Volume 26 (November 18, 2022)

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

My name is Jacqueline Bogden, J-a-c-q-u-e-l-i-n-e; my last name is Bogden, B-o-g-d-e- n.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 7 26-007-16

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Jeffery Hutchinson. Pardon me; I’ll get closer to the mic. I’m Jeffery Hutchinson; J-e-f-f-e-r-y; surname, H-u-t-c-h-i-n-s-o-n.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 7 26-007-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 8 26-008-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 8 26-008-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 8 26-008-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes, that’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 8 26-008-18

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I’m a senior advisor at the Privy Council Office, and I currently have the duties of Assistant Secretary in Emergency Preparedness.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 8 26-008-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So we are -- the Secretariat is a newly created Secretariat at the Privy Council Office. It is within the -- it reports to the National Security and Intelligence Advisor. She has responsibility for four different groups, and so the Emergency Preparedness and COVID Recovery Secretariat is one of those. There’s also the Foreign Defence Policy Secretariat; the Security and Intelligence Secretariat; and the Intelligence Assessment Secretariat.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 9 26-009-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So the Secretariat was created in October 2021, thereabouts, and it was created to support the new dedicated role of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, which is -- the Minister is situated in the Privy Council Office, and our Secretariat was created to support him in his activities.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 9 26-009-15

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes, correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 9 26-009-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 9 26-009-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So from the Privy Council Office perspective, we support the Minister in his horizontal responsibilities. So you know, when the Prime Minister created this new, dedicated role of Minister of Emergency Preparedness, you know, he asked the Minister -- and this is outlined in his mandate letter that’s available on the Prime minister’s website -- to exercise a leadership role and coordinate efforts to improve our emergency preparedness and our emergency management capabilities in the government; working, of course, with provinces and territories. And in addition to that, he also asked Minister -- the Minister to play convening -- exercise a convening and coordinating role to support both the Prime Minister and the Cabinet in the acute phases of emergency response. So, you know, for example, this would be one of those situations. He would do something -- you know, something similar; for example, Hurricane Fiona, which we dealt with at the end of September.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 10 26-010-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

It’s all hazards. So you would -- we would be concerned with human-made situations that might arise, you know, such as the protests, the occupation and blockades, but we would also be concerned with any number of natural disasters. Or public health emergencies, like, for example, you know, part of the genesis of this is we’ve just lived through two and a half years of COVID-19 and all that that has entailed for the country. And in addition to that, we’ve seen an acceleration of climate-related impacts on the country. So an increase in, you know, fire -- devastating fires, floods, you know, and we need to be prepared -- increasingly prepared to respond as a country to those kinds of events.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 10 26-010-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 11 26-011-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct. And that we need to be prepared to respond to those, and working proactively with, you know, any number of other orders of government, civil society, private sector to make sure that the country is as prepared as it can be for what we can see on the horizon.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 11 26-011-15

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

January 10th; I started January 10th of this year, 2022.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 11 26-011-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 11 26-011-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 12 26-012-01

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Certainly. My principal role is to support the Safety, Security, and Emergency Management Committee, and Minister Blair is the Chair of that committee. So I have a small team that ensures that we have membership agendas, appropriate documents that are ready for Cabinet consideration, that sort of thing. I also, as part of the functions that Ms. Bogden was describing, when there is an emergency of one sort or another, then I work with my counterpart at Public Safety, we have a fairly close partnership, and we can pull our counterparts across town together to make sure that we have good information-sharing, up-to-date situation reports, that kind of thing.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 12 26-012-04

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

The Assistant Deputy Minister of Emergency Management Preparedness Branch. His name is Trevor Bhupsingh.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 12 26-012-21

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

That question's for me? Sorry. There's a framework whereby provinces can make a request for federal assistance in certain circumstances, where they just need help in managing an emergency, and you see that in different situations. So after Hurricane Fiona, for example, you saw the military deployed for sandbagging and logistics and things like that. That's generally done under an RFA. Our role in that tends to be kind of at the level of coordination. It's actually our partners at Public Safety that really manage the core of that process. So a request comes in. Normally, with some advance warning, there's often discussion with the Province beforehand as to what's being sought, why, whether all available resources have been considered and utilised in the province. We're usually aware that it's come in. As it comes in, we know it goes to Public Safety, there are discussions between Public Safety and the Minister's office in terms of determining the outcome, and in the normal course, our response in the form of a letter would normally go to the province, and resources are deployed, or not, in accordance with the decision.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 13 26-013-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 14 26-014-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So I guess the first part of our role, obviously PCO plays, you know, as it does in many different situations, it helps to coordinate the Federal Government response to any given situation, and the same would be true in this case. And -- so what we're trying to do in coordinating that response, we'll convene departments and agencies together, we're trying to develop a common understanding, a common, kind of up-to-date understanding of the situation and assess that situation. We're determining, you know, what are the actions that the Federal Government needs to take in response to the situation or might need to take. And the objective there is really to make sure that, you know, we're ready to do whatever's needed, the efforts are coordinated, and ideally, that the course of action is effective. So what we would've been doing in this case, like the Emergency Preparedness Secretariat, you would have heard, for example, from others who testified earlier this week, that there was a governance structure set up at the Deputy Minister level. There was governance that was set up at the ADM level to facilitate that sharing of information. What we would be doing is, then, in the, you know, let's say in the week preceding the arrival of the demonstrations in Ottawa, helping ensure that that information that is being collected is flowing in to, for example, staff of the Office of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, staff in the Prime Minister's Office, so that they have visibility over this -- something that is on the horizon that is happening, what information do we know, what do we not know, what action are we taking, and they have confidence that, you know, the Federal Government across departments and agencies is doing what it should do in response to this kind of situation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 14 26-014-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So maybe, if you'll permit me ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 15 26-015-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- just to... So in that week, I think our efforts really began in seriousness in the week in advance of the arrival of the demonstrations; right? So the briefing that I was mentioning for, you know, the Office of the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, the Prime Minister's Office, we were also, as we got closer to the weekend, thinking about making sure that ministers, also, had a collective and common understanding of, you know, what we knew about the weekend. And so we would've started briefing, having joint briefings with ministers the Thursday before the arrival of the convoy, and again, we're just making sure that they have a common understanding of the situation. The other thing that we're doing is we're thinking a little bit about making sure that we're prepared in the event that things don't go as planned that weekend. Right? This is a scenario where -- that has been billed as a peaceful protest, a slow roll that will go through the Nation's Capital, and there's a series of activities on the Hill, and you know, in the park, a prayer service, and that those things will happen as intended. But in the back of our mind, we were also thinking about, you know, what if things don't go as planned? There's a lot about this situation that we don't. You know, it is -- it isn't like Canada Day, where law enforcement has, you know, it happens on the same day every year, there are weeks to prepare. We don't have perfect information about the situation as it's developing, we don't, like, have fidelity, for example, on how many trucks, how many individuals. You know, so we're thinking about that. And when you have large groups of people get together, you always need to be foreseeing the possibility that intentionally or otherwise, you know, it could lead to violence and loss of life, and so we're thinking about how do we make sure that the government would be ready and we could bring ministers together if something unfortunate happened over the weekend. And it wasn't a theoretically possibility. Like some of the statements that were being made in the lead-up to that weekend, you know, references to the January 6th attack on Capitol Hill, you know, we -- I think the Federal Public Service was well aware of the actual threat of lone actors that could take advantage of the situation. So that's kind of what's going through our mind. On one hand, making sure that everybody understands what's happening. We hope everything is going to go as planned, but we also need to be prepared if things don't transpire as they are presented. So to get to your question, which is about, you know, when did you know that things were... So I think it became clear to us on Sunday that things... I remember watching the news conference that was held by the organisers of the convoy, where it was made clear that they were staying. And so then we're starting to give some thought to, okay, Parliament is scheduled to return on the Monday, we -- you know, we're still in hybrid format, but we know some ministers are going to be making a decision to return to Ottawa, either flying in on the Sunday evening or the next day. We need -- you know, presumably the Prime Minister would like some information about whether it's safe and secure for them to do that, how will they access the Hill. We're also thinking about our own employees in the Federal Public Service. Our -- you know, whether that's at PCO or other employees, while we're in a remote work posture, there are still many, including in the security and intelligence sphere, that need to access our building, so we need to be thinking about their health and safety. So by that Sunday night, we would have been having meetings with the National Security Intelligence Advisor, and then ultimately with the Clerk, in order to brief her so that she would be in a position to brief the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister’s Office about the current situation, kind of leading into the week.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 16 26-016-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don’t.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 18 26-018-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don’t, sorry.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 18 26-018-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 18 26-018-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So I mean the events have unfolded; we, you know, have the return of Parliament on the Monday. For the first two days of that week, so that would be January 31st and the 1st, we’re continuing -- we’d been, at this point, having daily briefings for Ministers. And those briefings consist of just -- so that listeners and the Commissioner understand, what we would do with these briefings everyday would -- we would have the Commissioner of the RCMP, we would have the Director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service, and at a certain point -- or we would have had the Deputy Minister of Public Safety, and a few others, providing real-time, live updates of the situation as it’s developing. And at this point, we have a situation, not just in Ottawa, we also have the situation in Coutts which is developing. And so, you know, we have two different situations to be alive to. So we’re keeping Ministers apprised. By midweek we have these two situations -- midweek, which would be February 31st, 1st, 2nd ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 19 26-019-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 19 26-019-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 20 26-020-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Which Ministers? At this point, the -- we would have Minister Blair; Minister Mendicino; Minister Leblanc, who is the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs; Minister Alghabra, who is the Minister of Transportation. I believe those four Ministers at this point in time.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 20 26-020-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, and this is the Ministers who’ve been meeting on a daily basis to take stock of the situation and understand what we know, what we don’t know, and what actions are being taken. So by midweek, around Wednesday, you know, we have these -- this situation. There’s not clear signs that the situation’s going to be resolved, or we don’t have confidence of any signs that it’s going to be resolved. We’re also starting to hear a lot of reports that, you know, there will be additional protest activity over the weekend, both in Ottawa and in Alberta, and so, you know, starting to be concerned that, you know, not only is this situation not resolving, but the situation could get worse. So at a certain point here, we make a decision that it is time to convene a Cabinet Committee, which is the Safety, Security, and Emergencies Committee. Do you want me to explain the mandate of the committee, or...?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 20 26-020-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 21 26-021-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 21 26-021-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So this meeting, this is -- this is -- okay, maybe I’ll -- just for the benefit of others who won’t know, this is the -- this is a standing committee of Cabinet, it’s the Cabinet Committee on Safety, Security, and Emergencies. It has a threefold mandate. One, is to be concerned about threats and risks to the safety and security of Canada and Canadians. It has a second responsibility for management of ongoing emergencies; and, thirdly, to ensure that there’s proactive, integrated, forward- looking thinking around the -- our level of emergency preparedness and capacity to respond to emergency management. So that’s the intent and purpose of the Committee. It’s a standing committee that will meet on a fixed schedule but it also, like other Cabinet committees, has the ability to meet on an ad hoc basis. And that’s exactly what we would have done at this situation, is decided, okay, I think it’s time to bring together the -- and support a conversation amongst the, you know, standing Cabinet committee. And so the meeting would’ve proceeded in two ways, as you’ll see reflected in the minutes, asking, you know, key heads of different institutions to report on the situation; so the Commissioner of the RCMP, I think the Director of the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service also provided an update, probably Deputy Minister Rob Stewart. And the idea there, just like the Ministerial briefings is to give everybody a common understanding of this situation, how it’s evolving, what we know, what we don’t know. And then the second part of the discussion is to start to talk about -- a little bit more about what more the federal government might want to do to try to support the resolution of this situation. So you will see, I think in the minutes, there is a placemat that, you know, puts together a quick snapshot of some different range of options that the government could consider. And it wasn’t perfect, but it was there to kind of stimulate conversation on the range of options within federal jurisdiction of things that Ministers and departments might be able to think about.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 21 26-021-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, sure. So, you know, like I said, you’re thinking about all of the things that are in area of federal responsibility. So you’re thinking about what authorities do you have; what influence do you have; what resources do you have; what are the kinds of things that you could do? So you see on the left-hand side of this document, the convening and engagement power that -- power; the convening and engagement sort of influence that the government could bring to bear. So, for example, is there more that we should be doing with provinces and jurisdiction -- provinces and territories that we’re not already doing? And that could be, you know, Ministers. Ministers at this point had already been doing some engagement. Should there be more? You know, should we be thinking about a call between the Prime Minister and Premiers, or anything; just thinking about all of those things. Engagement, you know, with the City of Ottawa, directly. Should we be doing more? And, you know, what form should that take? You know, making sure that with -- like, you know, determining whether additional assistance should be provided to the Ottawa Police Service, right? In terms of sort of increasing their ability to respond to this situation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 22 26-022-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don’t know if it’s attempting to sort out the jurisdiction, because I think jurisdiction is clear, ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 23 26-023-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- in my mind. Like, what we’re trying to do there is to ask ourselves what support does the City need? What support does, you know, the Ottawa Police Service need, and how can we be helpful? And it might be people, it might be equipment, it might be bollards. You know, we didn’t do that kind of thing at that point, but later in the -- you know, you’re sort of thinking about those kinds of things.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 24 26-024-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Totally.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 24 26-024-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Totally. You know, if -- to help bring this to a, yeah, to a resolution.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 24 26-024-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No. I think -- I think that’s good. It, you know, just essentially sets out, like there’s a -- any number of ways, right, that we can bring influence to the situation, provide direct support, you know, being creative about it. But this was the -- a start of a more formal conversation that we need to be thinking about, about supporting a resolution of what’s happening.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 24 26-024-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. So, you know, as we expected, that weekend there was an increase in protest activity. And you know, we, you know, not only saw an increase in protest activity in Ottawa and in Coutts. You know, you saw the situation expand into B.C., Manitoba now, in central Canada. You know, we're seeing similar slow roll protests in Toronto and in Quebec City. Fortunately, those two jurisdictions learned a little bit about the experience in Ottawa and were able to manage those situations differently, and it didn't result in, you know, what we were seeing happen in Ottawa. So we see, you know, an increase in protest activity over that weekend. I believe that is also the weekend where we received a formal request for assistance from Alberta, for both people and equipment to help resolve, you know, the situation in Coutts.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 25 26-025-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 25 26-025-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Sure, so this is the request that was received from Alberta. And I think you need to scroll down to actually get to the essence of the request.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 25 26-025-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So looking for, "...federal assistance that includes the provision of equipment and personnel to move approximately 70 semi-[truck] trailers and approximately 75 personal and recreational vehicles from the area." And looking, you know, essentially, for assistance from the government to deal with that. So the request would have come in to -- directly to the Minister's office. It would have also went in directly to Public Safety and Emergency, the Department of Public Safety and Emergency for them to work on for us. In receipt of this request, I probably received the copy from the Minister's office. What I would have been wanting to do at that particular moment in time is to make sure that my colleague that looks after intergovernmental affairs is aware. There's probably a record in the collection that I would have shared it with Michael Vandergrift, who is the Deputy Minister for Intergovernmental Affairs at the Privy Council Office. And also, wanting to make sure, you know, that the National Security Intelligence Advisor is aware and that the Clerk and the Deputy Clerk are also aware that we've received this request from Alberta that will need to be. And as Jeff explained ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 25 26-025-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Oh, slow down.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 26 26-026-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I'm very sorry, sir. My counsel was reminding me, and I knew that you've warned others. Sometimes I can speak very quickly. I will try -- I get excited. Sorry about that, sir.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 27 26-027-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

