Procedure and House Affairs Committee on June 2nd, 2022

[Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you, Chair.

Through you, just to clarify again, and I said it earlier on in a response, my priority as the chief of the police of jurisdiction here, facing the brunt of that national security crisis, was resources.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Yes, thank you.

[Chief Peter Sloly]

It was 1,800 that became 2,000, but we needed supports well beyond that, resources that included accessing heavy tow trucks for the removal of large vehicles and other aspects that eventually came into the mix that allowed for the successful resolution.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Okay. Those are resources that I might consider were probably available when the G20 protest happened in Toronto.

[Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you, Chair. Through you, while I appreciate the attempt to draw a nexus between the scale and complexity of the G20 and other G7 and G20 events that have taken place in Canada, I do not think it is a comparison worthy of the discussions we need to have in order to really prepare for these types of events going forward. I would suggest that January 6 in the United States, Washington, D.C., would be a closer aspect.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

I appreciate those comments.

Councillor McKenney wrote a letter on February 3 requesting “that the federal government and the RCMP assume full operational control of Parliament Hill and the Parliamentary Precinct so that Ottawa Police Services can be deployed into the local neighbourhoods to restore peace and enforce our laws, something that is simply not happening at this time.”

Was that an accurate statement put forward by the councillor?

[Chief Peter Sloly]

I appreciate what you've just read.

Madam Chair, through you, I'm not aware of the statement, so I can't validate its accuracy.

What I will say.... It comes back to your previous point, so thank you for the question. What I will say is that we did not have enough resources to deal with the portions of the events taking place here in the police jurisdiction that I was responsible for and to provide proper, adequate and effective police services to the city of Ottawa.

I was asked that question explicitly by the former board chair, and I answered it in the same way: I do not have the resources, the capability, to provide adequate and effective policing in the context of an event of the scale we're dealing with and our regular policing requirements.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

That's very helpful. Thank you.

The Canadian Police Association was in Ottawa a few weeks ago. They're proposing right now—it was one of their key asks—that:

...the federal government organize a national summit that brings together key stakeholders, including representatives of police executives, front-line police representatives, municipal and provincial officials responsible for public safety, and community-based organizations with experience in organizing public events, to establish a clear framework to coordinate the response to protests and demonstrations.

Given the comments already heard, Madam Chair, would the witnesses believe that is a prudent step to take, possibly with legislation that would include some type of framework to help coordinate a future unprecedented protest on the scale we saw?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[Chief Peter Sloly]

I'll defer to my colleague Vernon for his comment.

[Vernon White]

Look, I don't disagree that we need to have greater dialogue about how we're going to handle these events, because I think this is the beginning, not the end. I think we'll have future events that we're unprepared for, and I think we had better try to improve on that.

I think the RCMP needs to take a stronger role nationally in dealing with what I would argue—and as the chief has said—is a national security event. They're responsible for national security law enforcement in this country and I think they need to take a greater role.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

That was very helpful, Senator White.

I have one more quick question.

Through you, Madam Chair, Mr. Sloly mentioned “environmental design”. Would removing cars from Wellington and maybe putting in a tramway be a good way to deal with some of the security issues you mentioned, through environmental design versus the jurisdictional challenges that were outlined in the opening remarks?

[Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you, Chair. Through you, it's an excellent framing of the challenge that this committee has taken on.

First of all, I would say to be as open as you can to considering all the environmental changes that are available to you. I suspect that list will quickly narrow to a few.

It has been my experience in two jurisdictions within this province that, in crime prevention through environmental design, physical change is the low-hanging fruit that often has the biggest return on investment. I've already stated several times: Legislative or jurisdictional change is the high-level fruit that is really hard to get. It's very timely and consuming and may not ultimately address the primary core issues that have been raised to me so far today.

[Brad Vis, Conservative, Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, BC]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you.

We will now go to Mrs. Romanado for up to five minutes.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

Through you, I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today and for your service and your expertise. It's very helpful.

I don't want to repeat what my colleagues have said, but one area that has concerned me is the fact that Wellington is open to vehicular traffic. You've both alluded to that.

When we look back almost 30 years to the Oklahoma City bombing, Pennsylvania Avenue has been closed in front of the White House to vehicular traffic. When I look online, I can find the Canada Day vehicle closures for all of Ottawa from 2019, and there was no possibility of a vehicle getting close to Parliament Hill, let alone parked, whether it be a truck or not.

Senator White, you mentioned that we didn't know what was in those trucks. The Prime Minister's itinerary is very public. A truck parked on the corner of O'Connor and Wellington with explosives in it on a Wednesday at 2:30 would technically wipe out West Block, including all parliamentarians, so the question of whether or not Wellington should remain open to vehicular traffic is in my view not even a question.

How would transferring the jurisdiction of Wellington to the Parliamentary Protective Service—understanding the unique nature of protecting the Senate building and all of the parliamentary buildings, including West Block—help to alleviate and prevent this from happening again? Could you elaborate? Thank you.

[Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you, Chair. That is an excellent question. I hope I answer it, but I will frame it a little bit differently.

