Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 17th, 2022

[Mark Gerretsen]

How much has it been this year?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

I'm sorry. We are out of time. The good news is that you can always send information to the committee to continue these conversations.

Mr. Gerretsen, I'd say 50% of your time was through the Chair, so you get E for effort.

Ms. Gaudreau, I know you will direct all your comments to the chair.

You have the floor for six minutes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I have six minutes to ask a million questions, like a new parliamentarian.

I'm going to take the liberty of asking my questions in quick succession. I would also like all answers to be succinct.

I have made an important observation and I am thinking of the citizens of my constituency when I say this, people who were worried. We don't want this to happen again.

What I have heard is that six police forces are working together. There have been changes after the terrorist act in 2014.

Madam Chair, my question is for Mr. Beaudoin, but perhaps someone else could answer it.

We are talking about a large command centre. When were other police services approached?

[Luc Beaudoin]

I can answer. Mr. Bell can add his comments afterwards.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

When was it?

[Luc Beaudoin]

This was done from the outset. In the week before the events, we had already started our discussions.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

All right.

I'll now put the question to Mr. Bell.

[Chief Steve Bell]

Madam Chair, as the convoy moved across the country, we had a unified intelligence group that was struck between ourselves, the OPP, RCMP and national security as well as other policing agencies. That progressed as the convoy came here to an integrated command centre between us, RCMP and OPP in or about the first week of the convoy occurring. The command structure was evolving as we moved ahead, but there were always succinct, constructive conversations between us and our partners in terms of planning and how we—

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

That's fine.

I wasted a lot of time. I think I understood.

This happened in the first week, which means that no preventive measures had been taken. Everyone knew what was coming, but there was no mention of a command centre.

Who's the ultimate responsible party? Six police departments to coordinate must be quite a headache.

I'd like to reassure the people back home. I come to work here and I've been extremely worried.

Who can answer me?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Madam Chair, from the beginning, the lead in the operation was the Ottawa Police Service. We offered them our support.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Chair, it is my understanding that the Ottawa Police Service, our security partner, was unable to make prior interventions to preserve the safety of parliamentarians, among others.

Some officers told me there was nothing they could do. They shouted and gave loud directions, but they didn't get through. I don't understand that.

Can anyone explain to me what happened?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Madam Chair, I would like to know who the question is for. If it's addressed to the Ottawa Police Service, Mr. Bell can answer it.

[Chief Steve Bell]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's important to realize that this was, as was indicated by every one of the representatives who spoke on police services today, an unprecedented incident. We had never seen this before in Canadian history. It hadn't happened across North America.

What you've seen since then is the concerns of the safety and security of parliamentarians, the safety and security of visitors to this city and, mainly, of the citizens who live here. All have been front and centre. That's why you've seen the posture and stance that we've taken, moving ahead in creating an exclusionary zone where vehicle-based protests may not occur. We actively balance that with the need to maintain the ability for people to access Parliament and for people to be able to protest at the seat of our democracy.

There have been lessons learned from the convoy, and you've seen those applied over a number of protest demonstrations since then with very successful outcomes.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Madam Chair, I was not here in 2014, but those who were here mentioned to me that lessons were learned from that event.

There have been adjustments to the RCMP, which has a specific parliamentary service for us. However, this applies to the perimeter of the Centre Block, which is currently being refurbished. However, those adjustments have not been expanded.

If I understand correctly, lessons were learned from the events of 2014 and in 2022, new ones are being learned. In 2030, if something else happens, will we still have to learn from it?

I want to be reassured. There are six police departments. For me to be reassured, we would have to expand the perimeter, have a big command and follow the lead.

Is this what is needed to reassure the citizens and to reassure us, not to mention public safety for the citizens who come to the capital?

Who wants to answer that question? Who agrees with that? Who thinks this is a solution?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Madam Chair, I can answer part of that question.

As was mentioned, six police forces were integrated. In fact, there were many more than six as different police forces from around the country came to assist us.

What happened was an exceptional situation.

In 2014, there were indeed recommendations. There were 67, to be exact, as a result of the events that occurred that year. Most of those recommendations were put in place by the Parliamentary Protective Service and the RCMP. It wasn't really a question of structure, in short.

As the first director of the Parliamentary Protective Service, I can say that in 2015, there was already talk of expanding the operational security of the parliamentary precinct.

[Marie-Hélène Gaudreau, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

I thank the witnesses very much; we could have put 10 million questions to them.