All right. I will try to breath. Okay. So I would have made sure that those who needed to know inside PCO at a senior level, you know, were aware. And then as Jeff had explained earlier, or Mr. Hutchinson had explained earlier, Public Safety would have done what they do to sort of look at the request and how the government would want to respond to that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 27 26-027-08

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

That's correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 27 26-027-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. So we're on February 5th. We received this request, and I'm not entirely certain if we knew then, or we knew on Sunday, but we were anticipating an additional request for assistance from the City of Ottawa, looking for additional resources to help the Ottawa Police Service. So by Saturday, we had decided, okay, we need to bring Ministers together again on Sunday night, so we began the preparations for that discussion on Sunday night.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 27 26-027-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That's funny.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 28 26-028-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

It says postal station B, but it wasn't. It was a virtual meeting.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 28 26-028-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So, I mean, this meeting was, you know, similar to the meeting that we had on Tuesday night in that it sort of was transacted in two ways. One was to update Ministers on the situation as we knew it at that point in the afternoon, and those briefings would have been delivered as they were on the Thursday night, you know, by the Commissioner of the RCMP, the Director of CSIS, and others to make sure that Ministers had an up-to-date situational awareness. And then there would have been a follow-up discussion about, you know, we've seen an escalation of protest activity over the weekend. You know, we're going into week two now of this, and what additional things -- you know, picking up from the conversation on Thursday and over the weekend, because remember, we're still briefing, you know, the core Ministers over the weekend. They were very seized with this over the weekend. What more should we consider doing heading into hitting into the week? So, you know, as an example, one of the ideas that was talked about was should we seek to bring together the representatives of the Ontario government with the Government of Canada and Ottawa, which is what became known as the tripartite discussion or tripartite table. And so that was, you know, one of the -- like, that is, you know, one example of something that would have -- tangible action that would have flowed from that meeting. I would have been asked the next day to organize that meeting and get that started.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 28 26-028-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 29 26-029-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

If we knew it at that time. I can't remember the timing, I'm sorry. I didn't go back and double check the timing. This meeting was at two o'clock in the afternoon, so I don't remember that the minutes reflect that, but, you know, if we knew that at the time, that would have -- it would have been something that we would have discussed.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 29 26-029-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that would have been one of the things, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 29 26-029-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Sure. So I would have, you know, sought to organize that. The next day, I think the meeting would have been, you know, maybe at five o'clock that day. And so we were seeking to invite the Ontario Solicitor General and her Deputy Solicitor General, who is the head -- it's Mario Di Tommaso who you've heard testimony here at the hearings, and then the Mayor of the City of Ottawa, as well as Minister of Public Safety Mendocino, and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness Bill Blair, and he would have had a few individuals from the senior public service. So, for example, I was there, Rob Stewart, the Deputy Minister of Public Safety would have been there. And the conversation was really -- you know, the idea here was can we get the three orders of government together, there's a situation in Ottawa that there is no line of sight on resolution. How can we help? What more can we do to help?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 30 26-030-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 30 26-030-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 30 26-030-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

There was not representation from Ontario.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 30 26-030-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 31 26-031-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I mean, it was a good conversation just to update on -- from each party. I'm sure there would have been a recollection, for example, that we had already -- RCMP -- additional RCMP officers had already been deployed to support the City of Ottawa. This is Monday, Monday the 7th? I'm sure the Mayor would have indicated to the Ministers that there was a request forthcoming for about 1800 additional personnel, and he would be looking for support, and he would be looking for support in response sooner rather than later.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 31 26-031-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 31 26-031-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 31 26-031-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Super. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 31 26-031-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

This is a regularly scheduled meeting. And I think -- so as I said, you know, there was intention heading into this week to be, you know, intensifying and thinking about what proactively the government could do to support the resolution of the situation. I think it's important to also maybe note that at the start of this week is we’d already seen some protest activity around the Ambassador Bridge, and now we’re in a situation where that, you know, is a much more dire situation. And so what we decided to do was add on an item at this meeting and again update Ministers and talk about what more might need to be done. And I think, you know, the situation is becoming increasingly concerning. You know, it’s getting worse, and not getting better. And we don’t have line of sight on how these different situations that exist are going to get resolved or get better quickly. And so there’s a further conversation about what more Ministers or departments and agencies need to be thinking about doing.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 32 26-032-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, so this is true for all standing Cabinet committees, is that they will deliberate either on policy or other issues and make recommendations to the Prime Minister and Cabinet. But they’re not a decision-making body.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 32 26-032-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So I mean I think it’s important to acknowledge that nobody has been sitting around doing nothing, you know, up until this point; right? But it’s leaning in a little bit more. And so what I would say happened next is, for example, you know, very early the next morning, the Clerk of the Privy Council Office pulled all of the -- I shouldn’t use the word “pull” -- convened all of the Deputy Secretaries of the Privy Council Office and Deputy Ministers who were implicated together and asked us to, you know, pull together, in written form, all of the options that are available to the Federal Government to resolve this situation and get that into some kind of a form that we could put it in front of Ministers, whether that is another SSE meeting or what. But, you know, to be decided.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 33 26-033-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 33 26-033-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 34 26-034-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 34 26-034-07

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That’s essentially what’s happening; right? Is we’ve had a conversation with the clerk amongst deputies that morning. We and our team are acting as a bit of an aggregator of information that is coming in from departments. We’re not writing a lot ourselves. We’re just pulling it in from departments. And the nature of the conversation that we had that morning was I think I would characterize it -- if you permit me to do that? Can I do that? To -- you know, is two things. So on the one hand, was it all of the range of things within existing federal authorities that can be brought to bear to resolve this situation? And you know, you’re looking at not just resolving the current situation, you’re also thinking about, you know, mitigating the situation getting worse; right? Because we do have a serious, you know, situation, and, you know, how do we prevent it from getting worse? So I think that the Commissioner and those who are listening today would have heard in other testimony that was given by other Deputy Minister’s this week some of the things that we talked about in that meeting that morning, the work that had been underway in getting that on paper. So the kinds of things I’m talking about are, for example, you know, first order of business is to think about what additional resources does law enforcement need? You know, whether that is people, or it’s equipment, or, you know, whatever it is that they need in order -- money, what is it, in order to be able to enforce the laws and address the situations that we’re seeing. You know, another example is engagement. You know, do we need to be doing more in terms of engagement with other orders of government, or engagement, for example, with the organizers of the protests and the demonstrations. So that’s, you know, a second line. And I think you maybe had heard that from Deputy Minister Stewart during his testimony earlier this week, that that was something that he had been working on. You know, the other examples of things that we were working on, you would have heard from Deputy Minister Keenan about the strategic enforcement strategy; right? How do we, you know, encourage people to consider taking their trucks and leaving? They’re engaging in illegal behaviour, how, you know, can we help in that way? The tow truck strategy, which I think gave everybody gray hair, just thinking of the millions of ways that we could try to resolve that situation. So that’s -- and there was other things in that bucket of things that we need to do within our existing authorities, like in the vein of thinking about how do we make sure this situation doesn’t become worse, one of the things that, for example, the President of the CBSA would have been worrying about is how do we harden or, what’s another way to say that, make more resilient our border points across the country? Like, you know, at this point in time, you know, at the SSE meeting on the 8th or, you know, as we’re having that discussion in the morning, he’s been reporting out on no less than 10 different, you know, border points being occupied. Ambassador Bridge is, for all pretense and purposes blocked, he’s having difficulty redirecting that critical traffic to Sarnia. Like, so we need to think about how do we make sure that this situation doesn’t get worse; right? Because these are critical supply lines, both in terms of Canadians, both in terms of trade, you know, and so we need to be thinking about that. So there, we’re kind of working on what are all the things that we can do within our existing authorities to try to support the resolution of this situation and not have it escalate or become worse.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 34 26-034-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 36 26-036-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Oh, perfect. Okay. Sorry. I should have allowed you to do that. That would give you sort of the kind of lines of effort that we were thinking about. So enforcement, engagement, finance refers to thinking about, you know, one of the -- I talked a little bit about the trucks. One of the other policy problems that we had was the fundraising, you know, and what do we do about the fact that there is a significant amount of money that is being raised that is going to support illegal activity. And what do we do about that?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So I’m going to ask you to walk us through all of those options a little more slowly with the assistance of the next document, which is PB.NSC.CAN.000002418. Oh, sorry, 2419. Okay. So do you recall, ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

This was the first cut; right? We’re ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- taking information that’s being provided from different organizations. This -- I can’t remember off the top of my head whether this came from the RCMP or Public Safety, but it would have been one or the both of them.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 37 26-037-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. By this point we are Wednesday; yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 38 26-038-07

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 38 26-038-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 38 26-038-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 38 26-038-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, presumably. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 39 26-039-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. And this is a request that is going to both levels of government; right? And I think both of, you know, both the RCMP and the OPP would be asking themselves the same questions; right? Like what's the order of magnitude of the people that you need, and what is the plan that you're putting those people against? Right? Because I remember that quite distinctly at a number of occasions the Commissioner making that clear, that it isn't just about the number of people, it's what are the duties, like what is the capabilities that you need? What will be asking them to do? And you need fidelity on that plan, both, you know, for their safety and to make sure that you have enough individuals to be able to prosecute on that. And I remember when this came in; right? It was a big, big ask, and it was a big ask for a lot of different kinds of needs and services, like including everything from, you know, media relations help and things like that. Like we were asking ourselves, okay, could we do a call out, you know, find individuals within the Federal Public Service to lend them? Like is there a way we can help? Like that was really the way everybody was thinking at this point in time, is like, all hands on deck. How do we help get this done kind of thing?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 39 26-039-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

M'hm.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 40 26-040-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. This is a short- form kind of articulation of what you heard from Deputy Minister Keenan a little bit earlier in the week about the strategic enforcement strategy, is how do we, you know, show that there are consequences, you know, economic consequences, or other consequences, both through the police and law enforcement, but also, is there a way to work with provincial transportation authorities and looking at, you know, for example, you know, the Ontario Highway Traffic Act. And you know, these are commercial vehicles with -- that are, you know, that are registered either in the province, or Ontario or other provinces. Is there a way that we could work with provincial transportation authorities to try to resolve the issue.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 40 26-040-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 40 26-040-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 41 26-041-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 41 26-041-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

And the prospect that that could get worse. And I think when I was talking about, you know, the idea of making sure that our critical infrastructure, like that we've hardened it or made it more resilient, you know, I was strictly talking about the borders, you know, ports of entry, but we were also worried about things like rail, and you know, other modes of transport. Right? So, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 41 26-041-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 41 26-041-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. Like what are the other -- you know, you -- what are the other places that could become a target of protest activity or blockades; right?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 41 26-041-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Well, I mean, we had -- I think there has been testimony here about a slow roll around the airport in the City of Ottawa. You know, we had -- I think there were indications around rail, I can't remember precisely what they were, but yes, I think that we were hearing that, you know. And even if they're unconfirmed reports, right, once -- you still have to take all of that stuff seriously and be thinking about how do you mitigate the situation getting worse. Right?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 42 26-042-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 42 26-042-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. As -- like, there's a range of options that we can explore here, right, and we need to -- you know, the idea of potential engagement with the organisers of the protesters, like it's been an idea that was thought of and talked about, and -- so now starting to put some definition around well, what would that mean. What would that involve? Who would do that?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 42 26-042-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 43 26-043-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No, not -- I mean -- no, I don't. I don't. The DM -- the sort of bullet before about the: "[Deputy Minister] of [Public Safety] and NSIA are meeting with senior levels..." That's factually true. Where the idea of: "Engagement could be expanded to include the [FCM]..." I don't know where that idea came from. Whether that was from us or it came from another department, I really can't recall. But I know the idea that's behind it, right, is that we're thinking about, it's not just addressing the situation as it exists today, it's preventing the situation worsening. So thinking about, you know, what we had seen with Toronto and Quebec City, right, having learned the lessons of how to create the conditions for a peaceful protest, but not allow it to turn into an occupation or a blockade. And so the idea behind that is how do we share those lessons learned? You know, these situations are not a normal occurrence, and -- so, yeah, I think that's kind of the idea behind that. I'm going to -- that's me speculating a little bit, but...

