Volume 12 (October 28, 2022)

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Religious document, please.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 7 12-007-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'll take the Bible, please, thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 7 12-007-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Peter John Michael Sloly, S-L-O-L-Y.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 7 12-007-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Good morning, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 7 12-007-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Good morning, Frank.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's correct, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's correct. Well, just 27 and change, but thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's correct.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I did.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's correct.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, that's correct.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Correct.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 8 12-008-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I did.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 9 12-009-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I was.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 9 12-009-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I received Incident Command System training from 100 to 400 levels. I received additional training here in Ottawa, I consider it 500 level, essentially it's a District Operations Commander, which allows you to command a multi-site major incident over a protracted period of time. So I had designations up to, I don't know if it's the right terminology, but a 500 level, and I had practical experience at every one of those levels in terms of being part of Incident Command. So either being an Incident Commander, what is now known as an Event Commander, Major Event Commander or Major Incident Command through to a District Operations Commander, mostly in my time in the Toronto Police Service and also during my two tours of duty in United Nations Peacekeeping Mission.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 9 12-009-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Correct, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 9 12-009-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, I received Public Order Unit training, both through the Toronto Police Service. It’s a little bit fuzzy now because it’s going back to the early 2000’s, but there was also a provincial standard training course that took place out in a rural community that I can’t remember. And then there was national training sessions that we did from British Columbia across the country.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 9 12-009-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 10 12-010-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was fortunate enough to have been selected by then Chief Fantino to represent the Toronto Police Service. I think at that time, I was the first senior officer for a municipal police service to be part of a UN peacekeeping mission that had been organized through the RCMP. I was deployed to Pristina in August of 2001 and completed two tours, coming back home in 2002. I was the Canadian contingent commander. This was a mission where the police of jurisdiction actually had full powers of policing, including use of force detention while building up a local police service. It was also during 9/11 and a very significant and complicated and volatile zone.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 10 12-010-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It just tested, and stressed, and challenged, and grew me in literally every single way possible: physically, mentally, emotionally. I’m a very spiritual person. It allowed me to see parts of the world I don’t think I’ll ever get back to see again. And to be involved in a unique, challenging, and often tragic set of circumstances, but one that opened my eyes to the conditions globally. I had a chance to work with 53 different police services from around the world, and so that was also an opportunity to learn the good, the bad, and the indifferent of progressive policing at the turn of the century.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 10 12-010-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 11 12-011-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Probably a little bit of nervous energy in there. But thank you. I will try to slow down.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 11 12-011-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 11 12-011-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I trust it is, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 12 12-012-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No, thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 12 12-012-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

M’hm.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 12 12-012-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, when I was being recruited for the position, it was very clear to me through the recruiter on behalf of the Board that through their consultative process with service members and community members, that the Ottawa Police Service needed to be significantly changed. Operationally, administratively, from an HR standpoint, the usual sort of change processes that large organizations require on an ordinary basis, and very specifically, culturally. Internally, there was a culture that was less welcoming, less inclusive, less diverse, less equitable, and that had impacts on things like workplace harassment, member moral. Externally, that translated into a real or perceived level of trust in the broader community, but specifically in racialized and marginalized communities, that the service wasn’t, in some cases, appropriate enough and that there was a declining level of trust and confidence. Any one of those things would have been a major change agenda for any external chief coming in. All of those combined required a significant effort of changed management and changed leadership that I was asked, on behalf of the Board, as the incoming chief, to deliver over the course of my five-year contract.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 12 12-012-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 13 12-013-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’m not sure the Commission has all the time in the world for that list. But, I mean, I think the most simple thing to say is any effort of change is going to be difficult, particularly in a large organization. In this case, I believe the Ottawa Police Service is over a century old. And these were long-standing structural deficit issues. Needed investment in recruiting through staff development training. Leadership development in particular was something that repeatedly our membership identified and external auditors identified. And those things just don’t -- that’s not a light switch you can turn on and off. It’s something that you have to build and grow and almost organically move through the organization. Operationally, while they were excellent in some ways -- I just want to be clear, Commissioner, the Ottawa Police Service, and one of the reasons why I came here, had a reputation, deservedly so, of being one of the best operational police services. We’ve heard about their expertise in planning, their ability through missing persons investigations was second to none. They had really advanced -- in some cases, advanced HR systems that were to be seen as a best practice. So this was not a deficit across the board, but there were significant deficits in very specific areas that was contributing to some of the cultural and morale issues. My attempt in the first three months was really to go around on a listening process in small groups, large groups, internally and externally, to identify those areas, bring a command team that was, even in the early days, a struggle, there was significant challenges at the command team level, but people were leaning in and doing their best. I would say, though, that the challenges really came in in March of 2020. Three significant events. The suspension of one of my two Deputy Chiefs, the culmination of a significant internal criminal corruption investigation where three of my officers were arrested after an extensive joint RCMP/Ottawa Police Service investigation, and of course, the declaration of the global pandemic, two months later, the death and murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives movement, and the Defund movement. I think that signalled the start, not just here in Ottawa, but across police services in North America, I suggest around the world, as a significant change in the level of public trust and confidence in policing and the broader justice system. It certainly had material impacts on police services here in Ottawa. The Defund movement put significant pressure on our Board and our Council to adjust the policing budget in regards to size and to change police service delivery in terms of integration. And these were real challenges on top of the significant challenge of change mandate that the Board had explicitly and expressly given to me as the incoming chief.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 13 12-013-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, the command structure, I believe to this day, but I might be wrong, is the Chief of Police, two Deputy Chiefs, and the Chief Administration Officer. Within my first three months in the position, I lost one of those Deputy Chiefs to a suspension. That then required me to accelerate a succession plan that truly wasn’t ready for acceleration, and bring in a series of three-month assignments to the rank of the superintendent. I had two very experienced senior officers at that time. Both superintendents had a lot of experience. And so I rotated them for the first year. But within that year, both of them retired. And after that, the rotation went further into the superintendent ranks. Some were really good fits, some struggled. But it was a very suboptimal situation. In 2021, in the early part of the year, the Board made the decision to end the contract of my Chief Administration Officer. That then required me to look at my command level, and the only person that I could put into that position was Deputy Chief Bell. So essentially, for the full -- almost the full year leading up to the events of the convoy, I had one full-time Deputy Chief who was in a civilian position as a Chief Administration Officer, and I was rotating two -- for the most part, two uniformed Superintendents through the Deputy Chief process. Again, full respect to those individuals. They stepped up, in some cases volunteered. When I asked, they stepped up and they did their very best in very, very difficult circumstances during probably the most difficult time in Ottawa Police history and in policing across Canada. And so I have nothing but praise and thanks for them, but it was a sub-optimal situation that everyone was struggling to make the best of.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 15 12-015-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, the suspension of Deputy Chief Jaswal was in 2020. The subsequent retirements of my two more -- two most senior Superintendents happened over the course of 2021 into 2021. The separation of the Chief Administration Officer was in early 2021. So for the majority of 2021, that circumstance of Deputy Chief Bell being in an administrative function and two Superintendents operating in the uniform function was the situation that I was managing with.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 17 12-017-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It has a cascading impact on down the way. As you move any officer from one level to the next on a temporary position, not a permanent promotion, you then affect the next level and the next level. I remember once in Toronto someone said every time we promote a new Chief, we have to change out seven positions below. I don’t know if it’s exact calculation, but that’s the ripple effect. So it not only destabilizes the executive level, it destabilizes, to a degree, the other parts. There are always benefits. I mean, people are given stretch opportunities or given leadership opportunities earlier than they maybe normally would have. And again, some rise amazingly to that. Others do an excellent good job, and others struggle. But it does create churn in the organization that was already in churn based on all the changes that were mandated by the Board and the massive external churn by the factors such as the death of George Floyd and the global pandemic. There was another factor that, for me, as a newcomer to the city, as an outsider Chief, I think we can all remember in the early days of the pandemic the lockdown and the requirement not to meet in public was significant. One of the most important ways that any leader can get to know their own members and the community or the clients that they serve is to meet in person. So much is lost on Zoom. Emails and text messages never cover it, as we’ve seen in testimony here. But I lost that opportunity three months into my mandate to actually sit down with my members in the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee with them, to have small group focus group meetings, which I did extensively in my first three months. And even when we could get together, we were masked up so we couldn’t see facial expressions and we were spaced out across a big gymnasium, so we couldn’t really communicate. We had to literally shout at each other. I think all of that, unfortunately, meant that we couldn’t build the level of cohesion internally or externally during a very critical, contentious period of time. A sustained critical and contentious period of time. But we did our best.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 17 12-017-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think it’s actually been well articulated. I will only add, Mark Ford, who -- his father was the former Chief of Police here, an excellent Chief of Police. Mark was an excellent leader. He was one of those first two Superintendents I brought in on rotation along with Joan McKenna. Mark actually was the most experienced Incident Commander and one of the most experienced Critical Incident Commanders. Unfortunately, he retired some six or seven months before the events that we’re going to be substantially focusing on. So that would be one example of many where we had people who had, you know, gone past their pensionable time, had given their life blood, literally, to the organization and to the profession of policing and had made a decision, as many executives in many different parts of civil society, to take their well-earned retirement and go on with their life with their health intact. We celebrated his departure, but he was missing from our team and we really needed our best people to be in the best places possible.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 19 12-019-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, there’s a -- there’s probably a not police saying about police officers. I suspect it applies to everybody. There’s two things that every cop hates, the way things are, and change, so it was going to be difficult no matter what. Nobody wanted things to remain the way they were and everyone was fearful of change to varying degrees across the full human spectrum, of course. And this wasn’t just a tinker around the edge change mandate. It was to go right to the heart of the culture and to the most difficult parts of that culture, the darker part of that culture, things like systemic racism, systemic misogyny. The trust factor between police and the broader community, but very specifically the racialized and marginalized and indigenous communities here in Ottawa. And those were the most contentious topics in policing for my entire career going back to 1988 in Toronto. Any Chief of Police or any command team that took on any one of those issues would be taking on a major, major challenge. Taking them on in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement and the defund, abolish police movements just made it that much more complicated. But it was still necessary. It still had to get done. Not because it was my mandate. It was just the right thing to do for policing. It’s what our members actually wanted, and it certainly is what the community wanted.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 20 12-020-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Committed to the direction, worried and tired from the effort to have travelled as far as they did.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 21 12-021-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I mean, I could answer that in any great specificity. Clearly, there was a range. I think -- I don’t know which one of the witnesses presented -- I think it was Inspector Beaudin from the OPP that talked about the range of crowd dynamics. Human nature is human nature, so no matter what organization you’re in, you’re going to get some five percent that will adopt everything that’s said without questioning, five percent that will resist mightily anything that is said with all sorts of questioning and then some range in between of people that will move if they’re incentivized or if they feel there’s a sufficient altruistic value around it. I think those crowd dynamics play out in any crowd, including the group in this room here today.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 21 12-021-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My recollection, sir, was a February 13th Hendon Report.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 21 12-021-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry. January 13th. You may need to check me on dates a little bit. I believe that was a report that came into my inbox for whatever reason that day, and it was an extremely busy period. We were still dealing with a multiple-death explosion in our city that killed some five -- four or five people. But I did have a chance to glance through the report. Certainly there was enough information for me to know that this could be a significant event in the near term. My recollection is that I forwarded that email to Deputy Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. I understand that there hasn’t been an email to show that, but that was my recollection. But irregardless, somewhere on or around February 13th there was a direction to Deputy Chief Bell to commence an intelligence review of all the circumstances around what was being purported to be a convoy coming to our city and to lead the over -- oversee the work of developing an intelligence threat risk assessment that would then inform Acting Deputy Chief Fergson’s assignment to develop the operational plan for the event informed by the intelligence threat risk assessment.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 22 12-022-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you very much. Just to take a back -- a little step back, all operations, not just Emergency Preparedness and Incident Command or Critical Incident Command, but all of our Operations, from traffic management order management, crime management that we would should be intelligence-led, information, best practices, evidence-based best practices should inform for the most part our systems, our policies, our procedures, our practices, and the evaluation of the outputs and outcomes that came from that. So that was an overarching theme. How it applied within Incident Command, Incident Command Systems, Emergency Preparedness was again, a weather report that says there is going to be rain tomorrow, well let's try to validate that to a greater degree. Is it going to be raining in a city this large? Is it going to be raining and flooding in one part, or is it across the entire city? Because that will then assess the amount of resources we need and the sequence of events we need to apply. That's an analogy, that's not meant as an actual example. So Intelligence-led as much as possible. Understand the nature -- the context of the situation, the factors involved, the nature of the threat, the risk of the threat, the likelihood of it actually taking place, and the resources necessary to mitigate in the first instance and respond to in -- at the back end. And then to recover from, the recovery period, which I suggest this is still a recovery period Commission, with the City of Ottawa and the Country of Canada. Does that answer your question, sir?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 23 12-023-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. I believe Interim Chief Bell did reference his own views on the advancements that we had made, particularly in the previous year, and he's absolutely correct. That we had made significant advancements around our Intelligence-led approach to our broader Operations, crime, traffic, order management. Order management is a subset, includes Critical Incident Command and Incident Command System. We had made significant strides in making sure our Information section and our Intelligence section were lined up with our Operational sections, and that we had sufficient crime analysis, administrative analysis to execute and continuously improve on those processes. We did not specifically take on Intelligence-led Threat Risk Assessments as a very specific product. Our priorities at that time were crime, traffic, order management was not at the same level. I think in 2021, we had our -- a very high level of gun and gang related shootings, and so crime, traffic was the number one issue in the community, always is no matter what jurisdiction. So those were really our one and two priorities, and order management was probably at the third level. Because we actually had up until that point a very good record, a very good record of planning and implementing plans and successfully ending a range of demonstrations, but we had made progress. I did make it very explicit, particularly, this one I'm not 100 percent sure on, but particularly around the events in mid-2020, when we started to see large events coming into the city, Wet'suwet'en, Black Lives Matter in June, Justice for Abdi in the fall. These are complex, volatile, political, trust factor events that were contentious and could have gone a thousand different directions. I was very, very strong at that point on the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment driving the Operational Plan, and in that period I think we did make some significant moves forward around how the intel TRA threat assessment supported, enabled, enlightened the Operational planning.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 24 12-024-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's my recollection, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 25 12-025-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. I can't say I read every single line, it was probably more of a skim-through read, but I did read it, yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 25 12-025-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

This is potentially going to be a significant event, that we probably need to get some people working on the Intel side and starting at least to put the framework of a plan in place.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 25 12-025-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That was my recollection of forwarding it, but that's certainly why I assigned Deputy Chief Bell to lead the overseeing of the Intelligence Risk Assessment and assigned Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson for the Operational Plan. By the way, those were their functional areas of responsibility. Deputy Chief Bell, again, I think has testified that the Intelligence was one of his directorates, and that the Planning Section was one of the directorates that Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson had just inherited. She had just started as the Acting Deputy Chief in January 2022.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 26 12-026-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 26 12-026-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I did, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 26 12-026-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

After that first week, that February 13th week, we may have raised it in discussion at -- I had a regular nine o'clock Command meeting, and whatever the deputies would lead their respective areas of command and talk about major projects, things that should come to my level, I have a general recollection that we would've have discussed it at least once or twice during that first week period. Coming into the second week, the week leading up to the weekend of January -- I'll just remind myself to slow down a little bit -- coming up to the weekend of January 28th, 29th, and 30th, I recall that being almost on a daily basis. And I think towards the end of that week, or middle to the end of that week, we had my nine o'clock meeting and then a separate Command briefing on the Intelligence and planning of the -- of - - around the convoy events.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 26 12-026-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. Going into that first weekend before the weekend of the arrival, and then through that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 27 12-027-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My early impressions was there was, to some degree, some doubt as to whether or not this was actually going to materialise.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 27 12-027-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Going to materialise. Whether this series of convoys, it was focussed I think mainly in the British Columbia area, but whether or not it was actually going to materialise. Clearly, as the days went on and Hendon reports came in, mainstream media, social media started to follow it more, there was certainly a sense that, no, there is going to be something that comes from as far away as St. John's, Newfoundland, and from Vancouver, British Columbia, and other parts in Ontario itself. The briefings that I was getting was that those two areas were working together. Our Intelligence Group were connected in with all of our policing partners, municipally, provincially, and federally. The Ottawa Police Service Intersect Program had been engaged early around information- sharing, intelligence-gathering, Operational Planning, deconfliction coordination. All of those things were sort of standard for any major event that had occurred under my tenure as the Chief of Police, and had been well-established going back some 15 years under previous chiefs of police. So there was nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly things from a process standpoint, I saw what I expected to be the level of communication, coordination internally, communication, coordination with our key partners in the National Capital Region, and even more broadly, given the national scope of what was unfolding, that we were engaged with a range of other police services across the country.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 27 12-027-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, all of the reports, the briefings that I was receiving through my chain of command was that this was going to be a weekend event, some arriving the Thursday, more arriving the Friday, the bulk arriving for planned or at least scheduled events on the Saturday and the Sunday. That there might be some remnant that would stay behind, but that remnant would be similar to other demonstrations that had come through where people stayed in the National Capital Region for a variety of reasons, but in some cases, setting up small tent cities that would at some point over the subsequent days, weeks, and in some cases months, would be gradually, through a measured approach, with multi-agency involvement from NCR and the City, they would be eventually moved either to a better location or moved back to wherever they had originally come from.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 28 12-028-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was on the mailing distribution, so it came into my inbox. I could also see there were other Ottawa Police Service members on the distribution. And by that point I had explicitly asked and had been told that members within Deputy Chief Bell's command and Intelligence Directorate were receiving Hendon reports, were involved in Hendon-related briefings, and that those reports were informing the Intersect discussions, the Threat Risk Assessment.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 29 12-029-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not every day, sir. I would -- if I had the ability I would, again, usually skim through a document. I do recall sort of, in the middle to the back end of that week, on a daily basis, doing a deeper, more full read. But at that point I was anything -- anything that was coming in, including emails from private citizens about this, I would try to skim read and if there was something relevant, I would usually just forward the email over into Deputy Chief Bell’s command, and copy in his Intelligence Directorate Commanders to make sure that they had the information and they could collate that into their larger threat risk assessment.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 29 12-029-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, the latter. The sum total of everything that I was reading or being briefed on, that was the -- on balance, the assessment.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 30 12-030-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s correct, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 30 12-030-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Maybe -- I’m not sure ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 30 12-030-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Every Chief of Police or Commissioner is accountable and responsible for everything in the organization. But I had delegated, specifically delegated those responsibilities to the two individuals, Deputy Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson to oversee and ensure that there was an appropriate level of threat risk assessment and forming an appropriate level operational plan.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 30 12-030-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Absolutely. On any issue, whether it was an HR matter or a Professional Standards Investigation, if at any point there was a data point or a context issue, something that didn’t seem to make sense, I would always ask a question, just to make sure that I understood the circumstances that they were dealing with. And if appropriate, I could provide advice, or direction, as required.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 31 12-031-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s entirely the direction that he had; that was his responsibility.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 31 12-031-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Just I want to be clear about something; Deputy Chief Bell, himself, wasn’t to sit down at his desk and conduct a threat risk assessment. But through the resources and the Directorates that he oversaw, to oversee that there was an appropriate threat risk assessment; yes, that was his directions.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 31 12-031-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, that was a best practice that I had learned and developed over the course of my tenure in Toronto and other areas. It was something that was, to some degree already -- significant degree already in place here in Ottawa. But I wanted it at the highest level possible. And I think Deputy Chief Ferguson -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson gave that in her testimony, that that was a clear expectation that I had made coming in.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 32 12-032-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’ve seen a document in disclosure that is titled Threat Assessment. I don’t recall receiving and reading that document. I did read the Threat Assessment that was embedded in the Pre-arrival Operational Plan that I received on January 28th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 32 12-032-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, what I’m referring -- sorry ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 33 12-033-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you, sir. What I’m referring to, I believe, is it just a briefing note. I don’t know what that would have been in the form of. It could have been an email that was sent around before, last night that had -- that that said there was no intelligence to indicate this was going to be violent. But it wasn’t the threat risk assessment document in any of its versions that I was referring to.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 33 12-033-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And I laid out a series of, I guess, it’s four points here of data that had come into my awareness over the course of the night into the morning, including the email that I forwarded, that would suggest opposite. So it was, again, just a reminder; there’s contradictory information, just make sure that that is incorporated into the overall threat risk assessment, and that is as optimal as it can be, so that the plan can be as optimal as it can be.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 34 12-034-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s the first time I’m seeing the document, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 34 12-034-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 35 12-035-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

