Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's okay. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you to the committee for inviting me here today. By way of introduction, I'm currently a senator representing the province of Ontario. I've previously worked as a police chief of the Ottawa Police Service and the Durham Regio

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Through you, Madam Chair, I thank the member for the question. Absolutely. I think that's the way we can reduce the risk, in particular in front of the parliamentary precinct. I want to include in that the Langevin building. Although it is not part of the parliamentary precinct,

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I may, Madam Chair, I think Chief Sloly has identified the issues. Look, we're supposed to learn from these experiences. There are no two the same. Ottawa would have 250 protests and demonstrations a year, and not once did we see anything that came close to what we saw in Ot

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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,

Declaration of Emergency committee  I think you're running two devices.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and thanks to the minister for being here today. I have a couple of quick questions. We talked about the invocation of the provincial emergency act, and the fact that I think maybe your words summarizing it had little or no impact. Did you have

Declaration of Emergency committee  Do you believe they should have had the discussion? Obviously, it didn't work. Proportionality is an important part of an emergencies act, whether it's provincial or federal. Obviously, their tools weren't proportional to the challenge if they weren't actually having an impact on

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you for that. In our discussions with the RCMP, we were told there was a plan in place to remove the convoy. In fact, we were told by the deputy commissioner that they believed that the plan would succeed in removing the convoy, blockade, or “fortressing”, as I've called i

Declaration of Emergency committee  If I may, Minister, prior to invoking the Emergencies Act, wouldn't we have wanted to see what their plan was going forward? Obviously, their plan for the first number of weeks didn't work, but we were told by the RCMP, which is a federal agency, that they actually had a plan tha

Declaration of Emergency committee  If I may add, because the chair is going to stop me, did you express concerns with the mayor of Ottawa, who was negotiating with people who had become involved with criminal activity, to allow them to take certain land and further fortress it to give up other land?

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Thank you, Minister.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm going to jump right into it, because you made a statement that it allowed for the use of RCMP officers and other officers from other services, but there is another alternative that we can swear them in as. I'm sure you have been involved in the swearing in of RCMP officers f

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's perfect. Thanks for that. I didn't want to leave it out there that there was only one option. Can you tell us, in your 37 years of policing, give or take a couple of years, have you ever seen any event like this? You policed in Toronto, the biggest city in the country. Ha

Declaration of Emergency committee  Quickly, we had legislation come from the other place into the Senate with regard to protests in relation to health officials, nurses and hospitals. There was consideration given in our legal committee to adding something to make it illegal to use vehicles to participate in those