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 43 26-043-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That's correct. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 44 26-044-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Or the Public Service level.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Mr. Di Tommaso was not there either.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 45 26-045-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. That's what I had mentioned earlier, is that engagement take many forms; right? And so how can we influence and work closely with other partners to bring this to a resolution.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I think it's just to help ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, it's part of a communication strategy. It -- I mean, in these kinds of situations, it's really -- it's important to have clarity and consistency on your communications about the initiative. And I think at this point -- where are we, we're the 9th? We do -- like, the federal government wants to make sure that Canadians understand that, on the one hand, we understand their frustration with COVID and the world that we have all had to live with up until that point, and -- and I didn't read these -- the narrative again before my testimony, but so it's on the one hand ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 46 26-046-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, and then it talking about what is the -- so, okay, so I was not that far off. The first is sort of empathy and understanding with the frustration that everyone is feeling with the current situation, and then starting to talk a little bit about what it is that we're doing to support the jurisdictions to resolve the situation, to protect us. Oh, okay, this is the work that we've done with provinces and territories to respond to COVID. Okay. If we could keep going down? "What we[']re now seeing is, unfortunately a very real demonstration of this frustration and exhaustion..." So, you know, expressing understanding, but also making clear that illegal actions are not the answer; right? They're -- yeah. And so this kind of notes are kind of put together to help Ministers and others, you know, have a common, consistent message about how do we want to talk about the situation. Canadians expect to hear from their government. They want to know what they think. And I think this is an early draft of that. I think there would have been additional drafts but ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 47 26-047-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. So this is the 9th. That's an early version. There would have been a later version.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 48 26-048-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 48 26-048-15

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, and there are -- we had that very -- this is the February 10th version because it's 3 o'clock in the morning by this point. That's why it's February 10th, but, so, you know, the 9th, we had that early conversation with the Clerk. People have been working really hard. They're feeding us information and we're trying to package it into some kind of form that kind of makes sense, right, or that could help the -- whether it's the, you know, senior leadership in the PCO have, you know, briefings or discussions, either with the Prime Minister or the Prime Minister's office, but just, you know, the Clerk had asked us to get these ideas together on paper, pull it in from departments and get it on paper. Yeah, and knowing that, you know, the -- part of our job in the public service is to put together options and advice for Ministers to consider what to do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 48 26-048-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. So at the top of the email -- here I'm just -- you know, the document that you had projected earlier was an earlier version, right, like, a first cut. And here I'm just saying to them, so we've done the best we can to not just take the input from the departments but try to put it together in a way that might be thoughtful. I think, you know, with the emphasis on enforcement, both in Ottawa and Windsor, and I've kind of put it into, you know, Plan A is provide resources, you know, whatever's needed to help resolve, and, you know, if that's not successful, what else do we need to be thinking about? And that's always the world we're in is what can we do within existing resources. And when that doesn't work or the situation escalates, or deteriorates, however you want to characterize it, you need to be thinking about what is Plan B, you know, what other -- you can call it Plan B or you could call it Track 2, but you need to be thinking about what other options that you might need to be thinking about. And again, I'll just say this is part of what we need to do in government is to be thinking ahead, to make sure that we're ready if the government looks to us and says, what are our options, how can we proceed. We've actually done the homework and we've pulled that information together. We don't wait until we're asked.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 49 26-049-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 50 26-050-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 50 26-050-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 50 26-050-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 51 26-051-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No, Ontario didn't -- wasn't able to participate in any of the meetings.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 51 26-051-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So the next morning, I believe that the Clerk had a conversation with the Prime Minister, and there was a decision taken to convene the Incident Response Group, so that is another Cabinet Committee. This is - - its express purpose is to be called in a crisis for national emergency of some kind, and it includes the Prime Minister, and it will include the -- you know, the sort of most implicated Ministers who need to be there to help provide information and advice. And so a decision was taken that morning to bring together the Incident Response Group. And the only other thing I would say about that is, is that Cabinet Committee is a decision-making body, so it can make decisions. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 51 26-051-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 51 26-051-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So this is the same as other departments were doing the day before that we’d talked about. Like, if you saw in the document there was kind of a place holder for more information about the engagement proposal, and so this is what Deputy Minister Stewart was able to send to us the next day, to kind of be integrated into the package. And I think it -- I mean, he is better placed to discuss the contents of this, but I think it’s a reflection of, you know, where we were at that point in time. We had begun work on developing some advice on a potential path for engagement and had been doing that with police -- some advice from police experts.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 52 26-052-19

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Certainly. That’s correct. I was involved in those calls. So my understanding, and I don’t have first hand knowledge of this part, but Deputy Minister Stewart obtained the name of Marcel Beaudin as an expert in PLTs and crowd psychology, those kinds of issues. And he -- Deputy Minister Stewart intended to speak with Supt. Beaudin and he called me and asked me if -- or texted. I can’t remember how he contacted me. But he asked me if I would be willing to participate. I said certainly. As Ms. Bodgen mentioned earlier, this was kind of an all hands on deck moment. If you were asked to help, you helped. So you heard Deputy Minister Stewart describe my role as observer. And he just wanted to ensure that PCO had line of sight on the conversations. So we had a phone call with Supt. Beaudin. I agree with Deputy Minister Stewart’s characterization that we learned quite a bit about PLTs and engagement and sort of the general approach. I think it was underscored that the utility of this kind of engagement at this point in time would be to see if we could shrink the footprint of the protests, much more so than looking for a resolution or a complete pathway to ending the protests in Ottawa. It was more about that intermediate step of shrinking the footprint. My recollection of the discussion is that there was quite a bit of focus on the idea of leadership. And I know when Supt. Beaudin testified earlier in the Inquiry he used the word “juice”. And that was a term he used in our phone calls both on the 10th and the 11th, “Who has the juice?” And by that, he meant we need to find the leaders that have the influence on the ground so that if they were to enter into any kind of arrangement, that there would be people that would follow them in the execution of that arrangement. My recollection was that while there may have been numbers of leaders thrown around, certainly on the first day that was very much a question of we’ll need to see, we’re still assessing. And then Deputy Minister Stewart started to put the ideas on paper, there was a second call with Supt. Beaudin. There was also a discussion about how to keep the different lanes clear. And I think that has been referred to so far in the Inquiry as matters of church and state. How do we ensure that the police are operating under their authority, how do we ensure that engagement that might happen by officials or even at a political level are coordinated but not interfering with the police authority? So there was certainly an attentiveness to the coordination element of how this could play out. And based on those conversations, Deputy Minister Stewart put together a piece of paper, which I know is in the minutes from a subsequent IRG meeting, he put together a proposal for consideration at the IRG. My understanding of our intent in those meetings was to essentially test the viability of a proposal. It was a proposal for engagement. What was the best possible proposal, I guess, that we could put forward that might have a chance of being accepted? So it was about doing the leg work on putting together a proposal and then putting that up to decision makers to consider.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 53 26-053-07

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

The way Deputy Minister Stewart put that was that it wasn’t taken up. The way I put that in our witness summary was it didn’t proceed. I think that’s the best characterization.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 55 26-055-14

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Correct. I think that - - I probably shouldn’t have used that expression because it’s a bit of an idiom, but that comes from previous -- a previous stage of my career. But the discussion around engagement was essentially rendered moot by the events of the next couple of days, including the IRG and the Cabinet meeting, and then eventually the invocation of the Act.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 55 26-055-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

And maybe, you know, the, sort of what happened in Windsor; right? The Ontario Government had attempted to do that and it wasn’t fruitful. So I think that would also be one of the considerations.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 56 26-056-01

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

No, I was done.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 56 26-056-08

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I wouldn’t necessarily have, like, first hand knowledge of that. I have no issue with his characterization.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 56 26-056-18

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 57 26-057-06

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Certainly, yes, it is. That’s correct. So as you will flesh out in more detail with other witnesses, after the invocation of the Act, there was fairly careful monitoring of how measures were implemented and the impact they were having, the daily meetings that we had had before invocation continued. And as we went into that next weekend, the 20th, I think, was the Sunday, if memory serves, and the large police action in Ottawa had taken place and circumstances had evolved at other protest sites across the country, including ports of entry. Earlier in the day, the National Security and Intelligence Advisor had reached out to the Deputy community implicated and asked, you know, essentially, “What’s your assessment of where we’re at with the need for the Emergencies Act?” And after that step, she turned to me and said, “Can you put some ideas on paper?” Unlike invocation, my understanding of the Act is that it doesn’t have specific criteria or a test for revocation, and so we were looking to put together policy advice on when revocation was appropriate. We had been -- it had been part of our narrative for that week that the Emergencies Act would be utilized only as long as necessary; and there were several people who would add to that, not a minute longer. It was really very -- a strong message to us, “Not a minute longer.” And I think in that weekend, the people who really do, as Ms. Bogden described, the PCO role, they’re really charged with looking ahead, what’s coming, what’s the next step? They knew that we needed to have the criteria in place. My first draft I would characterize as pretty rough. You can see some of my thinking there, which was influenced by some of the conversations I had earlier that day, that what we didn’t want to do was keep the Orders in place long enough that the emergency, the crisis started to recede, but then revoke the Orders at just the moment when everything could go back to the way it was, or worse. So you see my reflections on, you know, even if trucks have left downtown Ottawa, are they still positioned to come back? We didn’t want to be in a position of having things re-establish quickly. We -- so that kind of influenced the thinking, and the other thing I was trying to sort of think through was, you know, the Orders themselves; how would you assess that they had served their purpose? In this email exchange that you have pulled up, you see some back and forth with some Deputy Ministers, and Deputy Mike Keenan in particular used some language about, “Okay, these factors may be indicators of the sort of things we’re looking at but what this really comes down to is; is it necessary? Is it still necessary?” And the way I understood that language and the way I tried to use it from that point was you have to understand your threat level and then you have to understand whether that threat is manageable within the existing authorities, meaning outside of the Emergencies Act, or whether you still need the leverage of the Emergencies Act to address the threat that you’ve assessed. So it became two points, with some indicators that followed to help people think through the two points, but those two points became sort of the focus of how the advice evolved from that point.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 57 26-057-13

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, I guess that’s a fair characterization.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 59 26-059-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 60 26-060-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Good morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 60 26-060-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

They would have been there, yes. They are members of that committee, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

For each of the meetings to be absolutely certain it would be good just to check the minutes, because that’s part of what has been disclosed, I think.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, you can say that for sure.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Not full Cabinet, no.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Oh yes, sorry. Sorry; when you -- sorry; yes, that is correct. Yes, sorry. I was thinking about the normal regularly scheduled Cabinet meetings as opposed to the one we had on...

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 61 26-061-25

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I believe so.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 62 26-062-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That’s what it looks like, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 62 26-062-15

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Sorry; can you repeat that question again?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 63 26-063-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 63 26-063-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 63 26-063-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

We didn’t know that then, that evening.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 64 26-064-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes, that's ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 64 26-064-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- that's correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 64 26-064-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 65 26-065-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I can't remember what RRM stands for. That is -- you would find that in the testimony from the Associate Deputy Minister Cindy Termorshuizen ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 65 26-065-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- Global Affairs.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-02

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I don't know that acronym.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

They ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I can't explain the acronym but the ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- description is correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 66 26-066-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Does it leave out anything important?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So I guess, first off, I need to say I'm not the author of the document.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

You know, there is a team that pulls this information together to support the National Security and Intelligence Advisor when she would be relying on these talking points.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So, like, not being able to go through each kind of individual situation, like, I think I remember where I was on that Sunday night, and what I was worried about and the situation that we were seeing. So you referred early in the document to, you know, the -- that there was -- it was -- the situation in Windsor at the Ambassador Bridge was being resolved.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That is true. And the point of -- the port of entry was being opened, but I think at that point in time, we were also concerned about keeping it open, and what it would require in order to keep that border point open, given what the country had been through for the last seven days; right? That situation had existed for almost a full week. So you had no fidelity over whether that situation and the need to keep that open. That weekend, like, the weekend that we're talking about here, we continued to have other instances ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 67 26-067-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- of things that were happening across the country. So, for example, and I can't remember this, and you were scrolling down, the situation at the Pacific Highway. There were large demonstrations in B.C. at the Pacific Highway. There was a circumstance where, for example, four individuals were charged.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 68 26-068-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 68 26-068-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So here -- okay, that is there. No ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 68 26-068-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- delays, okay, but we did have an instance, right, where the RCMP has charged four individuals who have broken through an RCMP barricade there. I'm sorry, I made you hit your time.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 68 26-068-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

But it's important, because what we're seeing in B.C. and what we're seeing in Alberta is instances of where law enforcement is -- you know, there are an increasing kind of threats, and I think that was something that we were concerned about. So that's there and that's reflected.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 69 26-069-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, it's a -- it was a military style -- that's my recollection, it was a military style vehicle that had tried to break through the blockade.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 69 26-069-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That may be -- you could verify that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 69 26-069-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that may be.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 69 26-069-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 69 26-069-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Good morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 70 26-070-05

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Good morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 70 26-070-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 70 26-070-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That is something that public servants would do in consultation with -- usually you have advice from lawyers ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 70 26-070-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- on the interpretation, but, yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 70 26-070-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So, well, the first part of your question, no, I don't interpret legislation on my own, and I believe the second part of your question is correct. You know, Parliament passes legislation that sets out what their vision and intent for legislation is. And in some cases, it says what you can, and you can't do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 71 26-071-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I'm aware of that, yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 71 26-071-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I'm going to decline to answer this question. I'm sorry. I don't feel that in my current responsibilities and my knowledge and understanding that I can answer that question for you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 71 26-071-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I think ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 71 26-071-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Again, I don't feel expert enough to be able to answer that question.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 72 26-072-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Me, personally? No.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 72 26-072-24

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

There would have been discussions about this, but I think those questions, you know, about -- were, you know, put to the National Security Intelligence Advisor yesterday, and I would defer to whatever answer she provided to the Commission yesterday on these questions.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 72 26-072-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don't feel in a position that I can answer those questions very specifically ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 73 26-073-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- based on the role and the responsibilities that I had in supporting the Privy Council Office and at the time of the events that transpired.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 73 26-073-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I think I'm going to decline to answer this question. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 73 26-073-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don't know that I can answer that either.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 73 26-073-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I have no idea. I am sorry, I am not in a position to answer that question either.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 74 26-074-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That's my understanding, that it was the RCMP.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 74 26-074-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I can't speak to what others would have known, and what the -- who would've known what before the operation was executed. I, myself, in the conversations that I was witness to, was aware that there were threats of violence to persons and a worry about the safety of officers, and that was all we knew. And -- like I have to say in the conversations that I was party to, the Commissioner of the RCMP was very careful about operational security.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 74 26-074-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No. I was aware that there was a threat of violence, that there was thought to be firearms involved ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 75 26-075-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- and there were threats to the safety of the officers there ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 75 26-075-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- and they were proceeding cautiously, and that's the extent of what I would've known about that situation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 75 26-075-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

As I think I've already clarified what I knew, I can't speak to what others knew about the situation, so I think I need to leave it there just...