At this point I wouldn’t say unprecedented. I think he’s -- actually, Sgt. Chris Kiez is one of our best Intelligence operators; I had a chance to interact with him quite a bit when I was at the Police Service. I think he actually uses some very important language here that caveats his comments. Talks about “recent” years, “not ever”. And he does that several times in here. The -- what he is describing is very accurate. We’re seeing, generally in protests, I’d suggest over the last 15 years, in the age of social media, a greater level of mobilization. And increasingly last decade, a greater level of -- a variety of funding and logistical support. This email took me back to Idle No More, the -- oh, my gosh, my memory's failing a little bit, Commissioner, sorry, but the Occupy Movement, where these sort of sentiments, crowd size, crowd dynamics, logistics, mobilization, larger disaffected populations, polarized populations that would give direct or indirect support, would directly protest or indirectly protest. I'm slowing myself down a little bit here. These were elements that we had seen. What Sergeant Chris Kiez is saying in here, my interpretation of it, is that the planners need to be aware this is likely going to be bigger than recent events. He didn't give a timeframe. Is that two years? Is that 10 years? And so we need to be cognizant. So it's a good alarm bell, but it's not a five alarm that he's ringing right now.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 36 12-036-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

A very ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 37 12-037-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- very healthy warning.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 37 12-037-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, first of all, the deputies would ensure that this information is being shared amongst the planners, as was directed from an Intelligence operator over to the planners. I would want to know that they had sufficient systems in place, that when a briefing note like this was produced, that it would go from the Intelligence Directorate to the Planning Team, and that it would be, again, used in real time as they were developing plan in real time. And these are real time systems. It's not one first and then the other. In real time, information is coming in, very fluid, very fast moving, very complex situation. My sense from the briefings that I was getting was that that process was in place, and it was functioning sufficiently.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 37 12-037-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

On a specific level like this, no.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 38 12-038-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I saw Hendon reports that had elements of both, sir. Again, elements of both. And the totality of all of the Hendon reports that were specifically prepared on the topic of the convoy events prior to the arrival of the events themselves, I would literally have to go back through them all. And I think you and I have talked about this in previous interviews. A line in one report, unless you've read the entire report, can be misleading. One report, unless you've read all the reports, could be misleading. So it's the totality of the information. And even then, the Hendon reports, as excellent as they were, and, Commissioner, I want to be clear, I've expressed my gratitude to Commissioner Carrique on multiple occasions, even after my resignation, about the quality of the intelligence support that we received from the OPP and specifically around the quality of the Hendon reports. But in the totality, sir, I do not recall, and to this day, even with the benefit of hindsight, I do not have any clear impression or saw any clear conclusions that we were going to have anything more than what I was being briefed on by my team. This was going to be a Thursday, Friday, mainly Saturday, Sunday event, with the potential for a smaller group to remain behind, but in numbers that we had managed previously.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 38 12-038-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Known unknowns. They know they need some information, but they do not have the information and therefore can't validate the other parts of the assessment and that there needs to be some effort to acquire that information and convert it into intelligence sufficient to close one or all of the gaps.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 39 12-039-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's how I interpret it, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 39 12-039-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That we're going to have two days of activities. That they don't know what those activities will be on those two days.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 40 12-040-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 40 12-040-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 40 12-040-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

You're absolutely right. In the larger context of all of the Intelligence information -- sorry, what was the date of this report again?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 40 12-040-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm certain that by the 25th of January, we were into the cycle of briefings where this is a 3, 4-day event, mainly the Saturday, Sunday, so even at the point where these known unknowns were being listed, while we couldn't tell you what the agenda of the activities were going to be, there would be some activities. There would be people demonstrating in the city. It would involve some level of vehicular traffic, likely involving large trucks. But you're right, none of the information in these known unknowns fills in hour by hour or block by block of time as to what exactly would take place.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 40 12-040-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, that actually almost reflects I want to say word by word, but certainly the sentiment of some of the intelligence that was in the Hendon reports. I can't remember the date of that. I do believe, and, again, I stand to be corrected, Commissioner, evidence in-Chief was led by Interim Chief Bell that talked about the heavy equipment. There were efforts made to interdict, to prevent that from coming in or at least mitigate it. And I believe he said that this is not information I had as the time of Chief, so I'm relying on Interim Chief Bell's testimony, that in fact much of that heavy equipment did not make it into the downtown core and he described differently some of the equipment that did make it down there than what has been reported on previously in media.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 41 12-041-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Absolutely. I mean, it could be as simple as I think a term that other people have given testimony on. Just need to kick the tires on different parts. Just make sure you ask questions at different levels, strategic, operational, and, yes, sometimes tactical, to make sure that they're aware of it and they have put some effort into it and there's a reasonable approach to how they're going to address it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 42 12-042-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

To answer your question, no. If you’re asking -- and I don’t want to interpret wrongly your question, so if I go in the wrong direction please pull me back, as the signals became stronger and stronger, what I would expect is, first I would know the signals were getting stronger, and clearly, we did. Secondly, that whether I asked about it or someone offered it, that we would have a constructive discussion around mitigation for those signals. I can tell you, I think it was -- well, I can tell you. I think it was the Wednesday that I received my first formal request through Acting Deputy Ferguson to reach out to fellow Chiefs of Police and request additional resources. If I’m wrong on the date, Commissioner, I’ll stand corrected, but middle of the week, I reached out to London Police Service, York, I believe, Toronto asking for general resource officers, but particularly Public Order officers. It’s my recollection, again, I stand to be corrected, that around this date or on this date, I had another request to reach out for more Public Order. I believe in Commissioner Carrique’s testimony that he was aware of that request. He had two Public Order units that were sent to Ottawa. I don’t believe they were under our ICS control, but they were in the Ottawa area and available. So that is what I would call Inspector Lucas signalling we might be overwhelmed by the numbers, we’ll need to bolster our abilities to not be overwhelmed. Particularly that would be Public order assets, and I had a specific request to get more Public Order assets and I made that request in this case to Commissioner Carrique. And thankfully, as he did -- provided those resources as quickly as he could.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 43 12-043-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

First of all, while I have the greatest respect for Inspector Bernier, he was not involved directly in the planning or the intelligence threat risk assessment. Police services and organizations are wonderful places. Everyone has an opinion. The briefings that I was getting from the commanders that had been assigned to the task, the people that they had assigned through their responsibilities to produce the information, some of which is displayed on the screen here, did not indicate that there was a bizarre disconnection.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 44 12-044-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think they were. Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 44 12-044-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. An important question, Commissioner. If I’m going -- deviating too far, please pull me back. But probably one of my top recommendations for you to consider, sir, while we had excellent intelligence and particularly excellent support from the Ontario Provincial Police, this was, from the very onset, a national issue. It was a national event. It started in British Columbia. It was joined on the east coast and it brought convoys from the southernmost point in Windsor. Probably the greatest number of participants and vehicles and vehicles came from our border with Quebec across the five interprovincial bridges. The vast majority of the formal intelligence threat risk assessment reports that we relied on came from the Ontario Provincial Police. To this day, I have a question. Why wasn’t I getting intelligence threat risk assessments on a regular basis of the quality that I got from the OPP from our federal partners? And I want to be clear, they contributed meaningfully and I’m grateful for their contributions. But I’ve said this in the Parliamentary committees and I’ll say it again to the Commissioner. There’s a structural deficit in our national intelligence threat risk assessment process. I’m grateful for the Ontario Provincial Police for filling that gap and doing so to the very best of their ability, but it was not optimal for us or any other jurisdiction that faced any element of these events. And one of my recommendations, sir, with great respect, is that there needs to be an investment in our national intelligence threat risk assessment structure organizationally, institutionally, through integrated organizations and institutions. Some of that will be a financial investment, but it doesn’t all have to be a financial investment. It needs to be an investment to bring this country truly into the 21st century where we are two decades, two and a half decades in.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 45 12-045-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There is no doubt, sir. And I’m sure you will ask me multiple times over the course of my testimony could we have done better. Absolutely. I never had a chance to do a debrief. I suspect -- I understand that Interim Chief Bell has conducted some or completed one. I’m not sure of the status. And I’m sure within that document there will be many, many, many examples of how we could have done better and need to do better going forward. I believe in his testimony lessons were already learned and applied to subsequent demonstrations, so if you’re - - long way of answering, there’s no doubt that we could have done some things better.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 46 12-046-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Low-hanging fruit, and I believe it’s already been rectified to some degree. A substantive element of our intelligence and information directorates, I would suggest even in other functional units and directorates, the ability for us to conduct open source social media and other online information gathering with the caveats of Charter rights, privacy rights. Absolutely, that would have to be a very transparent process. I stand to be corrected, but when I became Chief of Police, we actually had a unit that would have, by description and definition, fulfilled much of that function. Not all of it. It was either zero percent staffed or staffed by one person because we did not have the financial resources to put human beings into those budgeted positions. We didn’t have the internal skill sets even if we could find a human being to sit in there. I believe that’s been rectified to some significant degree based on testimony from Interim Chief Bell, but that is something it took me almost a full year, two years to convince the Toronto Police Service to do, and this is going back 2010-2011 after the events of the G20 -- actually, before and after when we finally got our first -- it was called a cyber group, but really, it was for pre-intelligence and post- investigative online capabilities. There are very few police services anywhere in Canada, municipal, provincial. OPP is an exception. I don’t know about Sureté du Québec. RCMP and the OPP are the only -- and Toronto Police Service are the only ones that I would comfortably describe as a reasonable extending to optimal level of capability in that area. The Ottawa Police Service did not have that capability.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 47 12-047-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 48 12-048-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir, with this caveat. I’m a police officer, not a lawyer.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 49 12-049-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir, I did.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 50 12-050-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry; yes. Yes. Sorry, sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 50 12-050-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, first of all, just an observation. Deputy Chief Bell made the request on the 27th. Again, if you recall my earlier testimony, this was a four-day event, starting on the 27th, continuing to the 28th, which is the Friday, with the main events on the 29th and 30th, the Saturday and Sunday. This legal opinion, while helpful to a degree, arrived technically in the middle of what we were already dealing with. There were already vehicles in the city, protest vehicles. There were already protesters and demonstrators in the city as we were receiving, reading, and considering this. This did not arrive a week before, or even a day before; this was already in the middle of the events. With that caveat, this is helpful. It certainly articulates to a greater degree what I think most of the police officers, and even my general counsel, Christiane Huneault, would have known and could have articulated differently. It’s not definitive; it’s advice, not direction. I understand that’s counsel’s job, but there isn’t a definitive line that says, “Because there might be any level of any one of these five points you therefore must go to some substantive interdiction, prevention, blocking of the events that are going to happen.” Again, language is important, and I think you and I have talked about this before. The reference of the lawyer who draft this says, “The convoy” I believe. There wasn’t one convoy, ever. There were multiple convoys and there were multiple other individuals and small groups, and I think Supt. Morris used better language than I will but affiliated groups that joined or left on a daily basis. I’m always mindful when I read, particularly advice documents that use a pejorative term, when what we were dealing with in reality was a massive group of fluid interacting individuals and groups where there is no one leader, no one spokesperson and no one thing to deal with. This was helpful, but not particularly instructive.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 51 12-051-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe I recall seeing that number by Inspector ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 52 12-052-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry; ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 52 12-052-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- with your indulgence; Commissioner, with your indulgence? I do want to be clear, though; what was listed in those five points materially happened on Saturday, the 29th. Those -- I think Deputy Bell gave excellent evidence on his own; I won’t repeat his testimony. But what we saw in terms of a violation of our community’s rights, our business community’s rights, the level of unlawfulness, and assaultiveness [sic], in the broadest sense of that terms, including the literal sense of that term, was not what we expected, and was overwhelming, not just for the Ottawa Police Service; most importantly, it was overwhelming for those communities that were most directly impacted by those events that weekend and every other day after that. So this was helpful because it, to some degree, anticipated -- anticipated -- that there would be competing Charter rights; there would be significant mobility challenges; there would be an impact on our emergency services in the ways that they were described theoretically on the page. So there was usefulness in this exercise. It was just a little too little, and already in the middle of the events that were still unfolding around us.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 52 12-052-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. And as I’m reviewing this document and we’re having this dialogue; all of these things were actually within the operational plan. I believe Insp. Lucas has given evidence to you, sir, that he considered that number; he considered it, that through the combination of the PLT negotiations engaged by OPP and OPS officers, that there were agreements made with as many of the convoys as possible that would significantly reduce the impact of such events by parking trucks and arranging bus or rideshare into the downtown core that would alleviate much of this; that they recognized that emergency lanes need to be kept open; there were significant amounts of planning, detailed out on the traffic plan and other plans. Again, evidence led by many others in that regard. The Ottawa Police Service were neither ignorant of this; and, more importantly, they had taken steps to reasonably mitigate this, based significantly on the intelligence and information available; and ,as we’ve heard by other OPS members, including Insp. Lucas, Deputy Chief Bell, based on the previous experience they had with similar types of events in a reasonable similar timeframe. So I think, again, this was an informative document; it validated much of what we were thinking; it provided a more clearly articulated legal basis for what we were thinking; and we put in place the mitigation pieces that I felt were reasonably presented to me in advance of this, and we had the support of an excellent group from the OPP and their PLT as well. We’ve heard that unfortunately, the majority of those agreements were broken. Let me be careful of my language, and I believe, sir, it was Insp. Lucas that gave an insight that I was only aware of in his testimony. I believe it was the Windsor convoy that arrived first, and largest, into the city and occupied the majority of the red zone area along the Parliamentary district. Once that happened, the convoy’s -- again, relying on Insp. Lucas’s testimony, if I get any of this wrong, I will walk that back. But once that happened, Insp. Lucas described something, I think he called it, like, a chaotic scramble of convoys breaking off and going anywhere. The traffic plan collapsed. The extra resources held in reserve had to be immediately actioned to try to get the agreements that were in place, get the trucks to the designated parking zones. None of that was accomplished in the morning of, and I guess the early afternoon of Saturday the 29th. The Windsor group had claimed, for the most part, Wellington Street and the Parliamentary District, and everybody else wanted to get as close to that as possible. I shouldn’t say everybody else. A lot of other participants for almost the full duration of that event, tried to get to that most prized and prolific public place. And that was another complicating factor on our operations, our traffic plans, our PLT operations, even our POU operations. So I think we had an informative legal opinion sought at a reasonably early opportunity, received literally in the middle of the event, certainly within less than 24 hours. Stop me if I’m going on too much, sir. But my last point in this, and it’s a what-if, and I don’t want to engage in too much conjecture, but other witnesses have provided this what-if. I believe Deputy Chief Bell talked about this. Assuming that even on the 28th, Commissioner, that we decided to lock down the city, close off all the interprovincial bridges and the offramps from the 416 and 417 highways, we would have needed, in Deputy Chief Bell’s estimation, 2,000 officers. I think it would have actually been more. Even if that was our wish, even if that was the clearest conclusion that came from any of the Hendon Reports or any other combination of intelligence or legal opinions, on the 28th of January, we were not going to get 2,000 extra officers into the city and deployed on a plan that could execute and implement anything that relates to this.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 54 12-054-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

