Good afternoon, and thank you, Madam Chair and committee members, for inviting me here today.
I am Acting Deputy Trish Ferguson, and I'm responsible for overseeing information, investigations and serious and organized crimes at the Ottawa police.
We've been following the discussions at these committee meetings, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to again offer the perspective of the Ottawa police.
The testimonies we've heard and our recent experiences in policing large events in the city have confirmed the three priorities we previously identified to you. These are jurisdictional responsibilities, infrastructure and resources.
As you're aware, the Ottawa Police Service is the police of jurisdiction for the city of Ottawa. In fulfilling this role, we rely on co-operation and collaboration with other law enforcement agencies. As such, the service is used to dealing with questions of jurisdiction; however, the occupation we experienced in February confirmed the need to further clarify and even reconsider matters of jurisdiction around the Wellington corridor.
Jurisdictional boundaries within and around the parliamentary precinct need to be clearly defined. Collaborative strategies and responsibilities also need to be clarified in order to ensure that, in times of crisis and emergency, the statutes, regulations and authorities are already established and understood by all parties. This is particularly critical for situations in which events spill over established boundaries.
The second issue we ask you to consider is infrastructure. Since February, we have had several large events in Ottawa, such as “Rolling Thunder” and Canada Day, and we currently lack physical infrastructure that can easily and quickly be put in place to protect key locations and personnel. These events again stretched our resources thin, in part because we lacked adequate security infrastructure. For example, we had to bring in heavy trucks to establish a vehicle exclusion zone around Parliament. This was less effective and less reliable than security infrastructure would have been if we had set up, for example, bollards and protected pedestrian areas.
The third issue, as we discussed before, is the need for adequate resources for the police service. We must be prepared to maintain public security and protect the residents of Ottawa, no matter the size and scale of events. We also know that we cannot continually call on police from other jurisdictions across the province to help police events in our city. The demands placed on our service in the past year have strained our members and highlighted the need for adequate resources so we can safely and effectively respond to the needs in our communities, make intelligence-led threat assessments and enhance inter-agency collaboration.
Members of the Ottawa Police Service are committed to protecting Ottawa as an open and peaceful capital city, one where residents and visitors can move freely and that everyone can fully enjoy.
Thank you for your time. I look forward to answering any questions.