Declaration of Emergency committee  As far as I was concerned as the chief of police, the briefings I received from my incident command team, which included senior leaders from the OPP and the RCMP.... We had a significant plan in place, with a significant greater level of integration and resources that would be acquired, hence my statement at the end of my last day in office that we were in a significantly better place in order to successfully end the events in Ottawa.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Not at all, sir. The events in Windsor and around the Ambassador Bridge were entirely different—related but entirely different in terms of scale, the challenges.... Some of them were similar, but others were very different. Like here in Ottawa, Chief Mizuno in Windsor required significant external resources to come in and a significant level of integration beyond what she would normally have to deal with as chief of police in that jurisdiction.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Yes, sir. I'll do my best. Please understand that I remained in office some 24 hours after the federal one was invoked, and the provincial one was just 72 hours before that. Primarily, for me, it provided a massive lift in resources. The facilitation, particularly, of the swearing-in of special constable status across the country to allow the airlift of officers arriving from literally every province into the city was massively important.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's correct.

Declaration of Emergency committee  There were elements of it, but nothing that you could in any way suggest was going to work across the theatre that we had here in Ottawa. Again, this was not just a local event. It was a local event that coordinated other events across the country, so whatever we might negotiate here might have no bearing elsewhere and vice versa.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you. I may not have time to fully answer that question within this, but the incident command system is relatively standard across the country at this stage, thanks in large part to previous Ottawa Police Service executive members, including Sue O’Sullivan. She started the Intersect component of our incident command system some 15 to 17 years ago, which brings the major national capital region police agencies and other stakeholders, including the City of Ottawa and NCR personnel, into joint planning, information sharing and, in many cases, intelligence sharing.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Yes, and the plan was not just for Wellington Street. It was for the entire set of events happening within the city.

Declaration of Emergency committee  If I understand the question, sir, the Ottawa Police Service is the police of jurisdiction for the city of Ottawa. We had continuous operational lead of the incident command system. Up until my last day in office, I was continuously accountable for all police operations in the city.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The operational deputy was acting deputy chief Trish Ferguson.

Declaration of Emergency committee  He was assigned intelligence operations.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Our frontline officers did an amazing job in almost unhuman circumstances, with minus 35° temperatures for weeks on end. Our frontline members, civilian and sworn, did a great job as much as they possibly could in those circumstances and throughout my tenure as chief of the service.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The plan worked, sir. There was a safe and successful end to the occupation of the national security crisis. It was based on the plan that was updated and that continuously evolved through every day in office. My statement on my last day in office affirmed that—that we had a plan, were now receiving significant new levels of resources, and could foresee a safe, successful and lawful end to the events here and nationally.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you, Senator Boniface. Again, your own experience will play this out. In many occasions, there is a singular organizing body or a significant influencer within a protest group. This was not the case. There were significant efforts by multiple jurisdictions and multiple agencies at all three levels of policing to seek negotiated agreements, reasonable understandings and commitments, but there was never a unified “other” with which any police agency could come to any substantive understanding as to whether what was agreed to would actually happen on the day of.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The very second that any law was broken—whether it be a bylaw, provincial offences statute, or Criminal Code offence, or whether or not anybody who had stated their intent to come to Ottawa and protest had failed to secure a permit—at that point it was unlawful. Again, though, as you know, there are many unlawful demonstrations that the police will provide supports to in order to facilitate, to the greatest degree, the intent of what I believe is our Charter of Rights.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I would say it was impossible.