On the 29th, sir. Sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 57 12-057-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Two things. First of all, we did take active steps. Roads were closed. We’ve heard repeated testimony from OPS and OPP senior officers that there were efforts to manage the convoy’s on-route and on the King’s Highways. A new term. I’m so used to the Queen’s Highways. But the King’s Highways. And so there were mitigation efforts. Second thing, and it does relate to the first, the biggest mitigation effort was the work of the excellent PLT teams, from the OPP, which is best in class PLT program in the country. I hope I haven’t disrespected my RCMP colleagues, but that’s a humble opinion. Take it for what it’s worth. They have an excellent PLT program. But our PLT was engaged. I believe from Commissioner Carrique’s evidence, or it might have been Commissioner Abram’s evidence, engaged as the western convoys crossed Manitoba, and they were engaged with all the other convoys. So PLT had negotiated, in good faith, and had received good faith agreements, small A agreements, because I don’t think it's a contract, that the 3,000 trucks would be mitigated substantially by their willingness to move those trucks into pre-designated areas and carpool, for lack of a better term, into the core. They had agreed not to block the emergency lanes. We had no indication, even on this date, that we were going to have the type of public display of unlawfulness, a terrible term, and my English teacher will turn over in grave, assualtiveness [sic] in the broadest sense, sensory, as well as physical. Hate related incidents that we saw materialize and metastasize on the 29th into the 30th and beyond.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 57 12-057-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That was ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 58 12-058-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- fast and furious.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 58 12-058-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

In preparing for today, I read through some of my notes and I think I shared with my counsel, I was reading the 9:00 o’clock briefing on the Saturday morning. Whether you find this as validation or not, Commissioner, but the 9:00 o’clock briefing that I received on the Saturday morning, the 29th, was still talking about a weekend event. It described we might have a tent city at the end of this. Tent city in the vernacular, meaning that we would have some five, six, seven, eight, maybe 20 tents somewhere in an NCR park, Confederation Park, and that we would need to remove it, as we had in previous ways. And I’d seen that done during my tenure. There is a bit of a back and forth that I’m quoted in as saying, well, can we make sure that we have our ESU, which is our Emergency Services Unit, down on the ground, and when everybody -- when anybody brings out a tent, can we, in a very smiling and polite way, ask them not to put their tent up so we have less work to do after the weekend? That is literally the substantive assessment. Traffic plan is working, PLT agreements are in place, convoys are arriving, officers are ready to go, INTERSECT is stood up, NCRCC is stood up, and we might have a bit of a tent city to deal with. That is consistent with all of the briefings, intelligence, and operational, on balance, in summary, that I had been receiving up until that point. That wasn’t the case probably by 11:00 o’clock in the morning. It happened that quick.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 58 12-058-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My understanding and my observation was by 11:00 o’clock, we had a significantly embedded, clearly beginning to occupy, and in some cases fortify, elements of Wellington Street, the Parliamentary District, and other parts of our downtown core, that we were not able to maintain the agreed level of cooperation with the various convoys and that the traffic plan and the staffing and reserve staffing was significantly, if not already, fully exhausted. I do not have the detailed descriptions that have been provided in testimony here around what was taking place in the NCRCC, and I can’t validate or invalidate the level of chaos and potentially the occasional F-bomb that might have been thrown around in that room of dedicated professionals who were having been, excuse my term, punched right in the nose and engaged in a standing eight count, trying to get the city back to a level of safety as quickly as they can, and also trying to keep our Ottawa Police Service members and our partner agency members, our city workers, residents, business owners as safe as they possibly could in a set of circumstances that, at this point, sir, clearly was unprecedented. Clearly was unprecedented.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 59 12-059-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The morning, early afternoon of the 29th, which essentially stayed on a steady state with varying degrees of crowd dynamic and other injects, like alcohol and drugs, into the evening. But that was pretty well the next 72 hours.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 60 12-060-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 60 12-060-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s a very polite description.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 61 12-061-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

However many convoys there were, that’s how many firehoses were coming. Add 10 more firehoses for all the other odds and sides that showed up, with three more firehoses in for the minus 35-degree temperature, four or five more for the level of fatigue that our officers already had going into those events, 43 more firehoses for the level of public trust in policing based on all the events that I outlined earlier on, and I think that’s a more accurate assessment of the amount of water that we were taking on at that point.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 61 12-061-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I received an estimate. I never made the estimate. As high as 5,000 trucks and 15,000 participants is the upper end number that I received -- I recall receiving on the Saturday. I said 5,000 trucks. I want to be careful. 5,000 vehicles, predominately trucks, but that might have included a range of other vehicles that I can’t detail for you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 61 12-061-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 61 12-061-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My understanding through testimony is that they managed to keep the Wellington lane -- I always get this confused, the south lane open for much of that day. I don’t know if they lost it for portions or at some point between the Saturday or the Sunday they lost it or made a decision to close off Wellington and then create an emergency lane access egress through other street combinations. I’m not clear on the details, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 62 12-062-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s a very important question and I think it was touched on at some point in testimony. The downtown core was like, clearly was the epicentre and hyper volatile, hyper complex, like I won't be able to provide adjectives, so I'll just leave it at that. But you could drive south of the 416, is that right, 417, into literally still downtown neighbourhoods, and you would hear honking and you'd see, unfortunately, Canada flags stuck on vehicles and behaviour that was clearly anti-social, but it dropped off significantly once you got south of the 417. Further out into the Kanata's and the other parts, there were probably micro things happening, I'm never really sure of it. So the City would be aware of it, it would be obviously on TV. Social media is exploding at this point and people are dialled in to what's going on, but from a physical standpoint, physical location, you know, 98 percent of it was in a micro concentration, hyper concentration of activity, and trauma, unfolding trauma to our community in the heart of our city, in the heart of the Parliamentary District. And I don't want in any way forget, I know there are federal representatives here, but the trauma impacted on federal employees, elected officials, public officials, the entire infrastructure and ecosystem that represents our Nation's Capital, the Parliamentary District, and the, I believe Mr. Champ quoted, 18 or 15,000 residents in that aera. I don't know how many businesses, I know the Rideau Centre was closed. All of that happened literally within hours, and the relief did not come I believe until February 17th, 18th or 19th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 62 12-062-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

First of all, I'll never challenge the feelings of a member of our community, they're their feelings, they're as righteous and as accurate as they need to be for the human being that expressed them. So I'm no way challenging wherever that sentiment came from. I can tell you that I met with, spoke with, walked around, and talked with many of the residents, the business owners, I was at a Business Improvement Association meeting that was referenced by one of the witnesses, and I heard a range of sentiments. I saw a range of responses from incredibly resilient and understanding and patient people. An elderly couple, both of them infirm and wheelchairs, travelling through that minus 35 degree temperature, stopped me as I was getting out of my SUV, while doing a live call on a board meeting, on February 1st, I believe, and talked to me. I had -- I think Chair Deans was talking, and I was literally talking to this couple, "Chief, we know your guys are doing the best you can. Please, it's hard for us to get around the sidewalks. We're trying to do our shopping. We know this is really tough on your team, please do your best for us." So yes, I heard expressions of hopelessness, I heard accusations of abandonment, but I would say the vast majority that I received directly to me was around resilience and patience. "Get this thing resolved as quickly as you can, as completely as you can", but resilience. And a level of understanding as to what the officers on the ground, and I don't say just officers, the members of our organisation. The partners that were deployed already from OPP, RCMP, London, God bless them. I think people understood how difficult it was, but they didn't see the situation resolving in a day, in two days. And I think it's reasonable for people to feel really aggrieved that there isn't a clear solution or a timeline to a clear solution that they could tangibly see and anticipate, and we were simply not in a position to provide that to them ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 63 12-063-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- at that time.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 65 12-065-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

This is always a little tricky part for me, sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 65 12-065-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you, sir. It's okay. 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. And I'm grateful to them. And they should be celebrated. Not celebrated, that's the wrong word. They should be understood.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 65 12-065-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 65 12-065-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think I've given this testimony in Parliamentary Standing Committees. 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 it was crushing to the 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 the hard work of the men and women of the Ottawa Police Service and the partner agencies that stood with us. None of it. 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. It materialises in so many ways. I don't know if the Commissioner wants me to expand on that, but I'm happy to do so. And unfortunately, as quickly as the events unfolded on the morning and the afternoon of the Saturday, public opinion against the Ottawa Police Service and its members turned just as quickly and to the same unprecedented levels that were unrelenting, at least from my entire experience, up until February 15th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 65 12-065-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It's just respect for your profession.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 67 12-067-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 67 12-067-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My view is it was unlawful the moment a law was broken in or relation to the events. And so for me, that was clearly the Saturday morning. I don't want to in any way interpret Deputy Chief -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson's impression. I think I would position the 31st as we now know this is going to be a longer-term occupation. There are fortifications and there are -- there is alarming level of public safety issues at large and we're going to have to pivot our plan to now address the current context and near future context that we're going to be dealing with. So it's in that context that perhaps -- again, I don't want to misinterpret, but perhaps the full Command is fully on the same page and the Incident Command Team is pivoting the plan now into the next phase of this occupying period.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 67 12-067-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't know if there's any significant decision. I mean, we needed a much -- we needed a significant update on the intelligence threat risk. Much of that was in place in the buildup and iterations, but we now need it to escalate to another level. And again, that cycle of intelligence threat risk assessment to then feed the pivoting operational plan to what extent are we going to need different resources, greater levels of resources in one area versus another area, and to what extent do we need to build out sub- plans and other things. For me at the Chief of Police level is what resources are we going to need. What do I now need to do to inform and/or engage other levels including the oversight body of the Ottawa Police Services Board, the City of Ottawa and other factors. And I will be -- I was still trying to understand really what had just arrived in our city, what really was it, and even just level set my own understanding, never mind the work that was being done on behalf of me through Deputies Bell and Acting Deputy Ferguson.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 68 12-068-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I understand -- I think I understand the theme behind it. I would probably use different language, but I think it's definitely a what just happened, how do we now need to reorient, to reassess, and then start to address the situation going forward.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 69 12-069-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 69 12-069-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, there was no need for a new plan. There was a need for an evolution of the plan that we had, an evolution of the threat risk assessment that was in that plan. Again, I want to make it clear, there was only ever one plan. There were many iterations of it. There was only ever one threat risk assessment. There were many iterations of it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 69 12-069-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

On the Monday the 31st?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 69 12-069-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Probably the number one thing at that point was staffing, staffing, staffing, staffing.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 69 12-069-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, without the -- with the absence of my notes, but as simple as how many more officers can we redeploy from our overall complement of policing a city of a million people in the nation's largest municipal geography to that micro-ore of the red zones and the immediate neighbourhoods around it. I think, by that point -- again, I stand to be corrected if the records say otherwise, but that point, we had already started to look at changing our shift hours to create a greater volume of officers available, officers and civilian members. I don't know if we had, at that point, reached out to the Association, the Ottawa Police Association to start to negotiate a whole different shift schedule. That might have come later on in the week, but that was the focus, and then external resource requests that went to OPP and other police services to send additional resources atop of what they had provided us already.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 70 12-070-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, absolutely.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 70 12-070-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Predominantly, it sort of happens at two levels. You know, the agency-to-agency relationships would already be, you know, phone calls and text messages to people that they knew in other agencies. You know, you'll get something formal from the Chief, but we need X, Y and Z. And then the formal request would come up through Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson and then I would make a reach out to the respective agencies. So probably my approach for the main may have deviated every now and then, would be a text message to the Chief of Police or Commissioner, saying that you'll be getting a formal request, but I'm looking for X or Y or Z. And then my executive assistant would produce the document and I would forward that formally. But once I got a positive response, the positive response I would then forward to our Legal Services Department, and they would go through the process of enabling a memorandum of understanding, an MOU.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 70 12-070-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 72 12-072-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe by the 31st, I'm certain there was -- I'm really off base, but Coutts, Alberta was already in play at that point. On the Monday, I don't recall any other Ontario sites. I don't even think the announcement of the -- no, on the Monday -- oh, sorry, on the Tuesday, by then, there might have been some sort of indication that there would be an event in Toronto around Queen's Park.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 72 12-072-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

But I don't think there was any other active sites in Ontario. There were, I believe, some demonstrations at other provincial capitals across the country, but for sure, Coutts was active and clearly being televised and we're seeing I was getting briefings from Commissioner Lucki on the events out there.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 72 12-072-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So maybe I could just give some context to the meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 73 12-073-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So this is the Tuesday. We are into the -- significantly into the pivot at this point. I had received varying levels of input, some of them just random emails, some of them very specific conversations with people with a lot of experience in unprecedented, unusual public safety events. And the validation that I was getting from small i information to large I information based on expertise was this was unprecedented. This was larger than your police service is going to be able to handle. It was national, and in some cases, international in scope. It was fueled by significant funding, significant misinformation, disinformation and polarization, just to name a few. This meeting was my first attempt to sit down with Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson as the Major Incident Commander. I had invited -- I'd asked for Inspector Lucas to be at the meeting. He could not attend, and I respect his reason, although I don't know it specifically. I think Inspector Marin was sent as his designate, I think, but he was a senior officer from the ICS team that was there, Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll, who was the ESU Commander, our POU Commander. And he ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 73 12-073-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Emergency Safety Unit, I think, or Emergency Services Unit. Sorry, it's been a little bit of time.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 74 12-074-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Essentially, but broader -- I think actually a broader use of trained officers that are actually more effectively deployed, a really good practice here that Ottawa should be recognized for, Ottawa Police Service should be recognized for. And I had brought with me the two PLT supervisors because I had information, feedback internally that our PLT members weren't being optimally used and were feeling out of the loop of substantive discussions like this. And I had requested that the two supervisors be there, and they were there, and you see their contributions later on in the notes. But this is the substantive first time that I'm sitting down with the Incident Command thread, strategic, operational and tactical, asking what are you folks seeing? How are you assessing this? No decision's being made here. I need situational awareness. I need your assessment. We had been blessed with commanders of some expertise and experience from other jurisdictions that were in that room. I think London was there, can't remember if Durham. I believe there was an OPP commander. I can't recall, but there were at least three other agencies in the room. So it wasn't just us talking to us. There was a healthy amount of external expertise. And we went through what I would call -- I won't say it's a whiteboarding session, but a consultation, discussion session that I wanted to get at some point to, okay, well, this is good. Now what's the move forward coming out from this? So that's the context of this meeting. I'll pause there if you want to come back to the question that you wanted me to ask -- answer.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 74 12-074-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 75 12-075-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So around -- I'd say around the mid point of that meeting, I would have almost turned to Michel Marin and Mike Stoll, who were sitting to my right, and said, "What's the level of POU that you would think we would need to start to dismantle the red zone and end the occupation?" And then there was, like, a real-time discussion between my folks and the other POU commanders in the room, but there were others that were chiming in. It was mainly a POU discussion, and I've been in them in many other times before, so I know how this feels. I just sort of sat back and watched this new generation of experts do their thing, and it was kind of cool to watch. And within a really short period of time, it was almost unanimous. This may not be the exact language, but it was close to it, we're going to need everything in Ontario and a bunch more from across Canada. That was one of the moments where I truly understood the scale of what we were facing. Everything in Ontario and a bunch more from across Canada for me was state visits, an Olympic event, G8, G20. Nothing else requires that.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 75 12-075-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's when I truly understand from people with amazing expertise, from different jurisdictions, add onto that whatever other resources we're going to request, that's somewhere already in the range of 6, 7, 800 officers plus investigators, plus boots on the ground officers, plus dispatchers, analysts, special constables to handle mass arrests. The number is going to be well north of a thousand, and it's way more than we will ever be able to supply within the Ottawa Police Service, within the eastern region of Ontario, within the province.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 76 12-076-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 76 12-076-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't know. I'm assuming this is the PLT contribution to the discussion, so I don’t -- these aren’t my notes, and it doesn’t seem to be attributed to one or both of the supervisors. I don’t know if this is their briefing contributing in totality, so I’m not sure what that means.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 76 12-076-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, there were some 20 people in the room and it was really an open forum discussion with people just contributing ideas in a very fluid way.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 77 12-077-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I do, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 77 12-077-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 77 12-077-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry. Can you -- I’m just not sure the context or date or time of this, sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 77 12-077-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

“Call with Mayor”, and the time stamp, at least from the entry, is 1:30. Okay. Thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 78 12-078-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Fortunato.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 78 12-078-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s my Executive Assistant, or was my Executive Assistant.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 78 12-078-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

At this point, I actually didn’t have an assigned scribe, so I was trying in real time to capture information around conversations that I thought were important or a point that I was trying to remember, so it’s not a consistent practice with every single meeting that I would go back and do this. That’s the context of the note. I don’t know if that answers your question, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 78 12-078-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Some of it. Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think I can guess what’s coming, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There may be not be a policing solution to this.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

For all the reasons that we’ve talked about. The size and scale of the events were not going to be able to be handled by any one police of jurisdiction, certainly not mine. That this was a national scope event started from corners of all parts of Canada and arrived in our city. It was already, by the 2nd, in several other locations, Kutz, specifically, I think by the 2nd. There would have been some indication that Queens Park in Toronto would have been a location. 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 sentiments expressed at all three levels of government. And some of this was just people looking to come into our city and participate in an event, to have an unruly and, in many cases, unlawful party. This was the underpinnings that created this event and brought it substantially into our city. We’re well beyond the Police Services Act mandate of me as a Police Chief and the Ottawa Police Service and the police of jurisdiction, 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.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 79 12-079-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe there was a -- I can’t remember if it was a Board meeting or if it was a Council meeting that the Board was in attendance at. There was a range of questions for hours, and at some point one of the questions elicited that response.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 80 12-080-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

If there are 35 million people in Canada, probably 35 million different ways.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 80 12-080-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No. Largely misunderstood but, by a lot of people, very understood.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 80 12-080-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

