Commission clears former Ottawa police chief, Peter Sloly

TORONTO:

A report into the circumstances surrounding a series of protests and blockades staged last January in Canada against COVID-19 vaccine restrictions dubbed the Freedom Convoy, and the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act to resolve it has cleared former police chief, Peter Sloly.

It noted that while there were several deficiencies in how the police responded to the events in Ottawa, those could not be attributed solely to him.

In the recently released final report, Justice Paul Rouleau, commissioner of the Public Order Emergency Commission, said much of the focus of the evidence was on the then head of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), with the treatment suggesting he was ‘scapegoated’.

“It is all too easy to attribute all of the deficiencies in the police response solely to him. This would be unfortunate and indeed, inconsistent with the evidence. Errors in leadership must be seen in the context of a truly unprecedented event in size, duration, and complexity.

“Chief Sloly served the public with distinction as a police leader for 30 years. He came to Ottawa as an agent of change to address racism, misogyny, and a lack of community trust in the OPS, and he faced substantial resistance in doing so. He was heading the OPS at a time when the senior ranks had been depleted and expertise had been lost. Chief Sloly’s resignation, rooted in an acknowledgement that he had lost the confidence of others, did remove one obstacle to a successful resolution by creating an opportunity to restore that confidence.”

UNREASONABLY HARSH

Justice Rouleau noted as well that, “some errors on Chief Sloly’s part were unduly enlarged by others to a degree that suggests scapegoating”.

“He was rarely given the benefit of the doubt as to his intentions. His statements were sometimes cast in an unreasonably harsh light. For example, his public comment that “there may not be a policing solution to the demonstrations” attracted disproportionate scrutiny. I found it obvious that he was not abandoning the city through this comment or attempting to diminish the OPS’ important role in the ultimate solution.

Among the report’s recommendations are that: “Within 12 months following the tabling of the commission’s report, the government should issue a public response identifying which recommendations it accepts and rejects. For the recommendations the government accepts, it should provide a detailed timeline for their implementation. For the recommendations the government rejects, it should provide a detailed explanation of its refusal to implement them,” notes recommendation 55 of the report.

The final recommendation was for the government’s response to be referred to an implementation committee, the mandate and composition of which are to be determined by parliament.

In his initial review, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the report provides an objective account of what happened last year, and recommendations to prevent this type of situation from recurring. “We can all agree that it should never have come to this. And we should all agree that there are lessons here for everyone involved: law enforcement agencies, all orders of government, and elected officials. Within the next year, our government will issue a comprehensive, public response to the commissioner’s recommendations.

HINDSIGHT

Sloly, who is Jamaican, said Justice Rouleau’s comments mirror those of thousands of people across the country, including police chiefs, senior public officials, and elected officials, regardless of the party that they represent.

In almost the same language used by the judge, they thought the former OPS police chief was “undermined” and “scapegoated” and since the report came out, “vindicated”.

“I think Justice Rouleau did a good job, not just in that section, but across the board on understanding the volume of information, the emotions that were taking place, the unprecedented nature of what happened a year ago ... and, most importantly, in the recommendations,” said Sloly.

He urged the public to read the 56 recommendations of the report.

Asked whether he would have done anything differently in hindsight, Sloly said, “In any critical incident, crisis national security event, which the events of last year all were and more, there could be mistakes made. Absolutely, from the minutiae to the larger strategic elements, so there were definitely things that I wished I could have been clearer on in terms of communication.

“I could have been more decisive in terms of decision-making, could have been more, in certain cases, collaborative. But I have to tell you (that) almost all the recommendations that speak to the policing aspect of this, and virtually all of the recommendations of any substance, speak to what I call in my testimony ‘structural deficits’.”

NO UNIFIED OPERATIONAL STRATEGY

He said Justice Rouleau recognised that Canada does not have a proper national security framework or a proper national threat intelligence assessment capability and that when events do happen, despite efforts to prevent them, there is no unified operational strategy to bring not just police services together, but levels of government together to solve a problem.

Sloly said unfortunately all of that was exposed in the first hours and days of the events. He said it wasn’t until people stopped avoiding blame and actually started working together and bringing the resources that were necessary that the situation was resolved.

“The Emergencies Act was just one element of that and that was my frustration quite frankly. I think in any jurisdiction, whether it was in Windsor or Coutts, Alberta, the local police did not have enough resources to deal with what had arrived.”

Sloly said it was only when resources arrived in Coutts, Windsor, and Ottawa, that they were able to put together a plan and an operation that safely and lawfully ended the situation.

He cautioned that there needs to be a framework in place, sufficiently invested and robust, to provide immediate resourcing, coordination, and collaboration before the next significant event happens that overwhelms local policing and local municipal capabilities.

Now the Visiting Fellow, Change Maker-in-Residence at Massey College, University of Toronto, Sloly believes the report should be read by

all three levels of government, and recommendations implemented with proper oversight and accountability.

The January 22 convoy started as a protest against vaccine mandates for truckers and others crossing the United States border. It saw hundreds of vehicles forming convoys across Canada, converging finally on Ottawa on January 29, 2022, with a rally at Parliament Hill.