversation you were having with the chair on the police service of jurisdiction. In this case I'm talking about Ottawa.

Can you describe to us what the role of the RCMP was, prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act in Ottawa, when the protest/occupation was taking place?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

The first weekend, our role was part of our federal mandate, which is the protection of parliamentarians and the Prime Minister. We work with the parliamentary precinct and we protect the parliamentary precinct, which includes the Senate and the Parliament.

Because we have other resources located within the city of Ottawa, we also provided frontline assistance to Ottawa Police Service as well as other specialized resources. But they are the police of jurisdiction, so we worked under their lead in that regard.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

For that to happen, prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, your RCMP officers had to be sworn in by Ottawa Police Service in order to perform those frontline duties.

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

The frontline duties, yes.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Okay.

Can you tell us of any other assistance you were providing to the City of Ottawa in the earlier days of that occupation, as requests were coming in?

[Commr Brenda Lucki]

I'll pass that to Mike Duheme, because he was leading that.

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you, Commissioner and Madam Chair.

To your question, early on in the stage we did have the national capital region command centre stood up. That comprises the OPS, OPP, other law enforcement from the Quebec side, transport, ambulance technicians and firemen. It's just a coordination hub to make sure that everybody's in tune with what's going on, and if an emergency is called, we have fire trucks and so on. It's more a coordination centre for information that comes in before we go into the operational mode. That was stood up early.

That's also used as a hub for intelligence that's going on for the event.

[Yasir Naqvi, Liberal, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Duheme.

Before I pass it on to Ms. May—I just want to make sure she gets her time—I have a very quick question. What changed? What are some of the key things that changed for RCMP, once the Emergencies Act was invoked, in dealing with and responding to the occupation that was taking place in Ottawa?