A lot.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 81 12-081-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It needed to be more clear.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 81 12-081-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That the Ottawa Police Service is doing and will continue to do everything we possibly can do. Just to be clear, that was literally the substantive answer I was giving during that meeting. All options are on the table. We’re doing everything we can. We’re calling all the staffing we can. We are rearranging our plan. We’re calling out to our partners. So before that statement was made -- it wasn’t made in a vacuum. We were hours into a long meeting with multiple questions from multiple stakeholders. I believe my Board were present. I stand to be corrected. City Councillors, the Mayor, “What are you doing? How are you going to end this? When is it going to end?” Please understand, we’re doing everything we can and we’ll continue to do everything we can on a repeat loop, but at some point this isn’t going to end just by the Ottawa Police Service. Even if we could find a way to get all the resources we need, it’s going to come back again next week, the month after, Canada Day. This is a larger movement or series of movements. This is a trend that’s happening across the country and around the world, and so there needs to be more than just a policing solution to it. That’s the context. Now, I did reflect on it and in the days and weeks and now months after that I’ve, in opportunities like this, expanded on that short phrase. I think there’s ample documentation in my notes, note scribes, to talk about me explaining this further to the Chair, at Board meetings, in other conversations and meetings. So I didn’t just leave it till now to provide a more fulsome explanation. Within hours and days of it, I was trying to provide that more fulsome explanation to my Board oversight and to other public bodies and civil actors.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 81 12-081-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, like my earlier comment, sir, everyone is entitled to their opinion and is certainly entitled to their feelings. And I can understand that if that was the only thing they heard from me and they were not available to hear all the other efforts I made to clarify that, that that could leave them with a sense that we’d just given up. So I’m not challenging that. But let me clear. I don’t know if that is different from any other statement I’ve made around the role of policing in society. If you recall my earlier comments when I introduced my approach to policing and how I did it, the police are not going to solve guns and gangs and drugs on their own without education, health care, social services, the volunteer sector, communities themselves. The police are not going to be able to solve sexual assaults on their own without advocacy groups and legislative change. So there isn’t any major aspect of policing, crime management, order management, traffic management -- even traffic management, we can’t patrol the amount of highways unless we have bylaw changes, signage changes, engineering changes that are well beyond the remit of the police service to demand and deliver. So for me, this is a consistent them that I have spoken on and acted in accordance throughout my entire policing career. It wasn’t, for me, an unusual statement, but it was heard in unusual and unprecedented circumstances and misinterpreted broadly, badly.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 82 12-082-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I can’t rule that out, sir, but I think I made enough efforts after that to clarify that and, demonstrably, the Ottawa Police Service kept -- with its partners, kept putting out everything we possibly could for as long as we could, I would very strongly suggest well past where we should have been. Our actions should have spoken louder than words, but unfortunately, by Saturday afternoon, there had been a cemented narrative and I don’t think it ever changed. My statement probably didn’t help it, but I don’t think it was really changeable from that first weekend.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 83 12-083-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, if their comment was based on what was said without the benefit of hearing all the other explanations, I certainly attempted, through the larger calls, to establish the things I just talked about. We are still looking -- we are still doing everything we can. We’re seeking all the help we can. And if we can get 1,800 resources, or whatever number the final amount is to come in, then we could take care of the unlawful aspects of this. But there were broader implications and underpinnings that could bring it back to my city or any other city or jurisdiction. And so sustainably, to resolve the situation, we were still going to need larger civil society, all three levels of government. I don’t know if this is the time to interject around any of the levels of declarations of emergency, municipal, provincial, or federal, but clearly we had indications, and I believe that there were assistances from those various levels, the injunction, the private injunction. And so there are clearly examples where some additional efforts were needed beyond the efforts of the police to resolve it. Local community mobilized themselves in mostly constructive ways. In some ways, less constructive. But there were efforts across the board, from private citizens to public institutions, that contributed ultimately to that success. While I respect the comments of my peers, I want to be careful with my language here, I don’t know any major operation, including that one, that did not benefit material from the supports outside of police organizations themselves. And I think that’s unfair to the contributions made by broader civil society, including all three levels of government.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 84 12-084-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t know if that’s what they intended in their comments. I want to be clear about that. but no police organization of any size, operation of any size, that I’ve ever been involved with, that had the clear level of success, no deaths, no serious injuries, no significant damage to infrastructure, no rioting, no burning police cars. I don’t know if any size operation that didn’t materially benefit from the consent and cooperation of citizenry, the injections of material resources or advice, expertise, from other experts outside of policing, legislative change, et cetera, et cetera.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 85 12-085-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 85 12-085-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I did recall it was the 1st, but I’m not going to quibble.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 86 12-086-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. In terms of the surge of numbers, and then the extra dynamics of convoys coming in or not coming in. definitely larger in scale, and more complex.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 86 12-086-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think on that date, I received a briefing on the three options I’d asked for from the meeting on February 1st, the POU options. So that’s a substantive subplan development. By then, we’d had major changes around our internal staffing capabilities, decisions around how to redeploy resources around both the events for the convoy, as well as policing the rest of the City, which still had to happen on a 24-hour basis, obviously. We had made announcements around our efforts to try to address the disorderly, unlawful, and assaultive behaviour, the hate type behaviour that was happening directly in the communities most affected around the red zone, variously described as surge and enforce and contain. So those are some of the examples of overarching -- we were now planning for a week’s cycle, as opposed to a weekend cycle. Requests had gone out to partner agencies not just for police officers, but for planners, people with expertise in PLT, POU, recognizing we didn’t have the expertise or the number of people necessary to do the type of planning and sub-planning that we needed to do. I know I’m going fast, Commissioner, so if you need to me slow down, I will. So there’s a range of activities that are engaged in involving the prearrival plan into an in-event plan.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 86 12-086-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So this is the second Saturday. You’ll recall what happened on the first Saturday. Point number two around close everything, at the meeting that was held, that was qualified, I want to be clear about that, clearly access and egress -- access into the city and access into the downtown core was one of the major reasons why that situation on the first Saturday so quickly escalated and metastasized into the events that we’re feeling right now. It was reasonably predictable at this point that we were going to have another large influx of convoys, ones and twos vehicles, and walk across bridges demonstrators that would again likely overwhelm the number of resources, even at that time that we had in the city. And so that was a major public safety risk that, on the second Saturday, was now even more likely to happen. And so that’s the point there. The “Surge, contain and enforce” was announced on the Friday morning at a media conference. And this was specifically to address the level of ongoing disorderly, assaultive, hate related behaviour that our downtown communities and businesses were experiencing, particularly in Councillor Fleury’s ward and Councillor McKenney, although I’m not sure she’s in office now, but former Councillor McKenney, her ward. And the overwhelming amount of community complaints, business complaints were coming from the unlawful, assaultive type behaviour in that area, and we needed to -- that “Surge, contain and enforce” is not for the red zone. That is for the areas outside of the red zone. And the reference around the stacking the day shift and the night shift is to hold back the night shift officers, and then deploy the day shift officers so we have a larger amount, at that time, to be visibly present in the mid- morning to mid-afternoon when the bulk of those arriving demonstrators and activities, unlawful, assaultive type of activities, would be taking place. The third point is around probably less of a public safety piece, but still unlawful, unsafe. Funds that were enabling, to some significant degree, the ongoing activities here, and other locations, but certainly here in Ottawa. Fuel. The trucks needed fuel and we were already trying to deal with the jerry cans and that, the open flames, propane in residential areas that I think has already been spoken about. And the fun. Probably not the best word to use, but these were, I think, significant emotional and psychological impacts on those that felt captured, abandoned, that elements of the demonstration and the convoy events were fun, where they were suffering. And I think there was a reasonable need for us to take whatever lawful and ethical actions we could to stop it or discourage it and negotiate it in some way, and those were largely the actions that PLT, I believe, we’re involved with.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 88 12-088-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

This is me crossing that boundary, and for a very specific reason. It's the first full week. The entire Service is fully deployed and fully exhausted. We are getting massive complaints from our community, and they are suffering. By this time, they are suffering. The resilience I talked about was still there in a lot of people, but it's waning. We are now reasonably able to predict the cycles of increases on Friday, Saturday, into Sunday, and down. We know what's coming, and we knew what hit us the week before. And this is the Chief of Police calling a special Incident Command meeting to say, "Are we ready? Do we have the capacity? Are we able to significantly alter what took place last Saturday to what is going to take place this Saturday? And I need to look around the room and eyeball everybody and get a nod or a headshake and then figure out what we need, you need for resources." So I framed out something that people come prepared to discuss and invited them to that meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 90 12-090-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was stepping into the Operational levels to make sure that strategic intent was really clear to the Operational Commanders.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 91 12-091-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, I thought it was Superintendent Chris Rheaume. I found out at the meeting that transpired later that in fact it was Superintendent Jamie Dunlop.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 91 12-091-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's correct, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 91 12-091-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

If you scroll up to the top of this, please? So this is... What's the timestamp on this email? Sorry, I just can't see it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 92 12-092-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No, that doesn't make sense.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 92 12-092-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So I think this around ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 92 12-092-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It's around five or six o'clock. So to give you context, Confederation Park had become a significant site that we were conducting PLT negotiations. The issue of fuel coming into the downtown from Coventry Road was escalating. The level of complaints, legitimate, desperate complaints coming in from businesses and residents are escalating. We had spent most of the Thursday and Friday trying to build towards the announcement on the Friday of the surge and force, contain. The statements "all options are on the table, we are putting all of our resources on the ground. You will see a visible, different amount -- visible -- a greater visibility of police officers engaged in a wider array of activities, including enforcement, to address the substantive complaints and concerns affecting our community." And I know I went way too fast there, so I'm going to take a breath and let people catch up. Coming into the Saturday night, I woke up because I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep those days. I woke up somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, could not get back to sleep. Checked the situation report that came from Duty Inspector Frank D'Aoust, and he laid out information that is contained in this email. The Confederation Park, I'm not reading exactly, but the Confederation Park negotiations ended badly. The Indigenous Elders that had come in were treated badly. There was an attack on one of our sergeants at one of the sites. Other City workers were being attacked. This, for me, was an alarming situational report in the middle of the night that no one else was likely reading, and I wouldn't have been reading until I had woken up with my alarm at five o'clock in the morning. But I read it. So I got in the shower and I got into my car and I got down to the station, and I changed into my gear, and I looked around. We were thinly staffed. I understand why. There was not much to staff with, and we were thinly staffed. And when I went down onto the, we call the Zero Level of our Headquarters, and asked the watch commanders there and the sergeants, "What's our staffing levels look like for 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock when the bulk of the resource -- when the bulk of convoys are coming in?" The numbers I got were really concerning. The level of threat from the situational report from Inspector D'Aoust at three o'clock in the morning was alarming. So overnight we had an escalated level of threat at multiple different sites, and in the morning, I wasn't getting a sense that we had the staffing commensurate to what we had announced and what we actually needed. And so I needed to make sure that I could pull together an Incident Command Team and ask these Operational level questions to be assured that we were in a better state of affairs than what I was getting at that point in the morning. And I think that is a reasonable level of situational awareness for a Chief of Police in an unprecedented crisis to ask of their Operational Commanders.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 92 12-092-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

They were conceived by me, they weren't directed by me. They were -- these were the areas that we were going to explore at the Commanders meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 94 12-094-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

At what point was that? Is that the subsequent meeting that we had when I called for the Incident Command meeting?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Just -- I'm a little confused, sorry, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The three-pointer that I put in my email writing is not the Ops Plan I'm referring to here.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. I sent a meeting request. I'm concerned about these three areas. We're going to discuss them. We have this meeting, and I'm saying, "Our Ops Plan is the right plan. What I want us to do is implement the hell out of it." So surge and force, contain was part of our Ops Plan. Implement the hell out of it. That means you're going to have to have enough resources to do that. To surge into the neighbourhood, you -- I think the number we said was, I might get the numbers wrong, but I think it was 30 per shift over 3 shifts in two neighbourhoods, where you would see 15 extra uniform officers in those neighbourhoods. But if we can't staff to that level, we can't implement the heck of out it, or even implement it. So the staffing request is around make sure that what we've announced as part of our excellent Ops Plan, which is not changing, has the staffing to implement it. That's the reference. The reference around the Traffic Plan, we're supposed to be reducing the amount of convoys coming into the city. Make sure the Traffic Plan is staffed adequately and implemented effectively, so we don't have the same level of surge of trucks and vehicles coming into the downtown, but we're not changing the plan. There was a clarification, and there was a misunderstanding from Inspector Frank D'Aoust and I first contacted him at probably four o'clock in the morning, where he interpreted close everything as literally get the OPP to close every highway off ramp of the King's highways across the entire municipality of Ottawa. He would need probably a thousand police officers to do that, and I would never intend that to happen. I would never need that to happen. I never needed it to happen. That misinterpretation has stayed alive to this day. I clarified in this meeting, down to off ramps that give direct access to the downtown core where our red zones area, that's what I need. I wanted all the interprovincial bridges closed because all of them give direct access to the downtown core, and I wanted to know that we had more roads closed internally than we had the weekend before, but I never publicly in the media, and I never in these meetings said get the OPP to close everything, everywhere, and keep it closed.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 95 12-095-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My best recollection was around the concept of all options are on the table. We are looking at greater levels of road closures including highway off ramps and interprovincial bridges.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 97 12-097-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not at all, sir. I wanted to ensure that the resources that had been said that would be in place were actually going to be in place.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 97 12-097-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Actually, if you scroll up a little bit, sorry. Right there. "On February 4th, Chief Sloly announced at a press conference that [the] OPS would be making greater use of road closures, including closures of off-ramps for Highway 417..." There's no statements there saying that we're going to close everything.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 98 12-098-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, but the plan was already to have those staff in place. I wanted to make sure they were actually available. A lot can happen in 24 hours. Potentially, without me knowing, the Incident Commander could have developed a plan that was going to take resources away from those commitments. If they had said we can't staff your surge and enforcement because we've got all those neighbourhood officers doing something else, or we had a shooting in the west end last night and it's an extensive scene and we can't redeploy our traffic to that, then I would have understood. We couldn't staff what we planned. But we weren't trying to figure out just then if we had the staffing for what we had announced. That is not correct.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 99 12-099-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was told we had the resources, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 99 12-099-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

If that was the case, and clearly, there was no understanding that the resources were available and reasonably predictably going to be available, that would be problematic. That was not the case in this situation.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 99 12-099-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe so, sir, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 100 12-100-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So those were the locations where our red zone -- Rideau, Wellington and SJAM are the three basic footprints of the red zone. Those were established, I believe, through the Incident Commander up through Trish Ferguson. She was the first that I recall hearing about the red zone and the footprints were described to me in subsequent meetings from probably the Sunday through until now. Confederation Park, as I had advised, I think that started up somewhere around the Thursday. I might be mistaken, but Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but certainly had escalated to a significant event for us to be managing on the Thursday night, Friday into the weekend. So those weren't my priorities. Those were already priorities established by virtue of the briefings I was getting, the situation reports that were coming in to me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 100 12-100-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm sorry, what general priorities? I maybe ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 101 12-101-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, we were dealing with a demonstration, so that's literally the entire theory of operations, number two, surge contain and enforce was to address the trauma impacting our communities. And shutting down the ability for this thing to sustain itself, again, those are just priorities that we'd been working on literally since the previous weekend. Those aren't new priorities. That's essentially what we have been working on.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 101 12-101-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, in terms of shutting down enabling factors, at a broad level, that was already well underway. We already had established I think through Deputy Bell and Christiane Huneault contacts with the City to try to shut down the GoFundMe. I may not be using the right terminology, but not allow those funds to continue to enable the ongoing occupation of the city. Diesel and propane and wood had already been established through briefing cycles coming up to me as priorities that the Incident Commander and the team were working on, and there's lots of communication around that, and questions and public forums, so that was already well established. I would probably agree the fund piece was something that I had inserted in there, but clearly had become a significant problem and a public trust problem. And so that's probably the only newer element but already a well-established part of our briefing cycles that we had been discussing.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 101 12-101-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’ve explained -- again, I’ve explained that, ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 102 12-102-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- the context. That that was misinterpreted and then clarified in the meeting that happened subsequent.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 102 12-102-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The pre-planning document.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 102 12-102-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, well -- then let me further explain. I’m not enforced -- I’m not introducing new priorities. I am asking; “These are the priorities that we’ve set. Are we able to implement them? We have a plan. Are we able to implement them? Do we have the resources? Are we ready to go this morning?” Because we weren’t ready to go the last morning. We did not have the ability to have the resources to address the level of surge coming into the city, and now we have additional priorities that we’ve identified over the week. I wanted to make sure -- I’m not setting new priorities, I’m ensuring that we have the resources to actually fully implement, the vernacular, the heck out of the plan that we have in place; it’s an excellent plan. Do we have the resources? Can we fully and effectively implement it? That’s my mindset going into the meeting; that’s why I’ve called that meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 102 12-102-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Even that, sir, I would suggest, clearly, we were already aware of the issue of the bouncy castles and the DJs and the dancing and the fireworks. That was -- that’s a very short list of all the things that were afflicting the neighbourhoods in and around the red zones. Open barbeques; people blocking lanes, tearing masks off people’s face. I could -- I could go down the list and detail the incredible range of assaultive-type behaviour. 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. And these were briefings that I was being given for days in advance of me calling this meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 103 12-103-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There’s only one ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 104 12-104-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There’s only on plan, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 104 12-104-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s the basic template of our operational planning.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 104 12-104-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, please do. Okay, thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 104 12-104-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 105 12-105-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t know if I was referring to this plan. I don’t know if I ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 105 12-105-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t know if I’ve ever received it, but at whatever point I was last briefed on our plan, that’s the point of reference that I’m making on the Saturday the 5th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 105 12-105-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, unless there’s sub-plans that have those priorities identified in there, I can’t recall ever receiving or reading through this version of the plan.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 105 12-105-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I had been briefed on versions of plan. You’ll recall I only got the pre -- I only got the pre-operational plan on the 28th; two days, technically, into what the event was. So I wasn’t required to sign off on these plans. There’s no signature block from me. I’m not approving plans. They’re happening on a real-time basis, so I don’t have a timestamp in my head that I saw a document at point zero and said, “That’s the excellent plan.” The briefing cycles that I had been getting, I have an understanding of what the priorities are, how they’re being resourced, how they’re being -- going to be actioned, what requests for resourcing is coming to me. But that’s based on a briefing cycle, not me sitting and flipping through pages of a plan saying, “Wow, this is excellent; this is the one we have to implement.”