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 75 26-075-15

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Good morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 76 26-076-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that was at initial assessment. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 76 26-076-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

If that’s what the record says, then yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 77 26-077-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I believe so. Like that’s my understanding of what I heard, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 77 26-077-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don’t -- I’m sorry. I’m not sure I know which meeting that you’re referring to. Like it could be the tripartite meeting. No?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 77 26-077-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. No, I’m not aware of that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 77 26-077-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. That was, right, the -- so what was shown to me this morning was the information that I got either from public Safety or the RCMP, so that’s not my -- that’s not my text, right. That’s what others have provided to me.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 78 26-078-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 78 26-078-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I was aware that a plan was being developed and was awaiting approval.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 78 26-078-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don’t have firsthand knowledge of this conversation. This is Deputy Minister Stewart who’s relating having spoken to his Ontario counterpart and OPP, and this is information that he’s got and/or summarized. So I don’t feel equipped. My understanding is that an offer was made to -- you know, separate and apart from this email, that an offer was made to the organizers of the different protests in Windsor and it was not accepted.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 79 26-079-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That’s what I meant when I said, you know, the effort was not successful. It wasn’t productive. It didn’t result in a resolution. But there was an offer made.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 79 26-079-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 79 26-079-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 80 26-080-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 80 26-080-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I really can’t say. My -- I can’t remember what Chief Sloly would have asked for. It would be probably better to put question to Deputy Minister Stewart.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 80 26-080-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 80 26-080-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Thank you, sir.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 80 26-080-26

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Yes, that sounds right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 82 26-082-06

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I don’t recall that specifically.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 82 26-082-11

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Yes. This was a pattern that we had observed across the country, that when a demonstration started we could never take it off the list. You might have a demonstration in downtown Toronto on one day and then you might have nothing for a few days and then you might have it again. So we monitored a lot of locations and we also noted from time to time the need for police resources to not only clear but hold. Now, that’s information that I received, obviously, second or thirdhand. That was my understanding, that -- in fact, I tried never to use the words “resolved” or “cleared” because it didn’t seem to describe the situation very accurately.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 82 26-082-16

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I’ll take your word for it.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 83 26-083-07

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I think I would have been aware of the injunction, but I didn’t read the Order at the time, nor do I recall being in any discussion of the specifics, per say.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 85 26-085-06

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Nothing that you’ve raised contradicts the information that I was privy to at the time.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 86 26-086-06

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Yes, I do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 86 26-086-15

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

So in the PCO Secretariat, we get involved, as Ms. Bogden said, in all types of different hazards and discussions about all types of different hazards. And our perception of emergency legislation is as much about what are the tools to help and what enables help as -- that’s kind of our focus more than anything else. I was pretty struck during the summer when the U.K. could declare a national emergency over heat and take steps to protect their citizens under national legislation and, to my knowledge, and I’m learning on the job, as Deputy Stewart referred to the other day, to my knowledge, we don’t have that kind of framework. We’ve a little bit more of a patchwork. Now, you can say that that’s due to confederation versus a unitary system of government, but I do think that there’s room. And I think that I would take it one step further and say that if we could strengthen the tools and the frameworks around protecting critical infrastructure, we could actually -- by doing that, we’d be protecting the space for legal and safe demonstration in our democracy because the rules would be clearer and the protection of what impacts people the most would be well protected.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 86 26-086-22

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, so taking the comment in a very general sense, like not commenting on this situation specifically, we’re well aware from all of the situations that we manage that municipalities tend to be -- and communities tend to be the first responders. And we have to have the systems of support in place. Not that I’m suggesting, in any way, shape, or form that the Federal Government should be out of its lane. That’s not what I’m suggesting. But the lines of support, the lines of communication, the shared planning where necessary, the collaborative planning, those would all support each level or order of government being able to fulfil its function to the fullest.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 87 26-087-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Good morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 88 26-088-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 89 26-089-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 89 26-089-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes, that’s correct. I think we confirmed that with Commission Counsel this morning. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 89 26-089-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That would be an option. Yes. either the Emergency Act, or Special Purpose Emergency Legislation; right? Like, there’s a couple of different ways you could do that. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 89 26-089-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. To a certain extent, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 90 26-090-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, the record will show that. If you -- if you look at the tracker that is attached to the minutes of the Incident Response Group meeting on the 12th of February, you know, the document that's appended there shows the things that we were working on, as you say, in Track 1, which is within existing authorities; and Track 2, you know, what if Track 1 isn't successful or the situation escalates quickly and we need to be in a position to do something different.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 90 26-090-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes. Yeah, so the -- I guess what I was trying to -- you're absolutely right, the minutes do refer to that. They refer to a discussion of, you know, the action that could be taken within existing authority and then what might be the process of invoking the Emergency Act. That was the second part of the conversation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 90 26-090-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, probably something like that. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 91 26-091-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Not the first week of February, no. That -- we were not there yet, no.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 91 26-091-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That's referring to something else. Do you recall when Commission Counsel put up the document that was circulated for the SSE meeting on February 3rd? It's like a placemat, and there's a whole range of options. In the right column it was creative options. So things like le grand débat, and things like that. That's what that refers to.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 91 26-091-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

It would've probably been on or around the 9th.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 91 26-091-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 92 26-092-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I think that's right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 92 26-092-07

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So I can't say that definitively. You know, work would have being done by a lot of different people on an anticipatory basis that, you know, making sure, as I said, that we've done our homework and we would be in a position to answer questions; right? Like if the Government turned to the public servants and said, "What's involved with invocation of the Act?", you need to be able to answer all kinds of first order questions; right? Everything from the threshold that's to be met to what's the Parliamentary process, you know, what kinds of considerations do you want to be thinking about. So I can't say definitively who was working on what. I wasn't directing that work. So I'm not being evasive, I'm just trying to understand it was all hands on deck at that point, and I can't speak to every part of the Public Service.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 92 26-092-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I can't say definitively. I know there was work being done in the Privy Council Office. As to how other departments would have been implicated, I can't speak to that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 92 26-092-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Okay. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 93 26-093-05

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Sure. The normal process would be for the response to be sent from Public Safety, and we usually speak about the official side or the political side or MNO, which is a acronym for Minister's Office. Normally, the signed letter from the minister would be sent by officials in Public Safety.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 93 26-093-15

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

That's my understanding.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 93 26-093-25

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I can't answer that question definitively. What I can tell you is that I have been personally involved in trying to determine where the letter ended up, and I have -- all indications to me at this point are that it didn't get sent simply due to human error. There was a belief on the Public Service side that this was being done, exceptionally, from the Minister's Office, but the Minister's Office had no reason to believe it wasn't being done through the usual process on the Public Service side. So there were people who had the letter, signed letter, but to my knowledge I can't find any record of it having been sent.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 93 26-093-28

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

That's correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 95 26-095-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

The evidence of that, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 95 26-095-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that was definitely something that we were alive to, that possibility that you would continue to need resources to make -- keep that open.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 95 26-095-18

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes, that's correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 96 26-096-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 96 26-096-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Well, I mean I think I would describe the situation as highly concerning, unpredictable, a lot -- still a lot of uncertainty. You know, no clarity on what the plan was for resolution in Ottawa, concerns about, you know, the border point at Ambassador Bridge. I had referred in my earlier testimony to the escalation of a violence towards law enforcement that we saw in B.C., and I think towards RCMP officers in Coutts, and -- but you know, the prospect that, you know, this situation could continue to get worse if left unattended and if nothing was done to change the trajectory of the situation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 96 26-096-09

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

I concur with that description. As I said earlier, I -- my perspective was very much that a momentary pause in a demonstration had not, up to that point, or after, frankly, proven to be an end of a demonstration. So my view that weekend was that there was -- there continued to be a national crisis, that it was impacting communities in almost every province, that we continued to see injunctions, emergency legislation being used, sort of extraordinary actions. And evidence throughout this Inquiry has talked about how unique this situation was, but then the conversation has tended, with all due respect, has tended to be about specific locations. I think on the 12th or 13th, stepping back and looking at it nationally, it continued to be a unique situation with a lot of tools in play, but not a sense of resolution to the threat, the continued, particularly, in my way of thinking, particularly around the economic threat, which I understand would be a threat to property.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 96 26-096-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that's correct. Like at each of the places, you know, over that weekend, like if you review, for example, you know the IRG minutes from that weekend, you'll see reports from the Commissioner of the RCMP and others about continued and growing protest activity across the country. And I've already referred to a few of them, and the same was happening here in Ottawa. And you know, here, this reference to, "Police say protesters overwhelmed officers", you know, that's also the point I made earlier, you know, what we were seeing in B.C. and Coutts. We don't have infinite resources to enforce the law, and you do need to be concerned about threats of violence against the people that you're asking to enforce the law. So there was a lot here to be worried about at this particular point in time.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 97 26-097-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No, not at all. Like there's a volatility and uncertainty in this situation. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 98 26-098-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 99 26-099-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 99 26-099-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah. This is the -- yeah, using it as a deterrence, and -- yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 100 26-100-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 100 26-100-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 100 26-100-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 100 26-100-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 101 26-101-01

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

M'hm.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 101 26-101-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, I think that's right. You know, as I was explaining when we were just talking about this with Commission Counsel, like, you know, first and foremost, like at this moment in time, and as we have been for a number of days now, right, really focussed on how do we bring to bear a range of options within existing authorities in order to help bring this matter to a peaceful and timely kind of resolution. But at the same time, you also have to be prepared that Plan A or Track 1 isn't going to be successful, and/or, not just that, I think you also need to be ready for the possibility, and it was not a theoretical risk, that the situation could escalate quickly or deteriorate and that the government would need to be prepared and to intervene and respond in some way. Yeah, it's important.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 101 26-101-22

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 102 26-102-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, this is a -- it's a culmination of conversations over the days leading up, the 9th, additional meetings over the course of the 9th, and just trying to put this together in a way that would help support a conversation. Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 102 26-102-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 102 26-102-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct. Which was -- you know, which was discussed, you know, at the first Incident Response Group. You know, what you find in the minutes of the meeting of the 12th is actually a reflection of what was discussed on the 10th, which is, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 102 26-102-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, it's to encourage that. It's a collective responsibility, right, that PCO would have and actually departments would have in this instance is to make sure, as I said, that we're ready to advise the government in a range of different scenarios that might materialize, like, remembering where we are. We're in an unprecedented situation that is vacillating day by day, hour by hour with new information, imperfect information, and so we need to be ready.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 103 26-103-08

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Absolutely, it's part of emergency preparedness is that, you know, you have to maximize the time you have before it turns from being a situation into actually an emergency. And, like, you know, that kind of philosophy is very acute when you're looking at saving lives in terms of, you know, we have a hurricane that's coming. Like, the first 24, 48 hours really matters. So in emergency preparedness, you're trying to maximize the time you have to get ready and think about a couple potential outcomes that might happen and make sure that we've done an analysis and that we're ready to support the government.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 103 26-103-19

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct. Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 104 26-104-06

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 104 26-104-11

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

We were organizing situational updates on the situation, so they had the latest information, because, of course, Ministers are having their own discussion with provincial colleagues. They need the latest information in talking about actions that are being taken.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 104 26-104-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct, where we're convening a larger group of Ministers.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 104 26-104-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Well, like I think as I said in my testimony earlier, when we convened the first Cabinet committee meeting on Safety, Security and Emergencies, we're midway through the next week after the weekend in Ottawa. We have a situation, a blockade in Coutts and an occupation in Ottawa, and we have no fidelity over how this situation's going to get resolved. So, you know, there's a need to support Ministers in coming together and having a conversation about that, and what, you know, are the range of things that the government might want to do or to think about to help bring the situation to a resolution.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 104 26-104-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 105 26-105-12

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Well, I think there we are in the middle of the second week. If I -- like, the 9th, the 10th, we're in the middle of the second week. You know, the -- we don't -- the situation has gotten worse. There's uncertainty about how it will be resolved and need to begin engaging and providing advice to the Prime Minister and others about the range of options that the government could consider at that point in time.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 105 26-105-16

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

So I think there -- it's actually in the meeting on the 10th, if I may.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-03

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-07

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-21

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 106 26-106-25

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 107 26-107-04

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah, I was just going to say that actually. If you scroll down, you will see that the Commissioner of the RCMP that weekend, this is the 12th that we're talking about?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 107 26-107-09

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

You know, she's describing in that meeting, you know, new and different -- either situations that have gotten worse or additional situations, like, Cornwall, I think is there a reference to North Bay, and the situations that we're seeing over that weekend, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 107 26-107-14

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 107 26-107-27

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

I don't know that I can answer that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-17

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-20

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-23

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Right. So I’ve sort of described kind of the ways in which it could not go well, right, in -- you know, we have this ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 108 26-108-26

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

--- this large group of people and that so what were the kinds of things we did. So you know, we are, for example, preparing to be able to bring Ministers together very quickly and organize an ad hoc Cabinet Committee meeting, whether that would have been Safety, Security and Emergencies or the Incident Response Group, right. So there’s some very practical things that you’re doing to make sure that you have the ability to reach Ministers in short order and bring that group together, you know, if there's a need to do something. So you’re kind of thinking along those lines. But at that point, I think the scenario that I -- that I was most worried about was the potential for, you know, violence or, you know, a clash with law enforcement and that there might be -- somebody might get hurt, or a loss of life. And in that case, that’s a Public Order situation and law enforcement would deal with the first line of response to that, but it’s happening in the nation’s capital. There might be a need for, you know, a government or several government Ministers to say something about that, and so just thinking about if that situation materializes, who’s on first, who’s on second, is everybody clear about roles and responsibilities, how would we get Ministers together. Now, there’s a theoretical risk that it could be worse than that, but we just need to know what the machinery is and what we would do and, you know, kind of what happens in the first four hours, first 12 hours, and that’s the kinds of things that you’re thinking about.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 109 26-109-02

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-05

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-07

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

No, there’s -- there’s nothing to do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-10

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Right. So this kind of situation could arise at any time, right, and so we do have existing structures that kick in, but you know, it is COVID. People are working remotely. Ministers are not all necessarily located in Ottawa. Do we know where everybody is, can we get the Ministers, Prime Ministers together quickly if that need arises.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-13

Jacquie Bogden, DM (GC-PCO)

Thank you, sir.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-24

Jeff Hutchinson, ADM (GC-PCO)

Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 110 26-110-25

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

My name is Janice Charette; J-a-n-i-c-e, C-h-a-r-e-t-t-e.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 111 26-111-24

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Nathalie Drouin; N-a-t-h-a- l-i-e, Drouin, D-r-o-u-i-n.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-13

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I can.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-21

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I confirm.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-22