A boundary change is a boundary change. I think that's probably the least challenging aspect of what you're trying to study. Changing the jurisdiction is the problematic piece. It's not impossible, but it's the challenging piece of what you're trying to tackle. No matter what you do to change a jurisdiction, you first have to find a legislative ability to do so. You're going to have to address the Attorney General and the Solicitor General of Ontario to remove the Ottawa Police Service lawfully out of the Police Services Act. You have a former AG sitting next to you, and he would understand the complexity of this.

Assuming that you could get through that barrier, you would then have to convince whatever the legislative authorities are that created the Parliamentary Protective Service to allow them to become the full policing authority of jurisdiction. That means everything from responding to mental health and addictions calls, to sexual assaults and gang-related activities. It would require a level of scale of resources well beyond what even Senator White referred to earlier on as the necessities now for the current mandate. Then you'd have to start to trade off resources, because the police service of jurisdiction, the Ottawa police, currently has that within its resourcing capability—I would suggest, under-resourced.

That's where the real complexity comes in—around jurisdictional or mandate changes. Move the boundaries as far as you want—shrink them, expand them—the jurisdictional and legislative mandates are where the real trick in the tale is.

Again, at the end of that, no matter where you would redraw those boundaries to, you're still going to have multijurisdictional, multi-agency challenges in large-scale crises like the ones we saw. You could redraw that boundary up to the 417. You're still going to have, on the day, challenges with communication, coordination, collaboration, levels of preparedness and intelligence gathering, and none of those issues go away.

[Sherry Romanado, Liberal, Longueuil—Charles-LeMoyne, QC]

Thank you.

I'll cede the rest of my time to my colleague Mr. Fergus.

Thank you.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thank you to my colleague.

Thank you to the witnesses for coming forward.

I have two very quick questions.

Senator White, for a long time you have been calling for changes to the boundary for the security reasons that you outlined in your discussion. I've followed your work very closely on this, and it would seem to me that every time there has been a crisis on Parliament Hill over the years—and I've been around here for over 34 years—we always move in incremental pieces.

Is the vision that you outline—and, frankly, the matter that is largely being mooted around this committee table—large enough to think further ahead for the things that we can't imagine, that we can't predict?

[Vernon White]

Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and, through you, thanks for the question.

Post-2014, there were a number of us who were meeting when the discussion was on the development of legislation regarding parliamentary precinct security. At that time, we looked at a number of models, including the Capitol Hill police service in Washington, D.C., as being a potential model. A number of those were brought forward to the government of the day and not adopted. Instead, they adopted the expansion of the PPS, which we see today.

A number of other areas—and my friend talked about crime prevention through environmental design—were things like one access point for walking traffic to Parliament Hill. Today, you can walk in next to the canal and come up in behind the West Block and nobody even knows you're there unless the camera happens to pick you up, and it certainly doesn't know what you're carrying in a backpack.

Those things were recommended and never adopted, because within 72 hours of that shooting, people wanted to get back to the way things were: making Parliament Hill accessible to everybody. They misunderstand the difference between “accessibility” and “security”. You can be hard on the outside and soft on the inside, like an egg. From a security perspective, that's really what they should be looking at.

There is a whole group of other things beyond Wellington Street that I think need to be implemented—or at least considered—and have not been implemented and that I don't believe were given sufficient consideration.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Madam Chair, I heard the buzzer go off, but is there an opportunity to seek a comment from Mr. Sloly?

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Yes, briefly.

[Greg Fergus, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

It's the same question.

[Chief Peter Sloly]

Thank you.

I won't repeat and will try to build on the excellent response you gave, sir.

Chair, through you, there is a hyper-focus for a very legitimate reason on the large-scale event that just took place and the trucks in particular. The day-to-day threats to this environment are edged weapons, small arms, objects that can be weaponized by individuals if they choose and by individuals who unfortunately, increasingly, are suffering from a range of emotional, psychological and health-related issues that predominantly are things that victimize areas like this with regularity across the world.

I would echo the point that we really need to think about hardening and reducing access, while still allowing the Charter of Rights and Freedoms for protests and gathering, etc.

Incrementalism in policing in general I have fought against for the majority of my career. We have an exponentially changed society. We have an exponentially changing threat environment. We have only really talked about the physical here today, and I referenced in my presentation cyber, which could create far more mayhem than what we're talking about, even with an IED packed into the back of a truck.

I really believe that this is an opportunity to potentially go well beyond the original thinking and get into the realm of exponential and resist getting into the realm of incremental.

[The Chair, Liberal, Bardish Chagger]

Thank you so much for that.

Ms. Gaudreau, you may take the floor to ask a question.

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

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

I'm really shocked and worried. When my children ask me about prevention, I won't know what to tell them. To tell you the truth, I realize that the specialists we turn to for the inside story will always tell us something new.

So how will we be prepared for such events? I'm worried. I tell you, that's my big observation.

That said, we are still establishing new ways of doing things so that there is, in advance, a lead or a commanding officer.

I have a very simple question for you.

We knew in advance that trucks, possibly with explosives, would stop and not move. How is it that the Ottawa police, who had a duty to enforce regulations, took so long to set up a command post or do anything? They had means at their disposal, like issuing tickets or towing trucks.

What happened that we couldn't do something?