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 105 12-105-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, it was delivered to me the morning of the 28th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 106 12-106-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

With the exception of the February 9th version.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 106 12-106-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s an excellent plan based on the briefings. I can’t recall whether or not this was sent to me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 106 12-106-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

He’s the executive -- was at that point the Executive Director of Communications and Strategy.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 107 12-107-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s my understanding, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 107 12-107-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No, it’s absolutely false.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 107 12-107-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was told by Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson that the switch for Dunlop was because -- my recollection was because Insp. Lucas needed some time off; he was tired. I may have misinterpreted that, maybe it was Chris Rheaume. But that’s my understanding, that there was a temporary switch to give somebody days off to go and sleep, basically.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 107 12-107-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Can I see those notes, sir?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 108 12-108-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Which day would that be? Is it the 1st or the 2nd?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 108 12-108-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Absolutely false. Never ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 109 12-109-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Never gave that direction.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 109 12-109-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was -- again, I understood from my recollection, and I don't know if there's notes to support, my recollection is hearing that Inspector Lucas was very tired. He had been -- gone through the entire planning cycle and had survived through that first weekend, and he had requested time off, and it was for him that Superintendent Dunlop was replacing. I don't recall a reference to Superintendent Rheaume. I have not recollection whatsoever of any conversation in which it was suggested to me or I directed that Superintendent Rheaume be removed as the Event Commander.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 109 12-109-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Zero.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 110 12-110-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And it's very concerning that it's articulated in that way.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 110 12-110-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 110 12-110-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well -- sorry. Again, here is the confusion for me, because either in that meeting or before, Ferguson, sorry, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson said "Lucas needed time off. We brought Dunlop in." So that's why I'm referring to Lucas, not Rheaume here. In my mind, my notes, contemporaneous notes are "Lucas got replaced. Why? Why didn't you tell me?" I had no idea about the Rheaume piece. I had no idea about why he was removed, I had no idea he was removed. My only context was Lucas was removed, and that was surprising for me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 110 12-110-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Even on the 5th I don't think I realised what had happened to Rheaume.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 112 12-112-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 112 12-112-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Extremely.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 112 12-112-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I needed to know who was running our Operations.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 113 12-113-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It was a massive trust hit.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 113 12-113-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think it's pretty clear, honestly. We're in the middle of what is now I consider a national security crisis, my opinion, it doesn't have to be held by others; certainly a local public safety crisis; and one, if not the most important functions is the Incident Commander. The Major Incident Commander, Event Commander, Incident Commander, that is my entire understanding of leadership capability and capacity to orchestrate all of what needs to be done across the Incident Command System just so that we can continue to provide adequate effective policing. That is a major level change, and one that was made without any consultation, any communication to me, and one that appeared to have been kept secret from me until literally it came up in the briefing meeting that I had called. I don't even know if to this day that I didn't call that briefing meeting that I wouldn't have known about it until the Sunday, the Monday or the Tuesday. What's also materially important here... If you scroll back up, please. Right there. "I asked why I was not advised" -- sorry: "...he was the new Incident Commander installed this week and was leading the implementation..." This is Dunlop: "...was leading the implementation of the preferred POU [plan]." Superintendent Dunlop was not at the February 1st meeting in Kanata, that two hour plus meeting, where we had that discussion around "where are we now, and how can we get out of this?" He was not a part of the discussion of the Public Order Unit Commanders who were expert in that area. How could he have been replaced to lead this if he wasn't part of that essential meeting? I left explicit instructions, and it was in the notes that you showed earlier, "If you need anything more from me, if you need to clarify, I'm available to you." This is clearly one of the most important things that I've asked Trish Ferguson and her Incident Command Team, who were there represented as fully as they could be, Lucas couldn't attend, you recall, for whatever reason, "This is critical. I need a set of options in three days before the weekend events come." And somehow in that timeframe, without me understanding or even knowing, a switch of that magnitude was made and then put in charge of the planning for that that I was expecting a briefing on. I finally got a briefing later in the afternoon on the 5th of those three options. Could it have meant I could've had a briefing on the Wednesday or the Thursday, possibly, and could that have meant that we could have started two days, three days, four days earlier to actualise that scale of Operations, including making the request for the Public Order Commanders on scale that I was told on the February 1st meeting? We lost time, and clearly there was a lot of confusion. Even this note demonstrates I'm still not quite sure who's running what. And for Chief of Police, with the citizens and trauma and victimisation that they were under, our own members as struggling as they were, at best I can call this a significant lack of judgement on behalf of my two Operational deputies. At worst, probably this would've been a review that I would have done after the events had concluded and looked at it even more closely.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 113 12-113-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 115 12-115-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Significantly. But at that point, it was low.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 115 12-115-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

“Through”, I believe.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 116 12-116-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t know if I’m better, sir. But what I can read here: “The Chief began by saying we floundered last week and because we switched -- we had switched riders partway through [something] the switch between Rheaume and Dunlop...”

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 116 12-116-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

“...indicating the switch between Rheaume to Dunlop to Patterson. The Chief and the team will not change any of the players until the operation is over unless Bill gets hit with a truck.” I don’t know what that means.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 116 12-116-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I never used that term in my life, so I don’t know what that means, “Bill gets hit”. Who’s Bill?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 117 12-117-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

These are her interpretations of what was communicated, so I don’t agree with ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 117 12-117-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So of that nature, we will not be changing out any of the major incident command positions unless there’s exigent circumstances. If it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and someone got hit by a truck and you got to switch, switch. Tell me in the morning at the first early opportunity or call me because I had a standing position that any major issue, I could be woken up out of bed for a phone call. Operational, officer safety issue or a major issue like this, you can call me, and they all knew that. So -- but other than that, the team we have, the plan we have, implement the heck out of it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 117 12-117-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No. No. To be clear, things were delayed, things were confused. There was a churn of three Incident Commanders within a way too short period of time. Yes, some of that might have resulted in delays. I can’t tell you specifically. It felt to me that the POU plan was delayed because of Dunlop’s insertion and his need to get up to speed and his then reinterpretation of things. That’s about the only thing I can point to that was materially delayed. I don’t know if there’s any other material delays. But the confusion was clear. This is also around the same time, I believe, that we’re starting to get some concerns that are articulated from the OPP that there’s confusion with the Incident Command Team. I recall a phone call from Commissioner Carrique in this period where he was saying, “My folks are saying there seems to be some confusion with your Incident Command Team”. I took that to mean what was happening in this circumstance, and that’s why, on February 9th, when the Integrated Command Team -- sorry, Integrated Planning Team was coming in for their briefing that we weren’t going to do this to ourselves again.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 118 12-118-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I might have used a term like that, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 119 12-119-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not across the board. That’s not a pejorative. We were floundering around the incident command switch-outs.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 119 12-119-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe I do, but I’ll let you carry on.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 119 12-119-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

One they significantly contributed to, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 120 12-120-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I understand that there’s been a theme around that. I completely ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 120 12-120-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- disagree with it. From my earliest days as a -- in training as a Public Order Unit Commander and in all of my times as a Public Order Incident Commander, Incident Commander, Major Incident Commander, Duty Operations Commander, the use of engagement -- community engagement pre, during, all the way through, even in the restoration phase has been something I was trained to and did in both police services that I had the honour to be part of, Toronto Police Service and the Ottawa Police Service. While the PLT program expanded from an RCMP-OPP kind of technique to broader -- to other police services, I -- for that most part, I was out of policing at that time. I had left the Toronto Police Service and was a partner at Deloitte. I came back into the Ottawa Police Service and the term Police Liaison Team was a new term to me, but their function was not new at all to me. I had deployed such tactics, seen them work effectively and less effectively, and fail, but always had that approach. Come back out of Incident Command -- and I know I’m going too fast. Come back out of Incident Command, the concept of community engagement is something that I had been championing for and had done at multiple levels for multiple decades. There isn’t anyone on God’s green earth that would have to convince me of the necessity and the value of community engagement, trust building, negotiation, mediation, de-escalation in any aspect of policing, not the least of which in Incident Command, Critical Incident Command. I have never in my entire life as a police officer, certainly as I became a senior officer and an executive and Chief of Police, have advocated for more enforcement over anything else. My record in the public is exhaustive on that. The operational plans I led in the Toronto Police Service when I had 4,000 officers under my control, responsible for anti-gang activities, always had a significant element of mediation, negotiation and engagement. I built the Toronto Police neighbourhood policing strategy, and brought that here to Ottawa. So this concept of Peter Sloly as being some sort of ultra-enforcement-driven focused leader is a narrative that someone has constructed to attack my character, but bears no resemblance whatsoever to my actual record in policing, including my time as Chief of Police here in Ottawa, including the three weeks that I was in charge at the Ottawa Police Service during these events.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 120 12-120-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I did talk about quick wins, as I do literally in every major operation or administrative project. You need quick wins. I think such is basically standard around to do something different, you need to prove you can do it different, and it builds morale and confidence. In that concept, quick wins was my contribution to that, and I didn’t get any sense that there was a wrong or a misunderstood contribution. What unfortunately has happened is that has been tied by someone or some people for some reason unknown to me to mean that PLT could not or should not be used, or could not and should not be used properly, or worse, that somehow I had to approve every single PLT action, otherwise it could not occur. And that is a complete fabrication and a lie.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 122 12-122-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, just for correction, John was brought in partway through the events to provide additional supports and leadership to the PLT, but that wasn’t a function he had before.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 123 12-123-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s a decision that I was aware of and fully supported.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 123 12-123-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

This is February 5th?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 124 12-124-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 124 12-124-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t have ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 124 12-124-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry to interrupt. I don’t have a specific recollection, but on literally a daily basis that would have been a comment that came from me. So I’m glad it was captured by John Ferguson. I’m glad I said that, because they probably deserved it based on the success of Confederation Park. I don’t have an explicit ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 124 12-124-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- recollection.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 124 12-124-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, whose notes would these be?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 125 12-125-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Okay.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 125 12-125-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

February 3rd. And sorry, what time or what’s ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 125 12-125-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t know how many meetings I would have had on the 3rd. Do you have a sense of what -- is this a morning meeting? Is this an afternoon meeting?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 126 12-126-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s not my handwriting, so.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 126 12-126-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I would assume so, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 126 12-126-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 126 12-126-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well somebody’s interpretation. In every aspect of policing, a measured approach is the preferred approach. From our use of force continuum through to incident command, communication, negotiation, de-escalation, risk mitigation is the preferred route. And if you can’t demonstrate you did it, even for a second, even if you had a second of opportunity, if you can’t demonstrate that you attempted to do that, then you have less legitimacy around your decision to use force. That would be the context in which I’m talking about it. What I am not saying here, to be clear, is let’s just pretend to negotiate while we put on the armour and go in there and hurt people. I would never say that.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 127 12-127-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It would be really hard to understand how they could misunderstand that, but that would be the most charitable thing I could say.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 127 12-127-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, thank you for that clarification. From my limited understanding of it, there was a lot of moving parts there.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 127 12-127-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

In the net -- I'm still not sure whether as a whole it advanced our operations. It certainly caused, again, confusion and contention among key elements of it and demonstrated that we were not at the level of maturity and optimal alignment around these things, but some good things did occur as well.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 127 12-127-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

This was part of the change to the transition from the preplan into a new phase of involving more attempts to stop fuel coming into the location. We had just, I think that week, had the success of at least temporarily ending the GoFundMe piece. We were starting to see some effect from the efforts of addressing unlawful and unruly behaviour in our neighbourhoods. We were starting to get a sense of what the priorities are. We had the Confederation Park win. I would call that a full win, largely through PLT, which I've talked about. So we were starting to show that we could aim at a priority, at a problem, at an objective and get a material result out of it, not just be paralyzed into complete, reactive, immobilized periods of time, which we had suffered in the first 72 hours. So for me, this was a sign that we were starting to get somewhere towards the front foot, rather than being completely on the back foot. So while I would completely agree it was a challenge for the PLT, and a substantive one, and I won't in any way change the commentary that others have brought to it, but to suggest that it was a complete failure, I can't agree to that.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 128 12-128-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And I don't want to be obtuse on this. That level of detail I was never aware of. After the fact, why didn't that happen? The morning I am briefed on it didn't happen. I have no idea if it happened or didn't happen. I think one of my complaints is I actually didn't get a call the night before to say it wasn't going to happen. So I don't know what was said by what PLT member, to who, what promise was made, I have no level of understanding even to this day what the PLT log notes say that they told them versus what happened. I've heard repeated descriptions of what took place, and even to this day, I'm still quite -- not quite sure what the sequence of events was. Clearly though, I am aware that there was a significant departure from the optimal way that PLT should be utilized, and it had a major impact on the PLT's abilities to move forward. That I am aware of and I'm confident enough in that evaluation. And that's why you will see, even more after this point, I am requesting additional PLT expertise from Commissioner Carrique. I'm reinforcing PLT and the need for it to be properly utilized, literally at every meeting that happens after this.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 129 12-129-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, if that is accurate -- again, it's one person's account, but for the purpose of -- there's so many problems in this paragraph beyond the PLT.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 131 12-131-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Staff Sergeant Ferguson contacting Deputy Chief Bell ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 132 12-132-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Staff Sergeant Ferguson contacting Deputy Chief Bell makes no sense to me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 132 12-132-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Deputy Chief Bell is not in charge of operations in any way on February 6th. That is an internal incident command contact out of the Incident Command System to another deputy chief that doesn't have a functional role in the Incident Command System. So that alone is very confusing and concerning for me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 132 12-132-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Problem number two, I'm going to assume that at any given time across the theory that we were dealing with here, even in the micro-red zone and Coventry Road being a 10, 15-minute drive from that, there's a lot of moving parts. If Staff Sergeant Ferguson, who probably at that point was a couple of days into his assignment, he's not trained on PLT, and has not, up until that point, been materially involved in the intelligence threat risk assessment, all of the various iterations of the operational plans, and the subplans is all of a sudden in the middle of PLT world, he's likely not aware of the larger intelligence and the larger frame of operations that Superintendent Patterson is. Even Superintendent Patterson is probably 24 hours into his job. So there's a lot of people who've been all of a sudden moved into different positions, after a period of Rheaume, Dunlop, Patterson. There's a lot of confusion happening at this point. This is clearly an evidence of a suboptimal system trying to right itself. People trying to do the right things, but not really coordinating and in some places conflicting. And people trying to get help, but going up the wrong chains of command and the wrong chains of command getting involved in areas that they shouldn't be getting involved in. If this is accurate, Deputy Bell should have contacted Deputy Ferguson. There's a concern from PLT. I'm making you aware of it. Can you manage that back down? That would have been more appropriate. So there's a lot of things happening here. It's on the basis of one individual's concept, and that's an individual who's probably relatively new into their position and has never been trained on PLT. So ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 132 12-132-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- problematic.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 133 12-133-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That big, long paragraph ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 133 12-133-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

My understanding is that John Ferguson was a trained and excellent crisis negotiator ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 133 12-133-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- but was never trained on PLT as a Police Liaison Officer. That's my understanding. I stand to be corrected.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 133 12-133-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I suspect John's substantive position is under Deputy Bell's command, and so in his brain, if I have a problem, I escalate it to my deputy. I'm assuming that.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 134 12-134-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's the only reason -- logical reason why he would go to Deputy Chief Bell and not go through Patterson, Deputy Chief -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson to get a resolution to the problem that he's facing.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 134 12-134-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Absolutely.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 134 12-134-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It's a big concern, sir. And again, I reiterate, I -- this is an Ottawa Police Service that its PLT program was a part-time program. PLT officers, I had approved them to get training I think in the late summer, early fall of 2021. So they're a part-time group of people, who within six months get some training. We're still in COVID. I don't know how many times they've been able to utilise that training in any substantive way before the arrival of this massive unprecedented event. And then they're literally asked to do the impossible from the beginning to the end, and do the best job they possibly. But no, there isn't a optimal optimisation within this incredible unprecedented even between that Command frame, there isn't. And even with the extra help that we got from the OPP and the arrival of experts, like Inspector Beaudin, we weren't going to be able to flick a switch and all of sudden go from OPS immaturity, to OPP excellence within the dynamics of what's taking place in real-time in the City of Ottawa.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 134 12-134-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. Well, first of all, again, Commissioner, with your -- the Incident Command System, I had the honour and pleasure in I think 2008, 2009, along with Mike McDonell, then of the RCMP, and Sue Sullivan, who was then a Deputy Chief in the Ottawa Police Service. All of us had been trained up on the Incident Command System. We believed that that was the appropriate Incident Command System for the types of demonstrations we were seeing in the new century. I hate to make myself old, but that's what we were back then. And we had made presentations to the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police that to avoid integration challenges we should have a standard Incident Command approach across the province. We were able to get the OACP Executive to adopt that, and that became, through that process, I don't want to say the standard because I can't say for sure, it's written into the current Police Service Act standards, but that became the default standard for Incident Command across the province. We attempted to that at the CACP level. I got promoted, and I don't know where that ended up. I now know there's a national framework. Long way of saying we are going to increasingly have to bring large organisations together across potentially multiple sites. We need to be working off the same understanding, nomenclature process, we need to narrow that gap of a grey zone between Strategic, Operational, and Tactical. I would suggest we also need to narrow the grey zone around a working Incident Command structure as it sits into the regular business of policing in any jurisdiction or multiple jurisdictions. Training needs to be standardised, nomenclature needs to be standardised, equipment needs to be standardised, 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 arise, in any jurisdiction. 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 exposed 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. Unfortunately, this reads like a duct tape effort to get through a really complicated dynamic situation. I need to be clear, every name here did their best in the circumstances they found themselves in. I don't read into anything here a deliberate attempt to undermine or frustrate or cause risk to the public. It just didn't go off very well.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 135 12-135-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. On the whole, sir, I wasn't sure what his role was. I had understood that Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll would be the primary presenter of the analysis that came out of that meeting on the 1st; a range of three options, I have described them, but not necessarily accurately as to what they would come back with; and a preferred option, including the implications of resources, et cetera, et cetera. On the 3rd, if that's the Thursday, that would be the Thursday, there were two, yes, there were two meetings, one at 10:30, and then another one I think maybe around 12 o'clock, where I was waiting for Mike Stoll to give that presentation. I think the notes indicate that he wasn't available, the presentation wasn't on what I had asked for, and I was saying, "Look, I just want that presentation that I had asked for." So there were two I would call aborted attempts to provide that on the Thursday morning, the first one around 10:30, the next one around 12 o'clock or so if my mind is accurate. Finally, the third attempt, which occurs I think on the afternoon I think of the 5th, the Saturday, I get the three options, I get their preferred option at that point. So I'm still not sure even at this time why Dunlop is, Jamie Dunlop, sorry, Superintendent Dunlop is involved in the presentation and what his role in it is. My recollection, I stand to be corrected, is he wasn't introduced as the Interim Event Commander or the Event Commander, that's my recollection, and my confusion is based on that point.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 139 12-139-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So while it was confusing, again, I don't want to characterise it as he did the wrong thing, I just want to be clear about that, John Ferguson, there would have been options. John could have gone to the Incident Commander, which at this time should've been Russ Lucas. He could've gone to the Event Commander and explained -- attempted to further explain, and if that wasn't happening, he could've gone to the Major Event Commander, in that case -- Major Incident Commander, in that case it would have been Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. So there were options for him to engage. I understand it seems to have been he was doing his best to get people engaged around something he thought was important.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 140 12-140-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Challenging, but still appropriate. There is an Incident Command chain of command and then there's an organisational chain of command. So at any point when there is a disagreement in the chain of command, if done professionally, if done timely, and if done seeking a constructive outcome, not for rumourmongering, not for undermining, not for any other personal agenda, you can engage that chain of command in trying to reach some sort of a better outcome. I think that would be appropriate.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 141 12-141-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And I -- again, I want to be careful. I received that through information that's been presented at the testimony. Myself, I wasn't aware of that, so it's new information for me. That Inspector Lucas's perspective on his changed role is new information for me. If that was materially the case, if that was known to everybody, and if it was known to John Ferguson, yes, he would then have another challenge of who could he turn to, I would accept that, but this is all new information to me too. So it's just conjecture, sorry, conjecture at this point to try to answer your question, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 142 12-142-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