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I am.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 112 26-112-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I was named as the Interim Clerk of the Privy Council in March of 2021, so that is about 18 months or so ago, and I was confirmed in the role as the Clerk of the Privy Council in May of 2022.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 113 26-113-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I’ve been a senior public servant for -- actually I think I’ve been a Deputy Minister for almost 20 years. Before being named as the Interim Clerk of the Privy Council, I was the High Commissioner for Canada to the United Kingdom, or Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and previous to that, I was actually serving as the Clerk of the Privy Council. I’ve held roles as the Associate Clerk of the Privy Council; Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental; the Deputy Minister of then-Human Resources and Skills Development; of Immigration, Refugee, Citizenship; Associate Deputy Minister of Health; and, as you can tell, a number of roles over my career.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 113 26-113-09

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Exactement.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 113 26-113-25

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

J’ai été nommée sous- greffière au mois d’août 2021.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 113 26-113-28

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Avant ça, j’étais sous- ministre à la Justice à Justice Canada et, de 2012 à 2016, j’étais sous-ministre à la Justice au gouvernement du Québec.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 114 26-114-03

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

S’il vous plaît, s’il vous plaît, soyer bien à l’aise et je vais faire la même chose, des fois je vais répondre en anglais, des fois je répondrai en français.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 114 26-114-09

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Absolument.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 114 26-114-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yes, okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 114 26-114-24

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Oh.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 114 26-114-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I wrote the words, “Slow down” just so that I would try to remember that. Thank you, Commissioner. So the Clerk of the Privy Council and Secretary to the Cabinet is the full title of the position. And I would say that that basically encompasses three roles. The Privy Council Office is the department of the Prime Minister. And so I serve as the Deputy Minister of the Privy Council Office, and the Deputy Minister, therefore, to the Prime Minister. I am the most Senior Public Service Advisor to the Prime Minister and to his Office. I’m responsible for the overall management of the Privy Council Office, and the discharge of all of our functions and responsibilities. And making sure that -- so that’s kind of the administration side, but I’m also the advisor on all matters that would before -- be before the Prime Minister for his consideration and decision. Second part of the role is the Secretary to the Cabinet. And in that respect, I’m responsible for helping to organize Cabinet meetings, make sure that the agendas are set, the attendance is set, the information is available for Ministers to deliberate on; that the meetings are supported with things like translation, all of the kind of staff support; that the decisions of the Cabinet are faithfully recorded and therefore comm -- and communicated out as necessary. And I’m responsible for overseeing the implementation, then, of those decisions. So anything to do with how Cabinet operates its decision-making structure, I am responsible for. Obviously working with the team in the Privy Council Office, both in the advisory function and the Secretary to the Cabinet function. And then, finally, in our system, the head of the -- the Clerk of the Privy Council has a third role, which is the Head of the Public Service. And I think if you look at the Institutional Summary for the Privy Council Office, we try to describe that in the Canadian’s version of the Westminster System, the Public Service is a professional, non-partisan Public Service. And I am responsible, as the Head of the Public Service, for, amongst other things, providing an annual report to the Prime Minister on the state of the Public Service. In this respect, I also provide advice to the Prime Minister on the appointment and performance of Deputy Ministers and other senior officials. And, basically, for making sure that the Public Service is ready to be able to serve the needs of the government and of the country, today, and also a stewardship role into the future. So those are kind of the three roles. And I would say the other thing that might be relevant as we get into this conversation is the Clerk of the Privy Council is one of a community of Deputy Ministers. I think in -- the expression would be primus inter pares, you have -- you are one amongst others, and I very much work with the community of Deputies, in order to be able to discharge those functions.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 115 26-115-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s it.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 117 26-117-01

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Okay.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 117 26-117-05

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Perfect. So let me start with that. So my first role is really to support the Clerk in her role. A little bit like what we call a two-in-the-box model. So on the day-to-day basis, ce que ça veut dire, c’est, entre autres, assurer un leadership au sein du ministère qui est le ministère du Conseil privé. Ensuite, assurer un leadership sur les dossiers qui sont horizontaux, donc dans le développement des politiques, par exemple, assurer une cohérence. Un des pouvoirs que j’ai, c’est celui de convoquer des sous-ministres pour discuter d’enjeux, donc c’est des choses que je fais régulièrement. Je suis souvent appelée aussi à faire de la gestion de crise, qu’on appelle, en anglais, le « issue management ». C’est justement dans ce cadre là que j’ai joué un rôle dans la gestion du convoi dont on va parler cet après-midi. Et j’assure aussi un leadership sur des dossiers horizontaux, par exemple, les dossiers à matière autochtones.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 117 26-117-09

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

C’est, you know, I’ll say very organic. So my mantra is, I go where the needs are in order to support the Clerk. You know, more instinctively I go where I have strength, competencies and capacities to support her in her main role, advising the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. So this is, you know, how we work. On a weekly basis, we will reassign, you know, where I should put my attention and efforts and what file I should keep under my radar.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 117 26-117-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Can I just add a little bit to that, if that’s all right?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 118 26-118-09

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So perhaps I’ll just add two things. I think one of the operating styles that Madam Drouin and I’ve tried to follow is that if I’m not there, Nathalie is briefed up enough to be able to handle or to be able to deal with any issue, and vice versa, so that we are not completely interchangeable, but there is leadership at any point in time, because people have holidays or whatever else to do. And secondly, I don’t think either one of us mentioned that we also have a number of Ministers within the Privy Council Office portfolio, and I might forget one here, but I’ll try not to. So the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs, who are supported by the PCO.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 118 26-118-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Minister LeBlanc. That’s right. The Government House Leader. That’s Minister Holland. The Quebec Lieutenant, which is an intergovernmental type of function. That’s Minister Rodriguez. The Minister of Emergency Preparedness. That’s Minister Blair. And I have no forgotten.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 118 26-118-26

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

And the DPM.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 119 26-119-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

And of course the Deputy Prime Minister, that’s right. In her role as the Deputy Prime Minister, she also gets support, of course, from the Department of Finance. But in her role as the DPM, we do provide her some support as well.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 119 26-119-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Sure. I think the term that Madam Drouin used of organic maybe applies here. There are many, many routes in terms of the flow of information and advice between myself and the team in the Privy Council Office and the Prime Minister’s office and the team that support him there. When it comes to the Prime Minister himself, it gets more structured. And I’ll come back to that in a moment. There would be daily conversations going on between PMO and PCO staff, whether it’s around information exchange, trying to think about how to manage an issue, surface a problem we’re trying to solve, exchange information. Any number of things in the course of a day would take place. In terms of the advice to the Prime Minister, when it comes to the exchange of information with the Prime Minister, in some cases you will see, I think even in evidence, of documents that have been submitted to the Commission that if it’s for the purposes of just sheer information, you would see a briefing note perhaps prepared by one of the Deputy Secretaries to the Cabinet. But if it contains advice, it contains a recommendation, if write to the Prime Minister for the purpose of decision, that would come through me. In some cases, some of those briefing notes may also go through Madam Drouin, and if I’m not around, Madam Drouin can sign off on briefing notes, decision notes for my -- over my signature.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 119 26-119-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I think that would be fair to say, yes. As well, we have a number of opportunities to provide oral information, oral briefings to the Prime Minister as well. I have a regular bilateral meeting with him every week, which is joined by the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister. That is Katie Telford. And sometimes other members of the Prime Minister’s staff will join us. And that’s a session where sometimes the Prime Minister has items, I might have items, the Prime Minister’s Office may have items. But what’s kind of our regular once a week touch base, traffic management, advisory, decision, kind of -- whatever is on the issue plate of the day. Every second week, the Deputy Prime Minister will be joining into that meeting as well. So that’s our regular structure. We may have issue-based meetings or briefings with the Prime Minister. We’ve done -- for a very long time, we were doing frequent, three times a week briefings of the Prime Minister and his office, sometimes with Ministers on the covid situation, for example. That might involve senior officials from other departments, Dr. Theresa Tam, the Chief Public Officer, officials from Public Health Agency and Health, and so on and so on. You get the picture. When there is a Cabinet meeting that the Prime Minister is involved in, we almost always have a pre-brief session with the Prime Minister where we’ll go over the agenda, the kind of show, who is going to say what, the key issues to be deliberated, so he has a focus on, in addition to the written briefing material we would have provided, kind of what are the key issues he's trying to adjudicate at the session, what are some of the perspectives he may want to be listening for, where is the area or the zone for a possible decision. And we would be doing that before a Cabinet meeting, for instance. And certainly, I think which will be relevant to the work of the Commission, before an Incident Response.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 120 26-120-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Right. So to cast your mind back, we were in January of 2022. We -- the country, like many other countries around the world, was dealing with the Omicron variant of covid. We actually had, I believe in mid- January, record levels of hospitalizations, even higher than previous peaks of the covid outbreak. And so the vast majority of the public service was working remotely, although there were some people, but dint of their function who had the need to come into the office to access secure materials or so on. But it was kind of -- the public health advice was to be working remote by default, and that’s where the bulk of the public service was. The same thing for, I think it’s fair to say, for the Prime Minister, Ministers, and political staff. So we were all working remotely. I remember this well because there was a Cabinet retreat that was held in the week of, I have a little calendar here to try to remind me of dates, the week of January the 24th. That would have been the first Cabinet retreat that had taken place since the Government was formed after the 2021 election. And I think everybody was hoping that that was going to be an opportunity for a face to face, and unfortunately it ended up being a virtual. We are very fortunate to have secure video communications so we can actually have Cabinet meetings held virtually, and so we were able to do that in the week. There was a lot of other issues that were before the Government. I think you would have heard from other witnesses as well that we were monitoring the potential for an emerging situation in Ukraine and trying to prepare for what possibly could happen at that point in time. And so as we came out of the -- came out -- the Cabinet retreat, I believe, was two or three days, and that’s when we started to hear the early signals that there might be a protest or a series of protests happening in Ottawa, and potentially other locations. Now, I should say that as of January the 15th, there was a change in the public health measures related to covid that affected truckers in the country, affected cross- border traffic, and that change was for truckers that were unvaccinated coming back into the country. They were -- they had been previously exempt and they were now going to be subject to public health measures. And so we were monitoring very closely both the implementation of that measure, as well as the talking to the trucking association and monitoring, because it was clear that at that point in time, despite the very serious record levels of covid we were facing, that Canadians were kind of getting a bit fed up at that point in time with the restrictions, and the measures, and what they were having to deal with. And so that was very much on our minds. We were getting ready for the return of the House of Commons. They had been on a Parliamentary break coming out of the holiday season and the House was due to resume on the 31st of January. And so as we went into what I think others have described as Weekend 1, the weekend starting Friday, the 28th of January, we were monitoring and waiting for the protest that we had understood was going to be arriving. And that’s kind of the context at the very beginning, if that’s helpful.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 122 26-122-06

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I’m happy to add to that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 124 26-124-11

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The first briefing I had with the Prime Minister was an oral briefing on the 30th of January. I think you’ve heard testimony from other Privy Council Office colleagues that there were PCO/PMO briefings that had been going on in week before that there had been daily Ministerial briefings going on starting, I think, on the Thursday before that. So on the Sunday, the 30th, there was a telephone call or oral briefing with the Prime Minister, including members of his staff, other members of the Privy Council Office to basically kind of give him a situation report. At that point in time, it was Sunday, I believe it was evening, and it was pretty clear that the protestors weren’t leaving. So we had a situation in Ottawa and our thoughts were turning immediately to the House return the next day and whether there was any issues we had to be thinking our way through in terms of the safe conduct of Parliamentarians actually accessing the Parliament buildings. As you may recall, Wellington Street was a bit of a challenging area. As the head of the Public Service and responsible for our department, I also had to think about what instructions we were giving to public servants, some of whom were still required to be going into the office about whether we were closing buildings or leaving those open. So that was really the first briefing with the Prime Minister, kind of a situation report, what was happening, giving him information. We were able to tell him that there had been Ministerial briefings, that there was lots of outreach going on by Deputy Ministers across we call it the Town, across Ottawa, across departments and agencies. And so that was -- and I wouldn’t say that we sought any decisions from him at that point in time other than to have a conversation about were we well connected, for example, were the right people talking to Parliamentary officials, to the Sergeant at Arms, the Parliamentary Protective Service. Were they connected up to the -- to law enforcement and security agencies to make sure that, you know, Parliament at the centre of our democracy could function well starting the next day.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 124 26-124-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Could I just take you back one moment?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 126 26-126-10

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

When you referred to other Deputy Minister colleagues, I know that yesterday as well you heard from colleagues from the Department of Finance. And so another big preoccupation as we were kind of starting up our work at the end of January was we were in the beginnings of budget preparation for budget 2022. So the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister, myself, the Deputy Minister of Finance and our teams, both their -- the political teams and the public service teams were thinking our way through what was going to be the economic strategy for the country at a time when, you know, we had hoped to be through the worst of the economic impacts of COVID and, frankly, we weren’t as a result of the fact that we were kind of facing another wave. So that was also kind of a contextual factor that I think might be helpful and relevant as we get later on into the discussion.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 126 26-126-14

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Starting on the 9th, yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 127 26-127-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I don’t know that I attended every DMOC. I attended some of them, so Deputy Minister Operational Committee, for the acronyms. I know you’ve been through them all now. You’re an expert, actually, I’ve heard. But I don’t think I was at all of them. I would have -- those were chaired by the National Security Intelligence Advisor. I would have been at some key ones or I thought I either needed to give direction or to hear, particularly at certain points in time, but I wasn’t involved in the day to day.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 127 26-127-18

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

My first DMOC was, like Mme Drouin’s, the 9th of February.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 128 26-128-01

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I would say that I was at the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Safety, Security and Emergencies, the SSE Committee, on the Sunday, the 6th. That’s the only one of the three meetings that you describe that I was at. So I was trying to get a sense -- that was at the end of weekend 2 -- trying to get a sense from Ministers and from my colleagues kind of what the situation was and what the sense was about how this was all going. I got a readout, a debrief, from the Cabinet Committee meeting on the 8th of February from my colleagues who were there, and it was certainly clear to me that the level of concern, anxiety and the situation itself was escalating. And so that was the reason I chose to go to the DMOC meeting on the 9th and to hear out my colleagues in terms of -- and to give direction at that point in time. And it was through the course of that day listening to them and other meetings that took place during that day I’m happy to tell you about if you’d like that I formed the view as we went into the 10th that it was time for me to provide the advice for the Prime Minister to decide to -- as to whether or not he wanted to convene an Incident Response Group meeting.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 128 26-128-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Of course.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 129 26-129-10