I would really like to have recommendations in relation to what we have just experienced, so that we can learn relevant lessons, have a lead and work upstream, because all this is not normal. Unfortunately, there was a rally in the week that all this happened.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you very much, Ms. Gaudreau.

Now, Ms. Blaney, six minutes go to you.

[Rachel Blaney, North Island—Powell River, NDP]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I will do my best to ask every question through the Chair.

If I may, through you, Madam Chair, I thank all of the witnesses for being here today. I really appreciate their testimony. I reflect on the fact that this was something that we have never seen before in this area or, in fact, in Canada, and that there were some serious concerns.

If I could, through you, Madam Chair, I'll ask a question of Chief Bell. One of the things that we're talking about today is expanding the jurisdiction. In your testimony, you talked about how important it is to have things clearly laid out, so that there can be a collaborative method moving forward with any kind of incident that may happen.

With the expansion of the precinct for Parliament, do you feel confident that those processes are in place, or is there anything that we need to do? Are there any modifications we would have to make to address the issue of a bigger precinct for Parliament?

[Chief Steve Bell]

Madame Chair, I think that's actually the crux of the issue that we need to discuss.

With the expansion of any territory within the parliamentary precinct, it will need to be clearly identified if PPS is taking on any new responsibilities. Does the Ottawa Police Service still provide the services it does as the police of jurisdiction across the parliamentary precinct, like responses to high-level emergency incidents, responses to criminal investigations or any other sort of criminal investigation?

I think that is the crux of the matter. If it's expanded, we need to be very clear and deliberate in how we outline who is responsible for what.

[Rachel Blaney]

Through you, Madam Chair, again to Chief Bell, in your statements earlier you talked about the need for a deep collaboration.

Are those structures in place now? Have we learned from the experience we lived through?

I guess the other part of that question is that right now Wellington, in front of Parliament, the precinct there, is blocked off. We know that we had this motorcycle group come in not too long ago. Obviously, it was a very different reality. I'm just wondering if those collaborative methods are in place.

Secondly, with our having that blocked off, did it have an impact on your ability to collaborate with the other partners to keep people safe?

[Chief Steve Bell]

Madam Chair, I can't speak highly enough about the level of collaboration that exists within our city, particularly among our partners, many of whom you see here today—Gatineau police, RCMP and the OPP. Those structures do exist. They will continue to exist.

I think what the ultimate takedown of the occupation identified is the depth of collaboration among all police services, policing organizations across Canada, that had to come together to manage the event. I believe those are continuing to become more entrenched and more ingrained in what we do and how we do it.

I would be very satisfied with people understanding how co-operative we are as an organization in looking at how we deliver policing services for our communities.

Madam Chair, there was a second portion to that question, and I'm going to ask if I can have it restated.

[Rachel Blaney]

My question was just around the blocks that are there now on Wellington and the impacts that had.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Chief Steve Bell]

My apologies for having to have it raised again.

One of the key areas I talked about was the need in this discussion to have a dialogue around infrastructure investments. There are several infrastructure investments, like bollards around streets, that can easily limit the movement of vehicles through different areas. I would hope that would be a key and important part to this.

We have changed our stance. We have changed our posture. We do harden areas like the downtown core of Ottawa to not allow vehicle-based demonstrations, and that's a posture you'll see us moving ahead. That has provided more safety and security to that area. It's something we will continue to use moving ahead.

[Rachel Blaney]

Thank you for that.

Through you again, Madam Chair, perhaps I could ask a question of Deputy Commissioner Duheme.

I appreciate your earlier statements. You talked a lot about the support for this study, the importance of having this conversation, and of course always the importance of jurisdiction, but you also talked about the need for integrated command centres.

Could you explain to us a little bit about what you meant by that, and also what does that mean in the context of the potentiality of increasing the parliamentary precinct?

[D/Commr Michael Duheme]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

With respect to the integrated command centre, in the national capital region, there is the NCRCC, the national capital region command centre. Any big event will have people coming together. It's law enforcement, the fire service, OC Transpo, la Sûreté du Québec across the river as well as SPVG, le Service de Police de la Ville de Gatineau, for a coordinated approach so that everybody knows what everybody's doing at any given time. If a decision is made with regard to a protest downtown, OC Transpo can shift its routes. Paramedics know the routes to take. It's very important.

PPS does this on a daily basis. With any demonstration on the Hill, they have their own command centre to manage this. Depending on the size, that's when you see different partners come on board with that, but you always have a command centre when something of that nature comes along. We deal with it.