At some risk to go into the realm of conflict of interest in relationships and organisation, I mean, that's -- there is that challenge, but in the frame of the Ottawa Police Service at that time, there wasn't any breach of policy. And so it would've been appropriate if he felt it had, again, you know, constructive, objective, not unprofessional, not undermining, not self-seeking, to have sought the intervention of or at least to have provided his information to the Major Incident Commander. I do also recognise, if I understand the context as to what happened, this is sort of a real-time unfolding event. It seems to me, again, I may be wrong, it seems to me that there wasn't an opportunity for Staff Sergeant Ferguson to wait for a briefing cycle to raise the concern when all the people would've been around the table, and then that would've allowed Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, or even Superintendent Patterson, to reconsider. It seemed like he was trying to get a real-time decision in the midst of an operation. So the third option would've been to wait for a briefing cycle, raise it as part of the briefing cycle to try to deconflict it and make it better going forward. I don't think it was appropriate in that circumstance.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 142 12-142-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I certainly can't be quick to judge or to in any way attribute blame. But I think, Commissioner, it goes back again, these are the still need to be developed areas of consistent-across-the-board understanding of Incident Command Systems within the operation of a Policing Service that clearly, here in the Ottawa Police Service, and other jurisdictions, we need to get to a higher level. There are examples of excellence across the country, I think we need to try to raise that -- raise all boats in the harbour as high as we can, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 143 12-143-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Lots of help.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 144 12-144-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 144 12-144-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It looks like “communications”.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 145 12-145-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. I mean, specific lines, not as clear, but I recall the meeting with Commissioner Lucki and, I believe, Commissioner Carrique. I don’t know who else would have been on the call.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 145 12-145-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Those would be your sort or general duty officers, traffic directions, taking a traffic point along the red zone, patrol, just general duty officers that could be utilized in a variety of different ways.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 145 12-145-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, she outlines ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, that’s the running list that she was asked to sort of, you know, come up with on the spot. I think it’s actually a pretty reasonable list based on what we knew at that time and where we were.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’m not sure. I’m not sure what she’s referencing.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 146 12-146-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

“Gatineau and Sûreté de Québec”.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 147 12-147-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 147 12-147-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I understand the question. They had already had resources in the theatre. Again, I stand to be corrected by other information that might come up. RCMP, I believe, had three, what they call, “troops”, Public Order Units in the National Capital Region. They were not under our incident command system control but they were available in an emergency and they had, certainly, a range of important duties to manage. I believe, at that point, we still had OPP Public Order Units, again not -- if I understand correctly, not under our incident command, supporting Parliamentary Protective Services but, again, in the theatre -- general area of the theatre. Within -- what I would say within the incident command system deployment, there were general duty officers from the OPP somewhere in the range of 30, 40, 50 -- and I stand to be corrected on numbers -- as well as a range of other municipal police services agencies’ contributions, London Police, Durham Regional Police. I think Toronto might have been up at that point. Most of those were Public Order Unit officers, though, as opposed to general duty officer. That’s my recollection around the January 31st.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 147 12-147-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, so those would have been -- I’m assuming that that would have been a refined list of requests that I received from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson who - - she had -- she would have received through her incident command chain of command.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 148 12-148-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I may not be understanding the question, sir. Sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 148 12-148-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’m not that familiar with it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, I’m just not seeing it on my screen. Am I missing?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Oh, okay, sorry. Thank you. Sorry, I missed it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

So I ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’m aware -- I’m aware of the language in the Act but I wasn’t, in my mind, referencing this. If it happens to fit it, that’s fine.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- I was simply sending a communication to another chief or commissioner asking for resources.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 149 12-149-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I will say, I have never in my policing career relied on this section so I don’t have a -- other than what’s written on the page, this would seem to be, if we needed more officers, we could ask the -- or resources, we could ask the OPP. But I -- I mean, if this -- if this is intended to -- and again, I’m not aware of what’s underneath this. If this means, “We can’t manage -- we can’t adequately and effectively continue to be the police of jurisdiction. Can you come and do this for us?” I wouldn’t interpret that that way and that was certainly not the intent of me sending that letter to OPP Commissioner Carrique to ask for those resources.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 150 12-150-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe there’s certain conditions that would have to be met. They couldn’t just arbitrarily make that decision.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 150 12-150-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

If I felt the conditions in Ottawa required that level of intervention from the OPP or any other police service, I would obviously be making that request and therefore be very comfortable with it, subject to all the usual discussions as to how that would transpire. But I was not making that request.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 150 12-150-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

M’hm.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 151 12-151-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not at all, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 151 12-151-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We were three days, 72 hours into a situation. I don’t think anybody in Canada at that time really understood what was going on and I think it would have been irresponsible and unnecessary to burden another police service with that level of request without having any real understanding. So I just don’t think there’s -- listen, you could talk to other police chiefs and they may have their opinions but as of the 31st or the 2nd, when I sent that letter, that was a not situation that I was considering at all. That’s not a situation that anybody had raised to me either within the Ottawa Police Service or from the Police Services Board, just not in the realm of considerations.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 151 12-151-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not during my tenure, sir, no.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 152 12-152-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s correct, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 152 12-152-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The OPP never had the resources necessary, sir. They could coordinate the resources, and they did a good job of that, but the OPP on its own could not have come in and with its totality of its compliment, provided the full level of some 2,200 officers that were required.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 152 12-152-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The quantity of resources, while being a factor, would not be, even in my humble opinion, a significantly weighted factor for such a decision as for a chief of police in any jurisdiction to request through section 9 of the Act for another police service to come in and run its police service.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 152 12-152-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There's a lot of things they had, and they offered those things, and we utilized them as quickly and as effectively as we could. And ultimately, through to my -- end of my tenure and beyond that, there was a very successful outcome. But you've asked me before, did the circumstances in Ottawa rise to the occasion of what I now understand to be a function of section 9? No, they didn’t, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 153 12-153-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, what's the date of this, please? Sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 153 12-153-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 153 12-153-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The short answer is yes. I don't know if we got everything that we asked for and when we got it, but again, at this point, I have no concerns whatsoever. I think this is more just I'm actually seeing some of the most well turned out OPP officers and vehicles operating in and around my -- in fairness, they really just looked good. They were like the cavalry coming over the hill and they were just really well turned out, really professional group of officers. So I'm just complimenting Chief to Commissioner the quality of his people.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 154 12-154-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, just -- again, the date, is this February ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 155 12-155-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- 2nd. So this is again, this would be around the time that we are pivoting the plan. We know we're going to need -- this is the day after the February 1st Kanata meeting. We know we're going to need a substantive amount of POU, short term and long term, and so this was a request that I sent out to the RCMP for POU at least. I don't know if there were other things that we asked, and it seems that the substantive response here is, you know, "Our POU units are deployed. You can't get them." Reasonable. I'm not challenging that. They're having their own resource challenges and they're exploring the possibility of the other 50 resources. I'm assuming they're police officers, but there might have been a variety of different knowledge, skills, and abilities that we were asking for.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 155 12-155-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 155 12-155-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It's 1,790 odd, but yes. I think the number 1,800 has become the most functionally used number.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 155 12-155-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry, the date of this again, sir, sorry?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 156 12-156-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 156 12-156-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. So again, just context- wise, there was an emergency board meeting held on February 5th. During that meeting, the public session, I received a direction from the chair of the board to produce a list of all the resources that we thought we would need to -- my words -- safely, successfully, lawfully end the events in Ottawa. I needed explicit understanding from the chair, did she need that on the spot or could we -- could I and my team take that away and then provide a more thoughtful and full response, and she said yes, the team had -- I had asked can they try to turn that around in 24 hours, and I think by this time, which is almost 24 hours later, we had a substantive list that was drawn up. And it wasn’t just police resources, this also included discussions around what other things could the City help us with, increase bylaw fines, other potential supports from the City and civil society. I think we were looking at the insurance industry, whether they could help us to address some of the issues around the trucks and vehicles. So that’s the background to, I think, this meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 156 12-156-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, without the benefit of notes, but at some point after the board meeting, there would have been a request at two levels within the Incident Command System for their planners to identify the number, types of resources, and associate that to the overall operational plan and the relative sections -- sorry, sub-plan sections -- then across the organization. I asked each of the functional commanders -- so that would again include Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson in her functional role, Deputy Chief Bell in his functional role, and Chief Administration Officer Dunker in her functional role to identify supports. The reason for the two, sort of, coordinated requests, we needed a certain level of capability, resource capability, and predictability within the incident command structure to work under that structure to achieve the goals of ending the events in Canada, but we were still struggling with staffing for our policing jurisdiction responsibilities. And I don’t know if at this time we’d finished the negotiation with the Ottawa Police Association for the shift schedule change, but we were struggling on both ends, staffing to a level beyond just maintaining the red zone through the incident command piece, and staffing to maintain our contractual obligations and member health and wellness requirements in the general police services to the rest of the million residents in the city. The sum total of those 1,790 odd resources reflects all of the different aspects that we were looking for and they were broken down short-term, mid-term, longer-term. The bulk of the resources, I would suggest, were more short term, A significant amount was mid-term, and then another amount would have been long-term. That would have been assisting in prosecutions after the fact, the case management, crime analyst, all that together. But the bulk of that request really was in the days and weeks, as opposed to the months and years portions of some of it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 157 12-157-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Later on the 6th?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 158 12-158-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, just so many different - --

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 158 12-158-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- meetings. If you could show it to me, I might have a recollection.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 158 12-158-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Just for clarity, sir, just while the document is being searched, my understanding, and I stand to be corrected, I had a meeting with my command team on the afternoon of the 5th, after the board meeting was over, where I was interrupted for part of the meeting, had to leave to go out for a phone call and come back, and it was in that meeting I said, “Look, we’ve just gotten direction from the Chair. We need to produce this over the next day. Start thinking about what you need. This is a big lift that we’re going to have to do.” Then on the 6th, after my team had worked through the night, through the day, the number of 1,790 odd was broken out into various functions. So if it -- Supt. Abrams’ recollection of that comment, it should have been, in my memory, on the 5th, not on the 6th. But I stand to be corrected.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 159 12-159-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s a very strange interpretation by Supt. Abrams. What I can tell you was that at one of the meetings that I recall on the 5th, maybe it was the 6th, but what I recall on the 5th, I said to my folks, “Up until now, I’ve been getting requests that I would call incremental. What we need to get through this day or this weekend. What we need to do, and what the Board Chair has asked us to do, is what do we need to get to a safe, complete, successful, sustainable end to the events happening here in Ottawa? This could take weeks, so I need you not to think incremental. I don’t want you just to think in a short-term cycle of planning. I need you to think exponential, short, medium, and long-term.” It’s in that context, I don’t know if I gave the exact if they say 100, 200, but “Don’t let your thinking be incremental. You have to be able to consider the full range of resources. We’re not going to get to be able to make this request again, so think about everything you might need. A special constable, crime analyst, computer dispatcher, someone who can do open-source social media. Whatever you don’t have right now to meaningfully contribute to the end of this -- these set of events, or to not be able to continue delivering our basic police services, this is the time to put that resource request into this.” So I was not, in any way, trying to put any other police service in a situation where they would need to give us tings that we did not need. If it was interpreted that way by Supt. Abrams as a guest on that meeting, that’s unfortunate. If it was reported that way to the Commissioner, that’s very unfortunate.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 160 12-160-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

You’ll very rarely hear me agree to an or. I’m always an and person. So it isn’t one or the other. Particularly in fluid events that literally up until the day of the 29th, no one really knew what was coming, the plan will always need to make adjustments, in real time, sometimes. But at any point, where you have to make a commitment to some portion of the plan, you need to have some relative insurance of the predictability of the resources available. So these are not consecutive exercises. They are almost inevitably concurrent exercises. A lot of my concern about how this whole issue has been portrayed is it’s been portrayed as one or the other, and the preferred one seems to be planned before resources, consecutive. In this instance in real time events, whether they be natural disasters, or unplanned protests, or protests that are so fluid in the making that you don’t have the benefit of months or even weeks of advanced planning, you’re literally making resource requests in real time as the threat assessment or the context of the circumstances change. We saw that play out in the pre-arrival plan. You asked the question earlier on. As the warnings increased, did your resource requests increase? Yes, they did. Not because we stopped everything and wrote a perfect plan for the next resource request. We continued with the planning process, while we continued with the intelligence process, while we continued with the recourse request process. And quite frankly, that has been the way that I have seen Toronto Police Service work in all my time there, that has been the way that the Toronto Police Service supported many other jurisdictions, that is the way that my experience with the Ottawa Police Service was during my time as Chief. I had never, never once before in my entire career been asked to provide a fully detailed plan with subplans laid out, timing, and exact details and logistics as to where people were going to sleep, what uniforms they should bring, before we sent out a request in good faith to good police partners and said, “We’ve got something big. It’s happening right now, or it’s happening two days from now. This is our best guess of what we need. We might need to fine tune that. Can you help us? Yes or no?”

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 161 12-161-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s my recollection, but again, if my dates are off, I stand to be corrected.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 163 12-163-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Can we just -- I’m seeing -- sorry. I’ll let you finish. Sorry.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 163 12-163-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It looks like it was my mistake. But just refresh my memory. Can we go to the 5th? Is there any reference of the Board meeting on the 5th of February?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 163 12-163-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 164 12-164-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, my recollection -- sorry to interrupt you, sir. I shouldn’t talk over you. Sorry. My recollection was that we started those discussions immediately after the conclusion of the Board meeting on the 5th. Now, that might have been the command team and I, my immediate chief staff, might have started that discussion and then on the 6th, the Incident Command Team and other command areas were briefed and then involved, so there might be some -- a bit of a bleed-over from my recollection, me actioning these things on the 5th, to whatever the meeting was on the 6th Superintendent Abrams was participating in.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 164 12-164-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I’m not suggesting it’s in error. I just recall having discussions with people in my organization about the staffing numbers immediately after the Board meeting where I’d been given that instruction from the Board Chair. I wouldn’t have waited until the next day to start having people engage in the exercise of -- the planning exercise around getting that number.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 164 12-164-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I believe, yes, it was, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 165 12-165-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, it looks like there was - - it was announced at an emergency Council meeting, I believe.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 165 12-165-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 165 12-165-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes. So it definitely was not the normal process. There were a series of communications from the end of the Board meeting on the 5th through the 6th into the 7th as to what role the Board and the City could play in supporting the Police Service to get the needed resources. The substantive outflow of all of that was a desire by the Chair and the Mayor - - they arrived at that through some level of discourse to have a joint letter to the other two levels of government to seek their direct support in securing those resources.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 166 12-166-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

In the ordinary course, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 166 12-166-16