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I -- so I don’t know whether Mr. Duheme himself was at the DMOC meeting. I was not speaking to RCMP colleagues or a broad selection of colleagues working in the National Security and Intelligence Public Safety space on the 8th. That really started on the morning of the 9th for me after I heard the readout. So I think maybe the date, if I’m not wrong ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 130 26-130-09

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I think it might be the 9th.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 130 26-130-17

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I certainly was at a meeting at 9 o’clock in the morning -- sorry, 8 o’clock in the morning on the 9th, which was a DMOC, so it’s not unreasonable to think that the Commissioner of the RCMP -- either she was there and brought Mr. Duheme with her or he was attending for her. Either one of those two things is possible, so.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 130 26-130-20

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I never had a one-on-one call with Mr. Duheme, so ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 130 26-130-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

--- it would have been in the context of a broader meeting. It looks like, from what you have heard, that if PS is, in fact, the Public Safety, there was others there as well. Let’s talk about what the meeting was about. So having heard the readout from the SSE meeting on the 8th -- I should add as well there was a debate in the House of Commons on the 7th of February, if I’m not wrong, on the convoy situation. Parliamentarians, House of Commons, Member of Parliament can trigger a debate if they wish, and I gather the Speaker consented to that and so there was a debate. So there was rising levels of concern. That was obvious. And we heard this from the SSE Committee as well, and so I went to the DMOC meeting which was taking place at 8 o’clock in the morning on the 9th. And my purpose there was really to do a couple of things. I was there to make sure that I was hearing firsthand from Deputy Ministers and agency heads who have responsibilities in this area who had been meeting with the National Security Intelligence Advisor through the days previous to that on their assessment of the situation, and I wanted to provide my direction to them as the senior public servants, that in my view this was a very serious situation, that we had rising levels of questions from federal ministers, who were asking "How is this going to end? What can we do?" And so my commentary at the meeting, I think I was at two DMOCs on this day, as a matter of fact. Certainly at the first meeting at -- in the morning, my objective, my intention was to try to say to my Deputy Minister colleagues, "We have to leave no stone unturned. We have to make sure that we are looking at every power, duty, every authority we have, every resource we have to make we are bringing the full power of the Federal Government and its resources to try to help those who are frontline responsible to manage the situation." I'm not an expert in any of these domains. I would be conveying, like, "we've got to get on this, and we've got to use", like this -- I think you heard the expression this morning, you know, this is an "all hands on deck". I don't know why we use naval references, but all hands on deck situation. And I would've been saying all hands on deck. No idea too crazy. Let's look at absolutely everything. Let's look at every law we have, every resource we have. And including in that, what would it mean, you know, how does law enforcement actually -- well, like, how do the structures work? Who is responsible for what? You know, if it gets beyond the capability of one particular, you know, like a local police force, like the Ottawa Police Service or the RCMP acting in its local capacity, say in Coutts, you know, what happens then? Where does it go from there? Who takes over from that? How does that all work? How does the jurisdiction work? What are the responsibilities work? So this is not a -- my direction to the sense there was any direction was to let's get on this work. We need to get this work done. I think you heard a lot from Ms. Bogden this morning about then what she was doing the whole day long to try and collect up this information. But that would have been my intention. I didn't tell people what to do, I was asking -- we've got to get this work done.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 131 26-131-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I'm not sure I had reached the conclusion it was time for some federal action. It was certainly ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 133 26-133-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It was certainly the case - --

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 133 26-133-18

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It was time to consider -- to be ready to respond. I think the other thing is, and cast your mind back to, you know, the public environment at that point in time, this was all happening in Ottawa, a lot of it on Wellington Street. You were looking at the coverage in the media. You were seeing the Parliament buildings behind it. So there was a lot of questions being asked of federal ministers, "What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?" And so certainly, we had the sense coming out of the meeting on the 8th they were impatient to know what they could do, and that was my direction to the town at this meeting is go and figure this out. "What can we do? Be as creative as you can. Really think outside the box."

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 133 26-133-22

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So perhaps I can say in addition to that meeting with Deputy Ministers there was another meeting with deputies later in the day. I think if you -- you'll hear from the Prime Minister and ministers next week, but in addition to what the Public Service was doing, and outside of these official kind of Cabinet committee meetings and daily ministerial briefings, the Prime Minister was also speaking to his ministers, either one at a time or in small groups, in more informal conversations, getting his own direct kind of "What's happening? Brief me on this." talking to his own team. He'd been talking to mayors, he'd been talking to other stakeholders. And through the day on the 9th, as he was talking to his ministers, a number of which those interactions I was party to, I'm not always, but a number of those, certainly conversations with the Minister of Public Safety, Minister Mendocino and the Minister of Emergency Management, Preparedness Management, I can never remember, Minister Blair, you could feel that, you know, we were moving to a -- it felt to me like we were moving to a place that we had to be ready in case ministers and the Prime Minister actually wanted to look at what our options to be able to act. And so as the day turned over from nine to ten, I certainly formed the view that I believed it was time for the Prime Minister to convene the Incident Response Group. There was another informal call amongst Prime Minister and ministers that morning, and after that I gave my advice, and the Prime Minister accepted it and chose to have a meeting, an in-person meeting, which was unusual at the time because of course we were still working remotely, but given the stakes of what we were talking about and the nature of the situation we were dealing with, my advice was I thought it would be important to have an in-person meeting, and we did that at an offsite.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 134 26-134-22

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I guess I can try. Certainly what I saw, the parts that I will be part of ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 136 26-136-02

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

--- I was part of a Deputy Minister's meeting in the morning. I would have had various conversations, either individually or with -- in small groups with the Privy Council Office, officials, or other Deputy Ministers and senior officials through the course of the day. I may have spoken to, I can't remember exactly, the Prime Minister's Office. I certainly was part of a meeting that the Prime Minister had, as I said, with Ministers Mendicino and Blair, as well as other members of the PCO and the Prime Minister's Office, and I believe their staff. I don't know whether there were any other senior officials from outside of PCO in attendance. There was a second meeting of the Deputy Ministers Operational Committee on the 9th. When I came to work or got up for work on the 10th, I was -- one of the first things I had was a email from Ms. Bogden with their results of her overnight work, not a practice we like to encourage in the PCO, but very dedicated, and came up with, kind of pulled together everything that basically I had -- all the product of the work that I had tasked on the 9th. And we were in the morning of the 10th. There was another informal conversation, and then there was an IRG in the afternoon.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 136 26-136-05

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Well, maybe, and if you and the Clerk can talk about that thing. Also, the Prime Minister had a call with Premier Ford on the 9th.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 137 26-137-05

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I can't remember whether it was the 9th or the 10th. I -- I'm sorry.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 137 26-137-08

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I will defer to Madam Drouin's memory on this one.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 137 26-137-11

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So maybe you'd like to check that. And maybe just to go back to the take over conversation. I think the Clerk talked a little bit about the fact that, you know, a lot of images from, you know, the Parliament, but it was also an international bridge. It was also port of entries. It was also the federal vaccine mandate. So all the indicators were towards it is, you know, the Federal Government is owning the situation, and yet on the ground, RCMP, for example, didn't have jurisdiction on Wellington Street. We don't have jurisdiction on routes that brings you to the bridge. So it feels that we owned it publicly, but we didn't have jurisdiction to address the situation. So asking ourselves, "What can we do to have jurisdiction and really to support?" on top of, you know, supporting municipalities, supporting provinces, but that was also the type of questions we were asking ourselves.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 137 26-137-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

We knew that there had been a lot of conversations going on between our colleagues in other departments, at Transport, Public Safety, RCMP, CBSA with their provincial territorial counterparts, in some cases with local and municipal counterparts, there had been meetings going on with the City officials in Ottawa, all around to try and understand the situation. There was this "What could we do?" That was the -- I mean I think, as we were going into, now, the third weekend, we were really feeling kind of a crescendo escalation, although the situation changed from day to day and the sites changed from day to day.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 138 26-138-02

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Would it be helpful for me to just -- I don’t know whether you talked about what the Incident Response Group is with Ms. Bogden this morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 138 26-138-27

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Okay, I’m happy to do that. So the Incident Response Group is a committee of cabinet. It is usually chaired by the prime minister. Although it can happen without the prime minister, these ones did not. They were all chaired by the prime minister. They include a collection of ministers that are necessary to deal with either a national crisis, an emergency. That could happen in Canada; it could happen outside of Canada but affect either Canadian interests or Canadians. And so I think you did hear testimony this morning, perhaps, from Mr. Hutchinson that the IRGs have been used, for example, with wildfires in British Columbia, for dealing with Hurricane Fiona in Atlantic Canada. It was also used, subsequently, to deal with the illegal invasion of Ukraine by Russia and dealing with Canadian interests and Canadians as a result of that. So it could be a crisis that emerges domestically that affects Canada or a Canadian crisis. It is unlike other cabinet committees, and I think you did talk about this a bit this morning with Ms. Bogden. Cabinet -- the structure of cabinet is cabinet is the decision-making structure. Cabinet committees make recommendations which are ultimately ratified by cabinet. So it's kind of the -- the work gets divvied up amongst cabinet ministers. There’s -- because there’s a lot of decisions that get taken, kind of more thorough deliberation, and then they come to cabinet for final deliberation and decision-making. The Incident Response Group, the IRG, is unlike those other cabinet committees. Because it is about the management of a crisis or an emergency, it has decision-making powers with the prime ministers in the chair.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 139 26-139-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So that was such a ling explanation, now I’ve forgotten your question. I apologize.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 140 26-140-07

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Oh, the IRG can make decisions like, “Okay, we think we need to ask a minister to do something, to make a telephone call, to go on a visit.” They -- it could we need to make sure that these resources are actually being allocated to a particular situation. It could be tasking further work like going away and looking at whether there’s a regulatory authority that needs to be triggered. So it’s anything to do with federal jurisdiction, to use a good term, anything that’s in federal jurisdiction but an existing power, an authority, a resource that could be deployed either to help to resolve the situation or to deal with a Canadian in need.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 140 26-140-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The only ability to invoke the Emergencies Act -- the decision-maker there is the Governor in Council, so that’s the prime minister in cabinet with the approval of the governor general. And then, of course, there’s an approval process requiring a vote by parliament, and I’m sure we’ll get into that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 140 26-140-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

This reminds me of your question, actually. So what did we do ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 141 26-141-07

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

What did we do at the IRG on the 10th of February, I think?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 141 26-141-10

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The truth, yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 141 26-141-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I’ll start, perhaps, and then you can add if you want, Madam. So this goes back to the kind of -- Track 1/Track 2 goes back to the conclusions of the IRG meeting on the 10th of February where the prime minister heard from a variety of senior officials on what the situation, their kind of overview of the situation, the treat and risk assessment the NSIA, from agency heads; then he turned to his ministers for their view of the situation, who they’d been speaking to, what was happening, what they thought needed to be done. And coming out of the meeting on the 10th, in the way the conclusions of the meeting and the tasking coming out of that meeting was, there was two tracks of work to be done. Track 1 was everything that could be done within existing authorities, existing jurisdiction; although it may take new resources to do those things, what’s everything that we could do within the existing set of powers, duties, and functions under law? And then Track 2 was, are there new instruments that we might need; are there new legal authorities that we might need? So this looks to me like what we would have tabled -- I think this is true -- this is what we would have tables as a supporting document, an input to the deliberations of the IRG as the results of what had -- the work that had been done since the meeting on the 10th. And so it goes item by item and it describes, well, what was -- what were we doing under Item 1, and a bit more description of it; who was the lead on that, if any supporting departments; what the status of it was; if there were any documents. And if you go to number 3, you’ll see that there are some supporting documents and any other notes. So we were able to, on an ongoing basis, be in a position to provide ministers with an update on all the work that was underway across all the departments across both Track 1 and Track 2.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 141 26-141-21

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Was that good?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 142 26-142-28

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah, that’s perfect, maybe just one thing to add. And I think Jackie covered that a little bit this morning, but those options, or suggestions of work of area -- area of work, sorry, were at different stage of their analysis. You know, some were at the really early stage and then we found out that -- you know, for example, blocking the cell towers, do you see that elsewhere in the IRG? That was something that we look at, was just not feasible; we stopped that initiative. So we look at many things but here you don’t really see how in-depth is the analysis on each of one.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 143 26-143-01

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Exact.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 143 26-143-13

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It can be an idea or it can be something that is very fruitful.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 143 26-143-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah, and they’re all of different sizes. I mean “establish a clear leadership table”, that’s a relatively simple thing to do. And you see “daily DMOC schedule”. Some of the others are a lot more complex, complicated, and involve a lot more parties to do.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 143 26-143-18

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The tow-truck strategies. There’s a lot about tow trucks.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 143 26-143-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I would say that, again, context matters here. We were the 12th of February and as this track was being put together, we had a situation that was moving very quickly. There was a lot of inputs of information. We had very organized ways to get information through some of the agencies and a lot of that fed in through the National Security Intelligence Advisor, through organizations like the Integrated Terrorism Assessment Centre which operates as part of CSIS. What it felt to us at the time -- and I think, as the time went on, we both found out some things that told us we didn’t have a gap -- some people knew things, it’s just we didn’t have necessarily a way of sharing all the information. So I would say as you read here, the intelligence gap, and it goes on to specify open source, non-criminal, non-terrorist. So we thought we had -- we knew law enforcement was collecting up intelligence, wasn’t necessarily sharing it with us, nor necessarily should they have, because it was operational information. Terrorists, that would have been specific agencies that were collecting that. But it fell to us when it came to open source and that there were things happening, particularly in the offline space and through earned media that perhaps we didn’t really have a full 360-degree view on. And I would comment here that one of my observations is that on the public service side, we don’t tend to be as skilled and as literate -- I'm making a huge generalization here, but stick with me -- we don’t tend to be as skilled or as literate in the use of social media as the team that supports ministers and the prime minister on the political side. That’s very much kind of in their wheelhouse and we don’t tend to do as much of that. And so even going back before convoys and back to kind of through the election and afterwards, I was -- I would find myself on occasion hearing the prime minister's office staff, Ms. Telford and others, talking about things that they were seeing on social media that I just -- I wasn’t seeing and I wasn’t necessarily hearing or picking up. Those wouldn't have been the same places I would get information. They wouldn’t be the normal kind of inputs that I would receive. And so as we sat -- and this is one of the interesting things about the Incident Response Group -- unlike other Cabinet committees, ministers, the prime minister at the table, but senior officials are also at the table able to participate in the conversation. Normally in Cabinet or Cabinet committees, officials are there and we're called on to speak. We don’t kind of participate in the conversation. But given the situation we were faced with, everybody was kind of trying to workshop this together. What could we do? And it became clear in the conversation, which is why you see this in the tracker, that there were -- there was things happening in the open source, in the social media environment that we just didn’t have a very good handle on. And so that was one of the things, like, how could we close that gap? How could we figure that out better? And I think you see products later that we have attempted to actually try to figure this out.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 144 26-144-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yes. We were looking at standalone -- we were looking at authorities under other legislation, standalone legislation that could have been done in the financial area, I think, for example. You may have heard some of that yesterday from the Department of Finance, Mr. Sabia, and the Department of Finance colleagues, or the Emergency Act, which is really a legislation of last resort. So were there other things that could be done, other legislative steps that could have been taken? That’s -- but I'd say that we were trying to do this not so much inventing legislation but trying to understand the nature of the gaps and therefore, what would be the solutions to try to fill those gaps as opposed to kind of think up, you know, new legislative solutions on the spot.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 146 26-146-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah, exactly.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 147 26-147-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 147 26-147-16

