On Friday, former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly appeared before the Public Order Emergency Commission that is examining the federal government's invocation of the Emergencies Act to bring the "Freedom Convoy" protests to an end.
Sloly resigned weeks into the protests amid heavy criticism that the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) was not doing enough to enforce the law, dismantle the occupation, and remove the truckers from the city.
His testimony comes on the heels of testimony from some of his former police colleagues, and one week after the Ottawa Police Services Board named his permanent replacement. With his cross-examination expected to take place on Monday, here are some key quotes from his much-anticipated testimony, under questioning from commission counsel.
'THEY WERE DOING THEIR VERY BEST'
Early in Friday's testimony, Sloly got emotional when he was asked how Ottawa police were holding up after the first weekend—the point in which Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson has previously testified that it became apparent additional resources were going to be needed.
"This is always a tricky part for me," Sloly said, starting to tear up. Commissioner Paul Rouleau then asked if he needed to take a break, but Sloly said no and continued.
"They were doing their very best under inhuman circumstances, like the city was, like the community was. It was too cold, and it was too much, but they did their very best. I am grateful to them. They should be celebrated. Not celebrated, that's the wrong word. They should be understood," Sloly said of Ottawa police officers on the scene.
The commission lawyer then asked Sloly to elaborate on why he felt they were misunderstood. Here's what he said:
"The level of disinformation and misinformation was off the charts. It was crushing to the members' morale, it was crushing to the incident command team's morale, it was crushing to my executive team's morale. I suspect crushing to the [Police Services] Board. It was crushing to everybody. It was unrelenting, it was 24 hours a day. And I think by the end of the weekend, it had become a global story that mainstream media was following. And none of it was portraying in any way accurate[ly], the hard work of the men and women of the police service, and the partner agencies that stood with us. None of it," Sloly said.
"To this day it hasn't and that is very unfortunate because public trust and confidence in any police service, I believe, is the number one public safety factor. When any police service loses significantly, public trust and confidence, that in of itself is a massive public safety threat and risk."
EXPLANATION OF HIS 'MAY NOT BE A POLICING SOLUTION' COMMENT
On Friday, Sloly was asked why he said on Feb. 2 that there "may not be a policing solution" to bring an end to the "Freedom Convoy."
His response: "The size and scale of the events were not going to be able to be handled by any one police jurisdiction, certainly not mine. That this was a national-scope event started from corners of all parts of Canada and arrived in our city… This was borne out by a wide variety of polarizing issues, not the least of which was the vaccine mandates, but there were many other anti-government sentiment expressed at all three levels of government. And some of this was just people looking to come into our city and participate in the event, to have an unruly and in many cases unlawful party.
"The underpinnings that created this event and brought it substantially into our city were well beyond the Police Services Act mandate of me as a police chief, and the Ottawa police service… And we were going to have to engage other elements of civil society, and likely all three levels of government, to make in some way a meaningful contribution to a sustainable solution to the end of it."
DESCRIBED WELLINGTON AS 'THEME PARK'
When asked how the OPS tried to prioritize the response to the protest once it was well entrenched in the downtown core, Sloly said their broad goal was to "shut down" those enabling the protest zone to "look like it's a theme park."
Here's the full quote: "Clearly, we were already aware of the issue of the bouncy castles, and the DJs and the dancing, and the fireworks. That's a very short list of all the things that were afflicting the neighborhoods in and around the red zones. Open barbecues, people blocking lanes, tearing masks off peoples' faces. I could I could go down the list in detail the incredible range of assaultive-type behavior. But the broad thing is: shut down these enablers and let's not allow our city to look like it's a theme park in the middle of a public safety crisis. I hadn't introduced anything more than articulate the obvious."
Former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly appears as a witness at the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa, on Friday, Oct. 28, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick
CITES DEPUTIES' 'SIGNIFICANT LACK OF JUDGEMENT'
During his testimony, Sloly very clearly attempted to put blame for some of the force's planning and enforcement shortcomings on his deputies. He referenced a document that contained a Feb. 5 email discussing a meeting he had with then- deputy chief Steve Bell and acting-deputy chief Patricia Ferguson about a decision he says was "kept secret" from him: changing who was leading on incident command.
"We're in the middle of what is now I consider a national security crisis—my opinion, doesn't have to be held by others— certainly a local public safety crisis, and one of if not the most important functions is the incident commander," Sloly testified.
Sloly said that the note "demonstrates I'm still not quite sure who's running what, and for a chief of police, with the citizens in the trauma and victimization that they were under, our own members as struggling as they were. At best I can call this a significant lack of judgment on behalf of my two operational deputies. At worst, probably this would have been a review that I would have done after the events had concluded and looked at it even more closely."
Asked then if his level of trust in his deputies changed at that point, he said yes.
He was also asked whether he was, as others have testified, in favour of more enforcement rather than community engagement. Sloly called this "a narrative that someone has constructed to attack my character."
'CAN'T AFFORD TO DUCT-TAPE OUR WAY THROUGH'
Sloly was asked Friday what his thoughts are on what could be done to avoid the local police force being in a similar situation again. His answer was quite lengthy but this section was most to the point:
"Training needs to be standardized, nomenclature needs to be standardized, equipment needs to be standardized, joint training needs to happen. And all of that has to happen a long time before a major unprecedented paradigm-shifting event like what we just saw," Sloly said.
"This is one of those structural deficits sir that have existed for decades in policing. It doesn't all require money, but it's going to require a little bit of investment on that end. But it requires an investment of time, and resources, and focus. And what this event did to Ottawa, to Ontario, and Canada, was expose that type of structural deficit. It's the same concept of structural deficit around intelligence gathering. We can't afford to duct tape our way through these incidents anymore. And unfortunately, this reads like a duct tape effort to get through a really complicated, dynamic situation."
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