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

These were extraordinary circumstances, and so -- and there was an increasing and significant desire, would be the -- I think not quite the right word -- for the Board to be seen as actively supporting the service in one of its few ways that they can, which is securing resources for adequate and effective policing. Again for context, the start of the February 5th Board meeting, the Chief -- sorry, the Chair in her opening comments talked extensively about whether or not circumstances in Ottawa would allow the Ottawa Police Service to be able to provide adequate and effective policing. The transition from her opening statements to me was a question directly to me, “Chief” -- I’m not quoting exactly, but as close as I can -- “Chief, do you have the resources necessary, the ability to provide adequate and effective policing in the city?”. And then there was a substantive period of that Board meeting spent on that topic. The sum total of that was the request, the direct request from the Chair, for the list of resources that we would need. This is not ordinary, but I do believe it falls somewhere within the realm of the Police Services Act for the Board to make sure that we had the resources necessary to provide adequate and effective policing. And I believe this is one of the ways in which, again, Chair Deans may -- former Chair Deans may choose to frame it differently, but I interpret it as a genuine effort to exercise some level of their mandate to support getting those resources. There was then the additional layer of whether the Chair would sign this alone or the Mayor would join in signing. I wasn’t very much involved in that, so I can’t really speak to it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 166 12-166-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I presume someone could come to that conclusion on their own. I’m not sure why it would be so enlightening because I think almost every public statement that I made after January 29th, I talked about how desperately we needed resources and how we were seeking resources and asking for resources. I think in the middle of the February 5th Board meeting, the topic of resources came up and, in fact, in the middle of that Board meeting, I received a communication from the RCMP saying that 250 officers were arriving and I literally made that announcement on the Board meeting. So nobody should have been surprised, I think reasonably surprised, on the 7th that we were significantly in need of resources and that we were going to be asking for a lot of resources.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 167 12-167-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. Again, listen, I think there would be as many opinions in this room or all the rooms across Canada on any one of the aspects that took place here, so I’m not in any way going to try to suggest that no one should ever hold that opinion, including another police leader. But I suspect they would have the same problem about previous political announcements around staffing numbers that took place the week before.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 168 12-168-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, I can appreciate concerns raised certainly throughout this process and in discourses well beyond these walls. This is -- this, again, is not an -- not a practice that I’ve experienced in my policing career where there would be a requirement for detailed completed plans submitted and then analyzed prior to any substantive release of resources. It wasn’t -- it wasn’t in my experience around planned events like the G8-G20, and it certainly wasn’t my experience in unplanned or highly fluid and contentious events like the one that we experienced here. If this had become a new standard and a new expectation in policing, I was not aware of it, and I had, at that point, been a Chief of Police for over two years. Secondly, we did have a plan. It was an ongoing, evolving plan. I would by no stretch of imagination suggest to anyone, the Commissioner or anyone else, that it was an excellent plan. It was a robust plan, given that we were still pivoting from what we'd experienced just a week before. Canada was still trying to figure out what was going on across the country, just as we were trying to figure out exactly what was going on in the city. And we had been literally using every resource possible, just to get through hour by hour, day-by-day operations and the planning for those operations. There was no additional capacity to be able to produce such a level of standard plan while we so desperately needed those resources. I think, unfortunately, it became a misinformed issue around an unrealistic expectation, and, unfortunately, that caused a lot of concern across the board, inside our organization, and clearly outside of our organization.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 169 12-169-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, from what I've heard and what I've seen and what I knew at the time, yes, there were occasions where officers were not optimally deployed. And I tell you, I have never been involved in any police operation where we have brought in resources from across our own city or brought in resources from outside of our city in two police services, including my time in Kosovo, where there was suboptimal deployment and utilization of resources. What tends to happen is the Incident Commander almost exclusively will be from the police of jurisdiction, who will utilize the resources that they know best and use the most frequently, and then go and tap into the other resources. Inevitably, that means that the external resources will be underutilized. It is in no way surprising for me to have heard that at points during the entire three weeks that I was involved in this, that there might have been officers from some police department that didn't get their briefing at the right time and may have even spent the better part of the day not doing the things that they thought they were going to be doing. I'd experienced that many, many times myself.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 170 12-170-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That's probably very true, sir. Our officers were exhausted, frozen right through. They needed relief and there was no other place to get relief from. And that's part of the reason why the very first request on the 31st of January that Trish Ferguson announces to the RCMP Commissioner and the OPP Commissioner is to send us some general duty officers. Our people are asleep on their feet, or they're frozen to their post. I'm not surprised. That is not an optimal situation, but that's the reality of what was going on.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 171 12-171-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah. Thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to have a second go round on this. The concept of a measured approach I think that's been talked about usually in terms of PLT and secondarily in terms of use of force, a measured approach is we need more resources. Let's ask for it. We need help with the planning for those resources. Let's get that. We might need to integrate our operations to a greater degree than we have every considered before. Let's work on that. Okay. So we've got -- we're getting more resources. We are stepping up integration. Our planning now is getting to a much greater level of efficacy. Now we're going to consider a unified command. That is a measured approach of stepping up. I think it would be irresponsible, as I said before, and I'm sticking to that, I think it would be unprofessional and unwarranted to go from, wow, we just had a really bad weekend, let's get the OPP to come and police our jurisdiction to we just had a really bad weekend. Let's figure out how we need to get better and start to use everything we possibly can, and let's be as clear as we can but as quick as we can in requesting the things that we can reasonably anticipate we'll need in the short, medium and long term. Let's be very open to, as we have always been in Ottawa, even during my time, to integration. Nothing was off the table. I think I probably said that statement 453 times. Everything's on the table, including greater integration, and including unification. And ultimately, through greater integration, ultimate unification, and some 2200 officers, the Ottawa Police Service as police of jurisdiction, and the amazing supports we received from across the country were able to safely and successfully end the events here in Ottawa.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 172 12-172-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Just on that point, I just want to be clear, and I think it was -- I understand somebody clarified this before. There were instances where clearly that was happening. I believe Superintendent Abrams was the direct conduit to Deputy Chief Bell, organization to organization. He raised it. I believe it was received well and it was actioned. I don't recall that being a continuous problem or a problem of scale. I will not deny that it happened sporadically, and particularly in the early parts, but it's my understanding it wasn't daily occurrence on scale where hundreds of officers were sitting around being unutilized or underutilized. I just want to make that clear for the public record.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 173 12-173-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And again, that level of underutilization is something that I've experienced in my entire three decades in policing. That was not a unique situation to the events here in Ottawa.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 173 12-173-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think I've ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 174 12-174-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- I think I've said that repeatedly myself, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 174 12-174-08

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 174 12-174-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We needed external police agency's help primarily for the Incident Command System to address the crisis happening in the downtown core. We needed less help for the policing of the rest of the city.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 174 12-174-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We still needed help there, but we were nowhere near by comparison.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 174 12-174-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm not sure they wanted what you're suggesting Section 9. I never received any suggestion from Commissioners Carrique or Lucki that they wanted to come in here and bring the necessary lift of 2,000 plus officers, and have them on the ground here for days, if not weeks on end. I stand to be corrected if there's information out there that's different from that. Here's the challenge. Then you're going to have to get three levels of government to invest differently in three levels of policing. I don't know how the formula would work, but if we're to go down the what if scenario that you're asking me to entertain, and please, if the Commissioner doesn't have time for this or you want to move on, just let me know. But here's scenario number one: Take a percentage of every municipal police service, just say 10 percent, fold that up into the OPP because every single year some event is going to come to some municipal police service where they don't have enough resources, so automatically the OPP will get 10 percent cut of every police service because when, not if, they will be required under the new components of section 9 to come and take over policing for a day, a week, a month, they have the lift to be able to do that. I don't think any mayor or any regional authority is going to go for that, and I don't even think the Province would want that responsibility. Now, just layer in that on top of the RCMP. With how stretched they are with contract policing, national policing Indigenous policing, force protection internationally, there's probably eight functions that not one of them are staff adequately. Now are you going to take a 10-percent cut from the Provincial Police Services to allow the RCMP to do that? And now you come to the National Capital Region, where there are six police services operating in here at any given day. How do you divide the pie there? I understand the intellectual desire to explore that. The practical and financial side I'm sure merits the effort. I think what we need to do is get standards across the board, really clarify how and when we work together in integrated and/or unified, clarify the gaps between the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical, and how that fits into police of jurisdiction adequate and effective. That's going to be a lot cheaper and probably a lot faster, and it can be iterated over the course of time for lessons learned from experience to experience. You're talking about a major structural change, legislative change that would take years to hammer out and then years to get to a point of efficacy.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 175 12-175-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Okay. Well, I think it was around 12 o'clock. Again, for context, if I get the dates wrong, I believe somewhere around the 6th or the 7th there was a communication between myself and Commissioner Carrique, where we had talked about a significant increase in integration. I forget who raised it, whether he did or I did, but we were very quickly in agreement that that would be very helpful and that we would need then to bring in folks from -- senior folks that had experience and expertise and that type of thing. He referenced Carson Pardy almost immediately. That name, I believe, came up in our first conversation, and I welcomed him and anybody else that he could send to support that. And to his word, I think within 24 hours we were contacted, 24 hours after that there was an initial meeting out at the RCMP Headquarters. That was a meeting, unfortunately -- I realise I'm going really fast, so I'm slowing myself down now. That was the meeting, unfortunately, that because of the distance to travel to and the Teams meetings problems that we had, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson was only able to get a portion of her Incident Command staff on there. While there was somewhat of a productive discussion, it didn't get to the level where there was any substantive move forward. There was an agreement to have another meeting on the 9th of February, is that right, the 9th of February, and there was additional efforts during that period to continue to improve and evolve that plan. A substantive lift that day. I referenced earlier on that I got involved in that lift to try to elevate the plan to as great a degree as we possibly could for these partner agencies coming in. I believe around 12:00, 12:30, Chief Superintendent Pardy, Superintendent Abrams, RCMP Superintendent Lue, and I forget, there were other members, but those were the three primary members of the team, arrived at our headquarters. Take a pause there. But that was the context to the start of that meeting. I had my Command Team and my Incident Command Team there as well.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 176 12-176-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

M'hm.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 178 12-178-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah. And we debriefed from what happened the previous night, looked to see where we could again continue to evolve the plan in advance of this next meeting, and put every effort into that so that again we could have the best product available. It was clear to me that this -- the arrival of this team was not only to support what we're -- the ongoing efforts here, but they needed to assess where we were with our ongoing efforts here, specifically, assess the plan.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 178 12-178-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I see a note here 7:10. I don't know if that's accurate, but that would seem about right. It was relatively early in the morning.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 179 12-179-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 179 12-179-12

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Ancient Greek civilisation, an old myth about a multi-headed monster. When you cut off one head it would grow back.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 179 12-179-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Bit of creative license on my part, but the idea was we were struggling to take a section of the red zone or Confederation Park and then hold it while we continued on. And so that was a constant challenge as our officers made efforts to secure portions of the theatre, particularly in and around the red zone, that the challenge was as much to take the portion and then to hold the portion. The concept of the Hydra, if you can cut off the head and cauterise it, it can't grow back. If you can take a piece of ground and hold it, people can't come back. We can then focus on a smaller theatre with more resources, smaller theatre more resources, smaller theatre more resources. That's the concept behind the ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 179 12-179-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

These are Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson's recollection of that. I would not in any way characterise what took place in that meeting to reflect what I'm interpreting and language here. So again, without the chance to hear these concerns and understand... We had a very healthy discussion, yes, around whether the term "negotiation" should be explicit in I believe the mission statement, but other than that, I'm not really sure as to why she has interpreted things the way that she has chosen to do so.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 181 12-181-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir; it’s my statement.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 182 12-182-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We had had the challenge of the previous week where senior people were swapped out without any communication; where we had delays around the development of a significant portion of the plan, that being the Public Order Plan. This was a reminder to folks about the problems that we incurred -- we encountered last week. We are now bringing in a significant amount of resources, a significant level of integration, and we simply cannot have a individual make a change that could affect the strategic intent of what we were trying to accomplish at this point. We needed to have -- on the positive side, we needed to have a full commitment across the command team that we had reached a position now that could move forward with. There was still going to be evolutions of the plan and subplans and as resources became available, but that the base of the week and change of pivoting from where we were into this new position, particularly with the request of resources and integration, this required a very firm and full commitment from the command team going forward.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 183 12-183-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Absolutely, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 183 12-183-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Lightly, at the strategic level, no major changes in the plan; no major changes in the concept of operations, the elevated integration with RCMP and OPP, and the senior ICS assignments -- Major Incident Commander, Event Commander, Incident Commander -- without discussion first. Probably the only thing I forgot to add in there, unless there were exigent circumstances. Again, obviously -- I shouldn’t say obviously. Exigent circumstances is always implicit in any one of these circumstances.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 184 12-184-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s the concept of exigent circumstances, sir. That would not fit within what I was relaying to these folks here.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 184 12-184-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not at all, sir. At the operation level, no. Again, I’m very clear: No major changes to the plan. No major changes to the concept of operations, not objectives, not subplans, not operational decisions made during the course of the day. The elevated integration, I wasn’t going to have a Superintendent, an Inspector, a Staff Sergeant or a Deputy Chief tell the OPP and the RCMP, “You know what? We don’t need that integration, never mind what Sloly says.” So this was me being very clear. At the strategic level of where we were, no major changes outside of exigent circumstances, for these areas.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 184 12-184-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, thank you. (SHORT PAUSE)

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 185 12-185-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

February 9th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 185 12-185-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 185 12-185-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, to be explicit: No changes to the architect -- sorry; the architecture of the plan. But that is not me saying, “You can’t have a tactical change; you can’t have an operational change unless I approve it.” It would be -- even if I wanted that, it would be impossible for me to validate, approve or not approve, every single aspect of any potential change to the plan. It would just be impossible. I would never have said that. And I can see any experienced person in that room taking such a literal interpretation and walking out, particularly after being in this theatre for almost a week and a half. And if they had that interpretation, with the maturity and the rank in that room, I would have expected them to raise clarification.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 185 12-185-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 186 12-186-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

M’hm.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 186 12-186-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 186 12-186-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Just that. It was made clear to them that the folks that have arrived here have come with clear instructions from their Command to assess the level of our planning, the adequacy of the resource requests that we made, and then to -- assuming that we could come to that arrangement of integration, to then move forward on building that out. But they were coming to assess where we were.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 186 12-186-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah, first of all, these are Trish’s -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson’s words. I won’t challenge her emotions or interpretation around it but they’re not the conversation that I was leading at this point. I had a very clear discussion about two elements. We are going to be assessed on our quality of our planning and the relevance to the resource requests and if we cannot provide enough substantive justification for what we’re looking for, we’re likely not going to get the level of help that we need. Secondarily, I did talk about the politics that are happening in and around this entire event. By this time, it is a national event with global coverage. By this time, I had had several interactions with all three levels of government and the board. It was clear to me that there was increasing intense and, in some cases, I believe, undeserved and unhelpful political pressures happening to the Ottawa Police Service, pressures that could affect our ability to secure the resources. So I was letting them be aware, giving them situational awareness and allowing a conversation to happen in a very tight room with my command team so they could have as much understanding before they went in front of the group of external agencies to have that conversation. I didn’t want there to be any surprises and I wanted them to be as fully informed as possible. An example would be the day before this there was a public motion put forward by a significant number of city councillors asking for the Ottawa Police Service to remove the police’s jurisdiction for the purposes of the incident command. So these were very live, real-time issues. There were others that they were less aware of. So I tried to give them indications as to what was going on without going delving down into unfortunate details of it. It’s in that context that I think Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson may have thought it was a conspiracy theory. These were very real experiences that I was aware of and I was trying to bring my command team to a level of awareness so they could appreciate the challenges that we would have to show a unified approach around this going forward. And if we didn’t have a unified approach, the type of politics could very quickly divide and conquer us.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 187 12-187-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

If you’re asking whether Chief Pardy -- Chief Supt. Pardy and Supt. Lue were there for political reasons, no. I think they were genuinely assigned and they came with genuine hearts to offer the help that they could to understand what was going on and offer the help they could. But I’m very much aware of the politics that comes to play on the heads of chiefs of police and commissioners. And I’m very much aware of a number of issues that my colleagues at that rank were facing.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 189 12-189-13

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

None so ever, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 189 12-189-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Trust, no, but I was very explicit on two points. Integration means that the Ottawa Police Service remains police of jurisdiction, and that the Ottawa Police Service remains in control of the incident command system, and that the resources I’m asking for are to be under the control of the incident command system. Those were the only three caveats. If they couldn’t agree to those three caveats, we’d probably have to go back to the drawing board in some other way to get the resources and achieve another type of integration. Those were the three caveats. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s simply a matter of the baseline aspects, the redline aspects of our ability to move forward under and integrated model.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 190 12-190-02

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Not at all.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 190 12-190-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No, I don’t, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 190 12-190-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s in the Police Services Act, sir. We are the police of jurisdiction.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 190 12-190-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And we did that every single day of my day in -- of my time in office -- joint forces operations. I invited in the RCMP to do internal criminal conduct investigations. We did that every single day. That is a very, very different thing from we are no longer the police of jurisdiction in the Nation’s Capital for a million people. The Ottawa Police Service will no longer be the police service even though we’ve been so for a century and change. That is a very different concept of operations.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 191 12-191-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I can think of examples where yes, a investigator would come out. The lead investigator in the criminal conduct investigation was from the RCMP but professional standards were still under my control as the police chief in the police of jurisdiction. The decision to lay charges or not lay charges from the Police Act were still under Part IV from me as a chief of police. But if I’d abdicated that role and responsibility, then it would be up to the RCMP lead investigator to decide on the totality of the circumstances around that case. So yes, hundreds of times, probably thousands of time I’ve integrated police services for a wide variety of things -- administrative, HR, human rights, operations, Guns and Gangs. I have no trouble whatsoever with that concept. In my time in policing -- got to be careful here. I can’t think of a single time in my 30 years in policing where a police service said, “We’re done. Somebody else come do this for us.” I stand to be corrected but I can’t recall a single of that happening.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 191 12-191-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Potentially, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 192 12-192-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 193 12-193-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think a very healthy discussion, “Look, we have a local need here but we now have a national set of events.” I think by the 9th, Windsor might have been starting -- kicking up around that time. Toronto had just got through their Queen’s Park piece. I think much of the Prairie provinces had one or more things going on. Coutts was still very alive. So yeah, this is a healthy discussion around, “Look, we know we need a lot of resources but we also know you’ve got a lot of other resource demands happening.” Around this time, I believe there was a steady, almost daily call of all chiefs that were facilitated by the OPP and they had already, I think, established two levels of resource integration, one on Public Order Units explicitly and another one on general resource requests. So we were already in a provincial/national Theatre where we are trading off resource requests against risks on a scale that I’d never experienced. And I’m not aware of any police chief from my generation that says they experienced something similar. So that’s the context of the discussion taking place here.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 193 12-193-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I know what was taking place here. I don't think these notes are particularly accurate at this point, and I suspect there's a lot of back and forth and people are talking fast, as I am now, and there's a little bit of catch up time here. So I will build off these notes, not ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 194 12-194-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