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I can give you maybe another example that I'm sure you have seen in our documents that at some point, we were looking at the definition of "trade corridor"?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 147 26-147-17

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So that’s one of the things we were looking at. Do we have regulation powers somewhere where we can come and define what is a trading corridor, and then have jurisdiction in trying to do something? So those were the type of things we were looking at under this regulation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 147 26-147-22

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Exactly.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 148 26-148-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

In Windsor, you know, we had -- Bridges and Tunnels Act allowed us to actually control or have jurisdiction over the bridge, but the plaza, the roads going into it, well, that’s a bit more complex of a story. So was there a way to look at that piece of critical infrastructure and say, "Okay. This whole trade corridor, the roads leading into it, the plaza, is there a way for us to get jurisdiction over that so that we could manage?" It wasn’t just the blockade, as you recall the film footage on this is fabulous in a not very good way, but it shows you just -- like, it wasn’t just the bridge, right? There was 10 kilometres, sorry, of trucks backed way up. So the problem wasn’t just what was happening on the bridge, it was the entire trade corridor, and the Ambassador Bridge is a pretty important piece of our trade infrastructure.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 148 26-148-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 148 26-148-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So maybe we'll do this as a tag team because Madam Drouin was there in March of 2020 and I wasn’t, and then I could kind of pick it back up in February of 2022. Is that okay?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 149 26-149-12

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So go back to 2020 with COVID, and maybe we will come to that later. But we did some talk about the Emergency Act and whether or not the conditions were there to trigger the Emergency Act for health purposes and not for Public Order purposes, of course. And this is where I think -- and I was at Justice at that time -- we develop a little bit better understanding of the Act, an act that has never been used since its adoption in 1988. So we develop a little bit better understanding on how it operates, what is the oversight mechanisms, the House, the Joint Committee, this Inquiry, the consultation with the PT, so all the necessary steps to invoke. So this is where I think we develop a little bit more agility with the Act. But coming back to the convoy, from my perspective, the real first time where we start thinking about that was really after the DMOC of February 9 when, you know, as a group, we said we need to look at all potential options. And this is why we -- sorry, we start looking at what kind of tools the Emergency Act can give us, how we -- you know, meeting the thresholds of the Emergency Act. So I really think that for me, anyway, it's -- it was really on February 9 that we started to seriously look at whether or not it was an option.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 149 26-149-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I would certainly defer to ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 150 26-150-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Maybe both. I would defer to Madam Drouin on the early stages of the public health. That certainly, as it came to be February the 9th and we were looking at what could we do, the potential of the Emergency Act, which I'll underline had not been used since 1988 -- also contributed to when I thought about my advice to the prime minister, ministers were actually going to consider options put before them by officials, including the possibility of triggering the Emergency Act. That required an Incident Response Group. Now, you would -- I think you've been hearing in the testimony, you know, this is kind of a careful build up of all the deliberations, but when we were starting to talk about this as one of the potentials, I thought that the prime minister and ministers needed to be sitting in a structured Incident Response Group to understand, to be briefed on and to deliberate on that serious a matter.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 150 26-150-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Okay. So the chronology of the 13th. So there was a lot.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 151 26-151-10

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Keep in mind, it was a Sunday.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 151 26-151-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It was a Sunday. That’s right. Also Day 17, at the end of the third weekend. I think you’ve heard testimony from other colleagues and others about kind of what was going on in terms of the protests, what was happening at -- we had all been, when we weren’t working and on calls, we’d been watching the law enforcement action that had been taking place in Windsor for example. We were watching what was happening on our television screens. But there were calls and meetings that took place that day, which are the focus, I believe, of your question. I don’t recall myself participating in a DMOC that day. I may have. I just can’t remember, to be honest with you. My focus was really on getting ready for the IRG meeting at that point, just given the escalation that had taken place, the fact that we were in -- we were at -- we were coming to the end of the third weekend. I think the IRG was in the afternoon on the 13th, if I recall correctly. So we were getting ready for that, making sure the materials were ready and so on, collecting up all of the latest inputs. We were at the end of the third weekend. Ottawa was still a significant site of what I think was generally considered at that point to be an illegal protest. There -- make no mistake, there were people who were there for a lawful protest, but at that point, the totality of the situation in Ottawa was an illegal protest, an illegal blockade. And what was going on in Windsor. And we saw the size of the effort that was required to bring Windsor under control and the duration of the effort. That took days to de-escalate and to eliminate -- to get to a point where that situation was settled and the port of entry was able to open, but we didn’t know how long it was going to be sustained. So all to say, it was a series set of circumstances. Other ports of entry were kind of on and off. The situation was quite volatile. So at any point in time, there were lots of different inputs. We went into the Incident Response Group in the afternoon of the 13th of February and through conversations that we had had internally, my -- the proposed agenda for the IRG was a bit different than it was on the 10th or the 12th. And if you look carefully at it, you’ll see that we have switched the order of items. The first item is not what you would normally expect as a situational overview and update. Ministers and the Prime Minister had been meeting on the 12th, they’d been meeting on the 10th, they’d been getting this constant feed of information. So the advice of the Prime Minister was to turn, at that point, immediately to -- given we were at the end of the third weekend, we still had a very challenging and I believe the conclusions we had were a dangerous situation, a complex, volatile situation. What were the options. What were the decisions available to Ministers? And then after a long series of deliberations, then there was, is there anything new to add? And so an upside-down flip of the traditional agenda. And the conclusion coming out of that Incident Response Group was the Prime Minister was convening the Cabinet on the evening of the 13th of February, a virtual Cabinet call, luckily we had that secure video capacity to do that, to consult with his Cabinet on the overall response. And at that point, I think I’m allowed to say, of course, including the invocation of the Emergency Act as one of the decisions, the potential decisions to be considered by Cabinet.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 151 26-151-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 153 26-153-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 154 26-154-01

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Can you tell me who has written this or who is supposedly speaking at this? Like, what’s at the top of that?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 154 26-154-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Ten (10:00) o’clock meeting.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 155 26-155-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

From? Chief Sloly or from?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 155 26-155-09

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So OPS. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 155 26-155-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So OPS meeting with the OPP Commissioner and the RCMP Commissioner?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 155 26-155-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s what it looks like. Okay. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 155 26-155-17

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I wasn’t at this meeting. I don’t know how accurate ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 156 26-156-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

--- these notes are. And I will tell you for a fact that one of the things that’s written here is not accurate, because at 10:00 o’clock in the morning on the 14th, no decision had been taken about enacting the Emergency Measures Act, which is not the name of the legislation anyways. So with that out of the way, what happened at the IRG and the Cabinet meeting in terms of the materials, the inputs to the deliberations before the Prime Minister and the Cabinet, I think is the essence of your question. And so I would differentiate between how IRGs work and Cabinet. I think I said this a bit earlier. An IRG meeting, it’s really kind of everybody around the table trying to provide a contribution with the Prime Minister in the chair kind of deciding who gets to speak what and running the meeting, as you would expect. And so that’s a bit more of an opportunity for senior officials, including the RCMP Commissioner, to contribute. Whereas Cabinet is a different kind of a meeting. It’s a more structured formal meeting. The Prime Minister runs it. It’s tradition that Ministers speak and officials only speak if they’re called on by the Prime Minister. So a couple of things about this. Commissioner Lucki was a participant in the IRG and she was an attendee, I would say, at Cabinet. She was a participant, as I was a participant, at the IRG. And then an attendee and a secretary at the Cabinet meeting. I think it’s fair to say on the evening of the 13th when these two meetings took place that we had been hearing various versions of the evolution of a plan for the situation in Ottawa, as we had been hearing about law -- at a very high level, not at a detailed tactical or operational level, about the planning around what to do about Coutts, what to do about the situation at Emerson, what to do about the situation at Windsor. And so we’d been hearing about the evolution of the Ottawa plan. We’d been hearing about the conversation around the setting up of an Integrated Command Centre, so that RCMP and OPP resources, along with OPS resources, could be organized and share information and so on. But we’d heard a lot -- we’d heard often about a plan. What we hadn’t seen at the end of the third weekend was anything happening on the plan. And so the plan, which there had been various conversations about the Ottawa plan, there was no -- to the best of my recollection, the Commissioner or did not speak in detail at the IRG about the operational plan, but there were conversations about the fact that police were working together to have a plan, to resolve the situation in Ottawa, as you would expect them to. We had a horrific situation in Ottawa going on. You would expect that law enforcement at all levels were trying to figure out what to do about it. When it came to Cabinet, as I said, it's a different structure. The National Security and Intelligence Advisor provided an integrated brief to the Cabinet, which takes as inputs information that is provided through the colleagues who would be represented, for example, on the DMOC. And that would include the information that would have been fed in by the RCMP, by Transport, by CBSA, by CSIS, by PCO, by Global Affairs across -- again, and then the National Security Intelligence Advisor would provide that integrated view. The RCMP Commissioner, as any agency had a Deputy Minister, as a Minister who's also a member of the Cabinet, and we have obligations as Deputies to make sure when our Ministers are going to a Cabinet meeting, they're briefed, and they have our perspectives. And so my expectation would have been she would have also been briefing her Minister, Minister Mendocino, if she had things that she thought were relevant to the conversation. And so there was no explicit conversation either at the IRG, to the best of my memory, in detail about the plan but there had been many conversations leading up to that, as well as at the Cabinet meeting would have been the integrated view from the National Security Advisor, which has been the practice, I would say, without getting beyond the Cabinet confidence waiver that you have from the Prime Minister. It's fair to say that that has been the practice on other issues on which the Cabinet has been confronted. Situation in Ukraine, for example, the NSIA, the National Security Intelligence Advisor provides an integrated brief to the Cabinet pulling together all the information, so part of it's time management and one integrated brief. I guess the last thing I would say is that Commissioner Lucki, as the head of the RCMP, I recognized as the Clerk of the Privy Council that as the person who was in charge of the RCMP, there might be times when the RCMP Commissioner may have information that she did not want to provide in front of a large room of people, whether that's Ministers or officials, for whatever reason. There's sensitive information. And so I think it's part of my responsibility to make sure the RCMP Commissioner knows that if there's anything that she thinks that I need to know, that she has an open door to me. And also, that if she thought the Prime Minister needed information, that I would facilitate that. And I don't know whether there -- you know, I don't think there's any case in which the RCMP Commissioner has reached out to me to provide information that I have not had a chance to have that engagement with her. So we'll come to the conversation about what would have changed, if anything, if we'd known about it, in my view, just to give you the kind of the Cole's notes version of where we're going, it was one factor, one site, one moment in a complex situation.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 156 26-156-06

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I'm not sure I would say earth shattering, but that there had been evolutions of the plan with law enforcement with OPP and the RCMP working together with the OPS, but I didn't have a detailed level of -- Cabinet was not provided with any detailed level of knowledge about the contents of that plan, how it was going to work, when it was going to work.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 159 26-159-28

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Or how, or what the plan exactly was.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 160 26-160-09

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Seven ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 160 26-160-18

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Can you back up for just one moment, please?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 160 26-160-26

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Sorry, just to remember -- I want to remember something. Okay. Thank you.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 161 26-161-01

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Friday.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 161 26-161-17

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 161 26-161-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I think in the conversation around the management of the situation including the invocation of the Emergency Act, it's fair to say that Cabinet was briefed that there were tools and authorities in many organizations that had not been fully deployed, including in the RCMP. Think about the situation facing law enforcement on this third weekend. You know, they'd just been through the situation in the RCMP, along with OPP and Windsor Police Service, managing a significant situation in Windsor. They had this very difficult situation in front of them in Ottawa. RCMP was managing Coutts. There was a lot on the plate of law enforcement. It's a very difficult job at the best of times and these were not the best of times and very difficult conditions. And so that our police said that there were existing authorities -- we knew that there were existing authorities that hadn't been fully used. There were trucks parked on Wellington Street. You don't get to park on Wellington Street. So there were authorities that had not been fully deployed. There -- from municipal all the way through to Criminal Code, as the Commissioner indicates here. You would expect that the police were continuing to look at every available tool that they had to be able to deal with the situation. And so I can tell you that, to the best of my memory and my recollection, Cabinet were informed that, yes, there were tools and authorities. Track 1, go back to the tracker, there were Track 1 that hadn't been fully deployed, but the question was whether or not they were going to be adequate to be able to deal with the totality of the situation. That I think was the matter before Ministers.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 162 26-162-01

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Can I add something on this? As the Clerk said, yes, some tools were used unsuccessfully, unfortunately. Some haven't been tried, but the situation was still there. At the same time, I think it's, in a way, reassuring that a Commissioner, head of the biggest law enforcement agency is still wanting, you know, to use the tools, you still have confidence in her teams to do something. Can you imagine if we have waited for the Commissioner to say, "I'm overwhelmed. It's over. I can't do that." So we wouldn't have been in a situation of threat. We would have been in a situation where the threat would have materialized.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 163 26-163-02

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That is correct. A decision was for the Prime Minister to convene a First Minister's Meetings to consult the provinces and territories on the situation to brief them and to discuss with them the possible invocation of the Emergency Act.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 163 26-163-18

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Let me make sure I've got this straight, how I explain this. Cabinet was aware that CSIS had not assessed a threat to the security of Canada necessary to trigger their authorities under the CSIS Act. To the best of my knowledge to this day thee was no CSIS investigation of the protest, which is what section 2 of the CSIS Act is about. It is about triggering CSIS to use their authorities. They see a threat to national security by a person or a group that would cause them to seek a mandate to actually launch intelligence gathering activities.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 164 26-164-04

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That was not the case.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 164 26-164-15

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The CSIS assessment and theat legal assessment was before Cabinet.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 164 26-164-20

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

And then maybe just to add, the CSIS assessment in order to trigger powers under the CSIS Act -- so their assessment for the purpose of CSIS Act, not their assessment for the purpose of the Emergency Act.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 164 26-164-23

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I can tell you absolutely that that was put before Cabinet.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 165 26-165-10

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

And that was discussed. In all of these matters it was a balance, you know? When was the right time to act? What was the right thing to do? Was it too early? Was it too late? Was it too little? Was it too much? And so one of the things that Cabinet had to debate was amongst all of the actions to be taken, what was the possibility that there was going to be a reaction on the part of those who were engaged in the protest activity who were not there for legal purposes, who were not there for peaceful protests, who had other motives? So Cabinet very much had to be briefed and they were briefed by, and they had access to the information from CSIS from us.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 165 26-165-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I believe there may have been other conversations that happened that night between the Prime Minister and his Parliamentary caucus, but we, the public service is not part of that. So there we go. Sometime between the evening of the 6th and the morning of the 7th my colleagues in the Intergovernmental Affairs team and the Privy Council Office which is led by Deputy Minister Michael Vandergrift would have sent a message out to the offices of provincial and territorial leaders that the Prime Minister was convening a teleconference of provincial and territorial leaders. I think it was taking place at 10 o'clock in the morning which is a little bit early if you're in British Columbia, I suspect. But the objective was -- I’m not even sure that the subject matter was communicated. I think it was an FPT conference call. I don’t actually remember whether that happened late in the night of the 13th or whether that happened in the morning of the 14th, but sometime between those things. As well, I have come to understand as a result of reading the institutional report of the Prime Minister’s Office, there was other conversations going on between the Prime Minister’s Office and the office of other premiers across the country. So it could have been, but they got a heads up earlier. I don’t know the answer to that. But the official communication around convening this call happened sometime between when Cabinet concluded on the 13th, and 10 o'clock the next morning. I don’t think it was a lot of notice, that’s fair to say.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 166 26-166-03

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 167 26-167-06

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That was not mentioned ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 167 26-167-10

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

--- in the invite.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 167 26-167-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It’s fair to say there had been a lot of FPT leaders’ meetings, First Ministers meetings, going on through COVID, unprecedented. I would argue a number of FMM meetings had been going on since the beginning of COVID. But this was not of the same ilk.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 167 26-167-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Perhaps.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 167 26-167-21

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So to my knowledge, no. Have to take that with Deputy Minister Michael Vandergrift. And to our knowledge, no. What I can add though is if you look at that Sunday, Mr. Blair did a lot of media relations where he said everything was upon the table including the Emergency Act. So the reality is that provinces, when we started the conversation on the 14th, they were not surprised that the conversation was about a consultation under the Emergency Act.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 168 26-168-02

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I believe it was 10 o’clock in the morning.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 168 26-168-13

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Okay. Another action- packed day. So my notes remind me that there was the First Ministers meeting. There was an Incident Response Group meeting, again on the 14th. The Privy Council Office was busy working, following the First Ministers meeting to pull together a decision note for the Prime Minister in terms of whether or not to actually proceed to invoke the Emergency Act. That all culminated in the mid-afternoon sometime after three o’clock, so collecting up inputs to be able to pull that together. And then the Prime Minister and I believe other ministers together made a public announcement that they were proceeding to invoke the Emergency Act. Meanwhile, kind of in the situation that was still evolving, that morning we had seen the RCMP taking action in Coutts, Alberta, the port of entry at the southern of Alberta. Coutts has never been so famous. We had been advised by the Commissioner of the RCMP at IRG meetings previous to that that without getting into detail, there was reason to believe that there were weapons at Coutts. But when -- after the First Ministers meeting and before the invocation, my decision note to the Prime Minister were finalized. Actually, it might have been even before the IRG, before the FMM. We were seeing the results of the law enforcement activity and what was happening at Coutts and we were seeing the size of the stash of firearms and ammunition that were found in Coutts amongst the protesters. So this was new and I would say relevant information in terms of just the nature of the threat that we were worried about in terms of the risk for serious violence. So FMM, IRG, the invocation decision, I signed the notes to the prime minister representing the culmination of the advice to the prime minister. That was communicated to him. He responded to me and indicated that he was approving the invocation and the news conference was held. The prime minister made that announcement publicly and, at the same time, kind of behind the scenes, I think it’s fair to say, you would have seen kind of gears shifting. The public service was trying to be ready without getting ahead of the prime minister, the cabinet, or the Governor in Council because if we were going to -- if the Governor in Council was going to choose to invoke the Emergencies Act, there was need to be able to move quickly. So we were moving from -- like, this is a matter of days. The 10th and the 12th, we were still in Track 1/Track 2 option, this option that, “Could we find tow-truck driver in the public service?” to, you know, the evening of the 13th, “We might be invoking the -- the Governor in Council might be invoking the Emergencies Act. Who’s going to do what? What’s it going to mean?” And so we were starting to shift those gears while not, as I said, getting ahead of the Governor in Council, so that if the decision was taken, all of the organizations would understand, okay, what would it mean for them? And I think if you -- as an example, if you look in the notes that we saw from Commission Lucki earlier, you’ll see that she was feeding into, “Okay, if the Emergencies Act is invoked, here are some of the things that could be done as a result of that.” So the public service behind the scenes -- the agencies, the departments -- were trying to be ready in the event that it was invoked because we knew we wanted to be able to move quickly. This was a crisis. This was an urgent situation -- to be able to use whatever powers and authorities were going to be given through the Act and the orders pursuant to the invocation of the Act because we knew were in a -- it was urgent. We had time-limited, targeted powers here; how do you move very quickly? And so that was kind of going on behind the scenes. So as the prime minister then made the public announcement, I would say the public service shifted to, “Okay, so now we’re in the business of invoking the Act and here’s what we have to do to make that happen.” At the same time, we talked about -- a little bit about the FMM. I suspect you may want to come back to that; I don’t know. But officials continued to talk to their provincial and territorial counterparts including the Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs with his colleagues. Madam Drouin, I think participated in some of those calls. It was happening by what I would describe as “sector deputies” kind of talking to their counterparts, “Here’s what this is going to mean. Here’s what” -- and to maintain that kind of open back-and-forth communication as the invocation was being announced and we were moving into kind of that new phase of -- with the Emergency Act.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 168 26-168-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 171 26-171-21

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It’s quite possible.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 171 26-171-23

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Or miswriting down on my little calendar here. It may be that there’s no 14th and we may have gone from 13th pre-cabinet to the 15th because the 14th was decision day. That’s quite possible.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 171 26-171-25

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Sorry.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-02

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct, yes.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-05

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

A regular cabinet.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-07

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

A regular cabinet.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-08

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

M’hm.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Sorry, I advise, the prime minister decides, and then the Act is invoked.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-21

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I’m kind of fussy about that stuff, so.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 172 26-172-25

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I signed this memo some time, as I said, after three o’clock in the afternoon of the 14th. I remember that because we had been -- there was some -- there was some importance to try and get this moving. Once it looked like that’s the direction things were going to be moving in, we wanted to be able to move quickly. And the prime minister -- he will tell you his own story about this -- he was eager to make the decision and to move forward. So we were -- were moving on. We were trying to move quickly. The actual memorandum, which goes to many pages and has tabs associated with it, was being worked on and pieces were being pulled together even as we came out of cabinet the night of the 13th and through the day on the 14th, and pieces being added to it. The -- kind of the conclusions of the FMM, for example, there’s a paragraph in this decision note. This is the kind of decision note we would send to the prime minister -- I would send to the prime minister kind of capturing all that we thought was necessary, pulling it all together in one spot, the culmination, as I would describe it, of the public service advice to the prime minister on the decision as to whether or not to invoke this legislation. And so just around -- some time after three o’clock in the afternoon -- I think there’s a timestamp somewhere about when my office would have sent it to the prime minister. And then we got a sign, which is how the prime minister indicates his decision. We got a -- an initialed copy back with an “okay” and, following that, the press conference started.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 173 26-173-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

There we go.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 174 26-174-05

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Minus ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 174 26-174-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So 3:41.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 174 26-174-17

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So Jeremy Adler was my chief of staff. The address is ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 174 26-174-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

--- PCO-PMO. So Jeremy, as part of his role at the time, was responsible for, when a decision note finalized, he would transmit that to the Prime Minister’s Office and then the -- kind of the catcher’s mitt on the other side is a combination of officials in the Prime Minister’s Office, including his -- I see there his -- the head of his executive office, somebody from the policy team, two members of the office of the chief of staff, and the head of the policy team.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 174 26-174-22

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah, it’s from my ---

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 175 26-175-05

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 175 26-175-08

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 175 26-175-10

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

We were operating virtually at this time. Today, it would be a paper version of that note which I would physically sign, and them my chief of staff would transmit that.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 175 26-175-14

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

We call that “the decision box”, so.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 176 26-176-03

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

That’s correct. A kind of totality.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 177 26-177-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I am not a lawyer.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 177 26-177-25

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I will give you my laymen’s interpretation. But Wellington Street is a main thoroughfare. It happens to be right outside my office. Large trucks being parked on Wellington Street over protracted periods of time, I think, you know, Ottawa’s a -- I think it’s been described as a protest city. Protests happen in Ottawa. It is the seat of government. People come to Ottawa if they want to lawfully protest. And so I think there was -- you know, there was - - we don’t manage those kinds of regular protests, lawful protests. Those are local authorities that do that. By the time we had gotten to Sunday night and it was very clear, the RCMP gave us advice at that point in time that the best of her information, at a minimum, the protestors weren’t going anywhere that week, although numbers did go up and down a little bit. Even if you could kind of ignore the fact that there were, from the minute those trucks parked in the middle of Wellington Street, let’s say they were allowed to do that, let’s say that they were sent there, or allowed to park there, there’s a point at which the protracted existence or parking of those trucks and the activities going on in those trucks represented illegal activity. And I think as we got to the end of the first weekend, a reasonable person would say that we had entered -- we had gone beyond a legal protest and we were into an illegal protest, which isn’t to say that everybody involved was involved in an illegal activity. There was illegal activity, including things like by-law violations. There may still well have been people who were there to peacefully protest. But there was a level of illegal activity going on in Ottawa, I would say, laymen’s view, at a minimum, some would say from the get go, but I would say at th end of the first weekend it's reasonable. My assessment would have been it had become an illegal protest, an occupation almost. That’s what it felt like and was being described by the citizens of Ottawa.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 177 26-177-27

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Right.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 179 26-179-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I think you’ve heard others in the Privy Council Office describe us as kind of the place that brings all of the information together, and I think you will have -- there was a discussion yesterday with the National Security Intelligence Advisor about, “I need information for Janice.” So this memo was being pulled together for me to give my final advice to the Prime Minister about the decision to invoke the Act, and there were inputs coming over -- coming from all different parts of PCO reaching out to their networks. And so when we got to this point, it would have been, I think, reasonable to expect that we would have been able to include, as part of the package going to the Prime Minister, here’s a threat and risk assessment that was not able to be -- that was not ready by the time that this memo was being sent. And so the line: “A more detailed threat assessment is being provided under separate cover.” We have looked to see whether or not -- we’ve done -- gone back and search all our records, was this provided under separate cover, did it follow? We’ve not been able to find that. To the best of my knowledge, there was no written detailed threat assessment provided under separate cover. I can tell you that at every IRG meeting that followed, including starting the 15th of February, threat assessments were being provided to the Prime Minister and Ministers as regular part of the IRG proceedings. So there’s no missing note, to the best of my knowledge.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 179 26-179-19

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

I think we hoped for it, but it was not -- to the best of my knowledge, the best of our records, we don’t have a detailed threat assessment written that was provided to the Prime Minister under separate cover.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 180 26-180-23

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Maybe just to add on this, and you saw Jody Thomas’ request on the 14th regarding that. The idea was not to have a new threat assessment.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 180 26-180-28

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

The idea was really to collect, in an integrative way, everything we have heard, whether it’s from GAC, whether it’s from Transport, CBSA, all those departments that reported what they were seeing on the ground. But the idea was, instead of having a lot of different inputs, and often verbally, to have -- to try to have something in written. So that was really the purpose. Not to develop a new assessment.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 181 26-181-04

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Exactly.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 181 26-181-16

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

So I guess there’s two parts, I would say, to this. First is there was an assurance of confidentiality in the conversation that happened at the First Ministers Meeting. A number of Provincial Premiers and/or political leaders made public statements afterwards as to their position. So to be honest with you, I can’t remember who was public and who was not. So I’m just -- I don’t want to go too too far in terms of saying who said what around the table. It’s fair to say the Premier of Ontario was public. Other premiers were public in terms of their opposition. That’s pretty clear. But I just -- Newfoundland and Labrador, British Columbia, I think I know the answer to that, I just don’t want to betray any confidences. Maybe Madam Drouin?

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 182 26-182-21

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah, I mean it is in the consultation report.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 183 26-183-09

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 183 26-183-11

Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

But I put the provinces and territories in three baskets. So you have the supporters, strongly or maybe, lukewarm, and that’s Newfoundland, that’s Ontario, and that’s B.C. And then you have provinces that, especially the ones from the Maritimes, who have expressed, you know, concerns. And the same concerns as we’ve heard from some of our intelligence agencies, that there is a risk that invoking the Emergency Act can inflamate [sic] the situation. And then you have provinces that were very against. And those are the prairies and Quebec.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 183 26-183-12

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

Yeah. I think hindsight is 20/20. The prime minister had been leading the First Minister's conversation that morning. I had been participating and others had been participating, and I may not have spent enough time focused on these words myself to make sure they were perfect. There was a lot going on in a short period of time. We were working virtually, and so this is on me if it's not sufficiently clear.

Volume 26 (November 18, 2022), page 184 26-184-07

Janice Charette, Clerk of the Privy Council (GC-PCO)

It's true though, the premier of Ontario, when we think about it through the lens of sheer numbers, probably the biggest impact was the combination of what was happening in Windsor and Ottawa, Blue Water, Sarnia, all those ports of entry, slow rolls in and around Pearson, Risk the Rail. Like, that was a very big hotspot. It is also fair to say that Newfoundland and Labrador probably didn’t feel the same way. You're absolutely correct.