They're not accurate. So first, there was a discussion. I forget who raised it -- it might have been Supt. Abrams, but I'm not 100 percent sure -- around how many staff had been sent over, and again, I said, "Well, there was that miscommunication from the Solicitor General that that left the impression that 1,500 officers from the OPP or from across the province were here in Ottawa on a daily basis." And I again explained the challenges, the public trust and confidence challenges that that caused us, that then pivoted out of that discussion into -- again, I don't know who from the OPP would have led this, but I don't think this is an accurate statement, but it probably captures the theme -- "Can't build a plan without a plan." This is the chicken and egg discussion, should we have a plan in force before you get the resources? And I'm saying, "We are planning and we know we need a level of resources we can find to the plan. I need a commitment of resources." So that’s the gist of the discussions that are taking place, probably in rapid fire, and the scribe is, in this case, Christiane Huneault, is doing her best to keep up.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 194 12-194-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, I just referenced Christiane Huneault.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 195 12-195-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No, sorry if I've left that impression. She -- Christiane Huneault is many things wonderful and an excellent general counsel. She, for a period of days, offered to and took on this role of being a scribe. We were just so thin on resources, she offered to do that until she could free up Vicky, Vicky Nelson, I believe is her name. I'm not suggesting that the effort on the 9th was an insufficient effort. That was a very dynamic meeting and there was a lot of points being made, and she was doing her best to capture them. I'm only saying they're not actual quotes that I can attribute, and she hasn’t attributed the people. So she's done her best, just not able to say who said what exactly when.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 195 12-195-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The notes that she provided were incredibly helpful for me.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 196 12-196-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

All of them, sir?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 196 12-196-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don’t -- put it up, I just -- -

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 196 12-196-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- can't -- there was lot of things you just said there, so.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 197 12-197-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 197 12-197-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yeah. It was a tense meeting at times. We certainly got into very contentious discussions like the discussion -- sorry, I'll slow myself down. We got into contentious discussions like the discussion around the Solicitor General release of the 1,700 number. I could see if, at during those points, Chief Supt. Pardy, who I believe was selected appropriately and sent quickly and came with the view of supporting -- I suspect that would be the same for Supt. Lue representing the RCMP -- they were not aware of and had not been involved in these events. I suspect they weren’t even following all the events, and certainly not the political aspects of it. They were operational people coming in to provide an operational support. In that context, I could understand why Chief Supt. Pardy might describe some aspects of it as disrespectful - - get the right words here ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 197 12-197-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- "somewhat unprofessional and disrespectful". I needed to be very clear on behalf of my service and my city and the state of public safety that we're in that we needed the resources, that we needed them as quickly as possible, they needed to be predictable, sustainable resources, and not, as we had experienced so far, through nobody's fault, but we can send you this, but if an event comes to us, we got to pull them back. Without any predictability of resources, I don’t want to get back into the plan first versus the resource request -- but absent the predictability of resources, planning for something that you can't resource becomes a waste of time, and we had no time to waste, and we had no resources to waste. So again, I come back, it's an "and" not an "or". The rest of this, I don't know if you want to go -- me to go through bullet point by bullet point ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 197 12-197-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- and comment?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 198 12-198-18

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Suffice it to say we discussed political -- the political pressure aspects, and that is always an uncomfortable conversation to have between police services.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 198 12-198-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm not sure I understand the question, sorry. I may have just missed it. I apologize.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 199 12-199-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That’s right.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 199 12-199-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Before that, they'd have never thought about the Emergencies Act. I think I might have been made aware of it over that weekend. My challenge, literally, up until my last day in office wasn’t additional legislation or injunctions, it was resources. In fact, there was a period of time where we were hoping there wouldn't be any injunctions or emergency declarations because they would give us more powers and we didn’t have any resources to implement those powers, and then we would be accused again of not doing our jobs or not using powers available to us. So for a significant portion of my time in office, discussions around injunctions, discussions around emergency declarations were maybe that’s something that we actually don’t want at this point. I was never consulted explicitly on the Emergency Measures Act that was put into place on February 14th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 199 12-199-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I remember the discussion. I can't remember word for word, and certainly, that last line would be basically summarising what I just tried to tell you.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 200 12-200-15

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Tools are great. If we don't have the resources to use them, there could be problems with that.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 200 12-200-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't have an independent recollection. This appears to be the first time I'm hearing about it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 200 12-200-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And it certainly wouldn't have been anything more than a day before, if there was any other discussion on it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 201 12-201-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't have an independent recollection. If you could take me to a leading note or ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 201 12-201-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

That would be in line with the sort of type of discussions. I can go back to the there may not be a policing solution to this. This would be in line with that line of discussion. We have three levels of states of emergency. This is obviously more than just the OPS.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 201 12-201-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir. Sorry, I know I need to answer.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 201 12-201-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I can't tell you that because I resigned office within 24 hours.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 202 12-202-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't know what she's referring to, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 202 12-202-20

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, she may be relating to elements of Coutts, Alberta, or other parts that they're involved in. I don't know if she's explicitly talking about the theatre that I was involved in. It's hard to tell what she thinks could be done. These are certainly elements that we were doing in Ottawa. Where we couldn't arrest, we were getting information to lay charges after the fact. The Ontario Provincial Emergencies Act had just been announced on the Friday. We were still looking -- I don't know if by this time on the -- by on the Monday that we'd even had a substantial briefing from our legal team as to what those powers were and whether or not our Incident Command Team had considered how to roll them into the ongoing evolution of the plans. I can't disagree with the position of the Commissioner, but I can't say that it applies entirely to the circumstances that I was dealing with.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 203 12-203-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We meaning the Ottawa Police Service?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 203 12-203-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, I come back to it, sir, we didn't have the resources to fully effectively utilize the private injunction and the elements of the Ontario -- you got the Provincial Emergencies Act at this point. So I can't tell you that I would even have an opinion on that, other than we were just trying to get resources.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 203 12-203-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Sorry ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 204 12-204-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- I do recall, just as an example, I forget which day it was. It could have been the Saturday or the Sunday. It feels like it was the Sunday. One of those trilevel calls that you referenced with Rob Stewart and Commissioner Lucki, it was the only time that Ministers Mendocino and Blair were on the call, and I joined it late for some reason. I think I had multiple competing demands. And there was a question asked. Maybe it goes to what Commissioner Lucki was talking here about existing legislation, but a question was asked of me by Minister Blair, "Have you considered doing by-law enforcement?" Which I thought was a strange question. And I said, "Yes, we've been doing by-law enforcement from the very beginning." And then he asked a second question, "Well, have you considered towing trucks?" And I said, "Yes, we've been towing trucks from the very beginning, but we don't have sufficient officers to do full enforcement and we don't have sufficient trucks to do extensive towing." Maybe that has something to do with this we haven't exhausted all the tools comment, but that's the only context that I can think of.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 204 12-204-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There was a discussion in there with the Chair around the quality of support that I was receiving inside the organization and my own sense of where we were at at the leadership level. A reasonable question from the Chair of the Police Services Board at the direct employee level that the Board has with myself, and in this case only Deputy Chief Bell because Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson was not an employee of the Board. And I gave my best answer to her, there were some challenges. I mean, I actually think these notes capture it well. I -- there would be elements of some of those leadership challenges that would need to be reviewed in an after-action report, again, I didn't have a chance to ever conduct that. And I had made decisions on the fly in the midst of this very fluid situation to address conduct issues and park them or address them and move on from them completely. But I also gave the caveat that there had been incredible levels of stress and fatigue, and that clearly no one, including myself, could claim that they were always operating in their best, at their best.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 205 12-205-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No. It's an important question you're asking, and it's a -- not an easy question to answer. So please if you can give me some leeway here. There was a significant trust issue. That's the only significant trust issue that I was aware of and I thought had a material impact on the events that transpired over those weeks, was the switching out of Superintendent Rheaume for Superintendent Dunlop. And we've been through that, so I won't go back to it. When I realised what had happened, as close as I can, good discipline should be in the smallest -- small "d" discipline, should be applied as quickly to the event. I immediately called a meeting with the two Command Officers. I asked them a straight question, and to their credit they gave me straight answers. I wasn't happy with the answers, meaning I was disappointed that they had chosen to go that route, and I expressed that immediately and clearly. And then I counselled them immediately, and I told them what good behaviour would look like going forward, and then I moved on from it. And as I said earlier on, they both in their own ways worked back towards demonstrating trust and capability. What I was asked here was overall what's happening, and I related that circumstance, but there were other elements of a lack of cohesion within the team. People making assumptions. We've already elements of people taking a rumour and assuming it's truth and how that impacted a range of issues from PLT to whether or not there was a plan to whether or not the plan had been approved. So those were issues that I was dealing with on an ongoing basis. They were difficult issues to deal with. They took time and energy away from everybody involved, including me. And in some cases, they caused confusion. So those are the types of things I was trying to relate to the Chair, but I was also trying to relate the context in which we had found ourselves, unprecedented, uncharted, unrelenting pressures, inside the organisation and outside the organisation, to not leave with her with the impression that we were having some sort of a mass internal revolt. That was my understanding at that time, and that's what I tried to relay as honestly and as fully to the Chair at that time.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 206 12-206-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 209 12-209-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

They were very different plans in that they were significantly more evolved. The 13th was significantly more evolved than the 9th plan, but they were the same continuity of iterations from the pre plan that we had on January 28th.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 209 12-209-24

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

And again, I understand the perspective of Chief Superintendent Pardy that he did not consider what we had presented to him as a plan. I disagree with that assessment. It may not have been to his standard or the OPP's standard, but it was the plan evolved since January 28th through several iterations, some of which we've seen here today, that was signed off by Inspector Lucas and Superintendent Rheaume, and continued through until the next signature blocks appeared on the February 13th version of the same plan. I can appreciate Chief Superintendent Pardy might not have known of the iterations that preceded it, he might not have understood our business processes and policies, and he might have assumed that this was a brand new plan. I'm also aware of an email from Superintendent Lue of the RCMP that shares my impression, that the February 9th plan was being used by the Integrated Planning Team to build on. And that is entirely my understanding. That is why when I sent the email to Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, "send me the latest version", I wasn't talking about the February 9th plan. "What was the latest iteration that had developed since then? I just need to see. Is there a new org chart? Have you got an updated mission statement? Have you got a better sense of objectives you want? Are there subplans that I should be looking at?" I just needed an update. And I was having phone calls on a daily basis with Commissioners Carrique and Lucki in which there was these constant questions of "Have you signed off on it?", and I would respond, "I don't sign off on the plans." "Well, we heard it's with you." "It's not with me. I haven't even been briefed on it yet." "Well, we've heard it's you that have to approve it." "I don't approve the plans." I have to tell you we went around and around on that. And this is me trying to finally just say, "Trish, whatever is the latest version send it to me. If it's been signed off, please send to me quickly so I can forward it to Carrique and to Lucki -- Commissioners Carrique and Lucki." And that's exactly what I did at the end, I think somewhere around nine o'clock, I said, "Here it is. You can see the signatures on it. It's Bernier, it's Lue", sorry, I should use their ranks, "Superintendent Lue, Chief Superintendent Pardy, and Acting Superintendent Bernier. It's signed off. It's done." I never had to approve it, there's no signature line, it’s being implemented. I think there were still questions after that. I cannot, to this day, understand why there are still questions about whether or not the plan was approved and signed off. It had been approved. It had been signed off.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 210 12-210-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I think we were well positioned. I wouldn’t say we had reached a position of certainty but we were well positioned. We had, at that point, a significant level of integration. We had received significant levels of resources including expertise, including experienced leaders of the quality of Chief Supt. Pardy, Supt. Lue, and others. I think at that time, we actually had the strongest of the different iterations of incident command teams with Acting Supt. Bernier as the event commander. I think at that point he had a deputy commander in OPP Insp. Springer. Both of them seemed to have a very good rapport. And Insp. Springer, I believe, was one of the most experienced and trained incident commanders, if not in the province, across the country and there really seemed to be a sense of structure to what they were doing, and they were building in position that, in my experience as an incident commander and the roles I played in Toronto Police, were very useful for us, and I can see how they were being applied here. So my sense was we had a strong and increasingly stronger plan, a strong and increasingly stronger level of integration, and finally, demonstrably, a greater level of resources coming. But it was that last area that I still that there was -- there were challenges in getting those resources. And it’s in that particular aspect that played probably the biggest role in my decision to resign my office.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 212 12-212-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

We had a very strong integrated team. We had very strong leaders in that team. There was clarity around the plan. I suspect, yes, when there’s a leadership change, there’s always a sense of there’s a change, and that change alone, as you’ve seen in decisions to replace a hockey mid-season or whatever, the team plays well for three or four games and the old challenges that hadn’t been addressed yet come back pretty quickly after. So I don’t in any way challenge the notion that the change created a change but I do note that the level resources flowing was incredible at that point and that within three or four days there was sufficient resources on the ground to execute successfully the operations that have already been described in this court.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 213 12-213-07

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes, sir.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 213 12-213-23

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Well, I think I started off my testimony here today, Commissioner, with my thoughts on public safety being one of, if not the number one reason -- public trust being, if not one of the number one reasons for public safety. I gave lengthy descriptions throughout the course of the day here around the impact of public trust in the first day, that Saturday. The public’s opinion, the opinion of three levels of government, opinions of civil society leaders, that I think unfairly and unnecessarily laid the blame of this thing on the Ottawa Police Service. We did our very best for as long as we could. We sought the resources and the help that we could. We integrated and implemented those resources, ultimately, successfully. But on the morning of February 15th, it was clear to me that the trust factor in Ottawa Police Service was still headed in the wrong direction and the only person that could take that pressure off the Ottawa Police Service was me and I made that decision to resign from office to get the resources on the ground to support the safety of our communities and, quite frankly, to support the safety to health and wellness of our own members and out partner agencies that were, at that point, in the theatre.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 213 12-213-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It’s just how I was raised. It’s who I am. Everything after that is just what I did.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 214 12-214-26

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Good to see you too.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-03

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you, ma’am.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It was ultimately my decision. There was a lot of factors that went into it. Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-10

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There were significant pressures. It was clearly, to me -- it was clear to me that the Board, specifically Chair Deans, had lost confidence in my position, and that was a factor in my decision.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

From statements made and -- yes. The totality of the circumstances, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-22

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

On the evening of February 14th, I received a phone call from the Board Chair essentially asking would I consider resignation?

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 216 12-216-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm aware of some of it, but I'd be happy to receive more context or information around it.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 217 12-217-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Twenty-one (21) days into an event of the size and nature that we were dealing with, and 9:30 at night, at the end of I don't know how many hours and days of in that day I worked, you get a phone call from your Chair discussing rumours and then pivoting into, "Have you thought about resigning?" conversation, for me is a pretty clear indication that I no longer had the confidence of the Chair, and by the Chair, the Board of the Ottawa Police Services.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 217 12-217-09

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I told her that I put my heart and soul into this organization, the mandate that she had given me, and that I'd be seeing this thing through, and that at 9:30 at night, it was a very inappropriate conversation to be having with me. I wasn’t going to be giving it any more consideration.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 217 12-217-21

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

The almost 11 hours' worth of continuing to manage the situation in this city on behalf of the Ottawa Police Services.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 217 12-217-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I'm a little bit -- I realize I'm not supposed to referencing other people's testimony or evidence presented already, but I am aware of a very alarming text, apparently from Brenda Lucki, Commissioner Lucki to Commissioner Callique. I wasn’t aware of it before my decision, but I am now aware of it now. So I don't know how to relate that into this situation, so ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 218 12-218-06

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Thank you. That’s more helpful for me. I had direct experiences with officials at three levels of government. I had direct experiences with three levels of government over the course of the time of these events that left me with a clear sense that I had no -- little to no support from elements at those three levels.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 218 12-218-17

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 218 12-218-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Municipal, yes, definitely. There was a motion passed -- motion presented. I don't think it was passed, so clearly, yes. I don't remember if any of the Board members, the three councillors that were on the Board voted in support of that motion to remove the Ottawa Police's jurisdiction, but there was certainly, I'm aware, at the municipal level, significant pressure on the Board for that to take place.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 218 12-218-28

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Still, a clear indication.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 219 12-219-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 219 12-219-27

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't remember the 3,000 to 4,000 number. My memory is around 3,000, but I don't think at this point it matters.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 220 12-220-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I did hear that from Inspector Lucas.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 220 12-220-11

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

It was -- sorry for interrupting. It was a specifically called meeting for the purpose of the convoy. I have a recollection -- I stand to be corrected -- our regular January meeting was, I think, the week before, and there was some discussion at that level. But by no means was it a briefing and I wouldn't expect the Board to have sufficient information to even form substantive questions. But I just recall there might have been some mention of it at that previous regularly-scheduled meeting.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 220 12-220-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 221 12-221-04

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

These minutes are not verbatim minutes. I would prefer to look at a more detailed record. These are all taped. They're available on YouTube channels. These minutes of meetings were never intended to be verbatim minutes, so I'm not suggesting the number wasn’t given, but I can't tell you whether or not it was. So that’s my challenge with trying to refer to these as "scribe notes" or "detailed minutes" of what was discussed at the meeting. They're substantive summary points as opposed to what we've been using as scribe notes. I just ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 222 12-222-05

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I don't know who gave that answer, ma'am. I don't know whether it was in relation to a direct question here. There was some context missing. I just don’t know.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 222 12-222-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I was, yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 222 12-222-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Again, just to be clear, I don't think anybody had a fixed number. The 3,000 vehicles was, I believe -- and again, I stand to be corrected -- an estimate that Inspector Lucas, through his traffic team and his planners felt that could be accommodated, but that doesn’t mean we were going to get exactly 3,000 vehicles. We could have got 5, we could have got 1. He was looking at an upper range that he could accommodate, but that wasn’t a prediction of the number of vehicles that were expected to arrive 72 hours later.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 223 12-223-01

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

No. I -- this was a formal Board meeting, but I had been in regular daily contact with the Board. There were calls that took place this week with the Board Chair, was on with the mayor and team. So there was a number of other discussions, communications, formal meetings that took place in this timeframe were questions around what we had, what was coming, were we ready, “What messaging should we be providing? are you getting enough support from the city?” There’s a range of other meetings and communications. This was just the only formal board meeting ---

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 223 12-223-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

--- where there was -- specifically for these events.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 223 12-223-25

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

Yes.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 224 12-224-14

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

There was the possibility that smaller group could stay longer as opposed to everybody arriving was going to be staying longer.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 224 12-224-19

Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)

I honestly, at this point, can’t remember.

Volume 12 (October 28, 2022), page 224 12-224-25