Katie Telford
Katie Telford spoke 175 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
A religious document.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Bible.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Katherine Telford, K-a-t- h-e-r-i-n-e, Telford, T-e-l-f-o-r-d.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The Prime Minister's Office, we serve at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, which is different than our public service colleagues in the sense that job security is a little different. We work between elections as well, and many of us, though not all of us, do take leaves during election campaigns to work on election campaigns. But in-between elections and working in government, our role is to facilitate information to the Prime Minister, to facilitate his ability to make the best decisions he can to advance the agenda that he was elected on by Canadians. So that includes everything from very operational work. So we have teams of tour advance people, as we call them. We have regional desks who coordinate with stakeholders, including different levels of government in different parts of the country. I'm sure my colleagues can speak to -- John is our Director of Policy and can speak to the Policy Team. Brian Clow is one of two Deputy Chiefs of Staff in the Prime Minister's Office, the other Deputy Chief of Staff is Marjorie Michel. And the other Chief of Staff, since she is not here, is primarily responsible for a lot of the operational elements of the office ranging from human resources because we are an office of roughly a hundred, and -- so the human resources side. The public appointments as well, there's hundreds and thousands of public appointments that go through government, and so we act as a coordinating body in many ways on the political side between ministers' offices as well. And -- but our primary job is getting the Prime Minister the information that he needs, getting him the best advice from all parts of government, but also from outside of government that he needs to be able to accomplish what he committed to Canadians he would do if he were elected.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So I view my role in two ways: There's the day-to-day management role. So I manage the Prime Minister's Office, and I have an extraordinary group of people who work day and night, particularly during this time period they did. And -- so it's all the sort of operational scheduling and day-to-day management you can imagine of running an office of that size, as well as coordinating between other ministers' offices as well. So we have a weekly Chief of Staff meeting that involves the Chiefs of Staff from all of the ministers' offices across government as a way of touching base and sharing information, sometimes best practices. And then the other hat I wear at the same time is being a senior advisor to the Prime Minister, and in terms of bringing him the best advice I can from everywhere I can, but also facilitating people being able to get in front of him and provide him with all the advice and the inputs that he needs to make the best decisions he can for Canadians.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I would just add that, and I'm sure you heard this from the Clerk, who is -- who I have primarily the most contact with is with the Clerk and the National Security and Intelligence Advisor, and to only a slightly lesser degree, the Deputy Clerk. And they're also the ones who have the most contact with the Prime Minister. And so the Clerk meets with the Prime Minister on a very regular basis, often meets with the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister together, and I will attend the majority of those meetings as well. And there is -- and then she and I will talk regularly in between those meetings as well in terms of planning out, you know, what needs to get covered and what's going on, and prioritising who else we might need in those meetings. And so as John said, it's a very regular flow of information back and forth. But -- and that's true for the entire Prime Minister's Office. Everybody has counterparts of one kind or another on the public service side, and the flow of information is significant, though we do have clearly different roles in terms of what our responsibilities are to the Prime Minister, and of course, as I said earlier, how we're employed.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I believe she had just become leader that day.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So I think this was a continuation of what John was just talking about. This was obviously a further attempt at a meeting with the three levels of government, and Ontario was continuing to decline. I don’t recall when he says, "We'll say it," where that meant, but in putting myself back in that time, I think when I'm saying we should shine a light on it, it's bringing some attention to the fact that Ontario wasn’t at the table and we really did believe it would be a more efficient and effective way to work.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
There was definitely some frustration because we believed it could be easier than it was, all things being very relative at that time. But there was ongoing communication with Ontario bilaterally throughout. It just meant that the conversations were happening between Ottawa and the federal government, the federal government and Ontario, Ontario and -- so there were just numerous bilateral conversations that we just thought could have been better handled and more efficient if we could have all just come together, because as I know has come up throughout the Inquiry, there was a fair bit of confusion around numbers and requests and the RFAs, the way they worked, the requests for assistance. They do need to go through the provincial level of government and so not having them as part of the conversation made things that bit more complicated.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Just -- and you may want to add to this, but we are usually made aware of requests for assistance, wherever they’re going in government. And in this case, we were obviously following everything to do with the blockades and the occupation very, very closely. And in this case, because the feedback from departments was coming that there wasn’t a way to help, and our -- what we were trying to do was support anybody who needed assistance on the ground. And so if Alberta was asking for help, we wanted to be able to support them. So it just led to a lot of conversations. It kind of comes to the role that our office often plays, of coordination and facilitation, because we then started reaching out and asking questions of other departments, saying, “Does anyone else have the equipment that they might be looking for? It may not be appropriate for CAF, and they may not have the equipment but is there that equipment somewhere else that could be found?” So I think as it says in the interview summary, you know, we even went so far as to say, “Does Parks Canada have this kind of thing?” Because the goal was to be able to assist if we could.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Not during the occupation or when the blockades were on. For months afterwards I can say, including up until recent summits though, this is a topic that continues to come up with counterparts from various countries. And the Prime Minister also had calls during the occupation with other world leaders where this was a topic that was coming up because they were watching what was happening in Canada and concerned that they were starting to see the same thing in some of their countries and they were concerned about copycat situations. So this has been an ongoing conversation with international leaders.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think as the Clerk may have spoken to already, and I think as these notes show too, the meetings were becoming increasingly frequent with added Ministers and different departments getting involved because of the request for assistance amongst a growing number of blockades now, as well as protests in different parts of the country and the occupation of course is now heavily entrenched in Ottawa. And so as we were having these meetings, the Clerk, I believe, advised the Prime Minister, though it made good sense to the group of us at the time as well that it was time to formalize our structure, moving forward and that we were at a point of national crisis and that’s what the Incident Response Group was put together for. It was a group that was -- it was a Cabinet committee that was created, I believe, in the first mandate of the government midway through, and it is chaired by the prime minister. It does not have a set permanent membership. It is convened with the ministers appropriate to whatever the incident is that is being discussed. And the thing that makes it very different from other Cabinet committees is where in another Cabinet committee it tends to be policy focused and over a longer term, this is obviously dealing with something in real time and something that’s crisis-like in nature. But the structural difference too is that officials lead in many ways the conversations within the IRG meetings space, and they are right at the table. So whereas at a Cabinet committee the ministers would be sitting around the Cabinet table and the officials might be sitting to the side, they may very well be making presentations and then the minsters would be discussing those presentations or they might speak to make clarification when their ministers call on them for that clarification. At an IRG meeting, the principal presenters are officials and so whether it's the NSIA, whether it's the commissioner of the RCMP, whether it was the head of CSIS, depending on the incident, in past, it might be the CAF and the chief of defence staff. And then the ministers are called on by the prime minister to add anything that they might see as not having been covered, to any thoughts they have on the basis of the information that’s been presented, but they are all sitting around the same table which makes it quite a different meeting than really any other.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think for a number of reasons. It's their expertise and getting it in real time to the prime minister and to the ministers. And things are moving very quickly. And it's -- so it's an efficiency and an effective kind of tool to bring everybody to that same table and convene the leadership of the different security agencies for whatever the security incident is and to hear from people directly.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
As do all of the other ministers because they then get to hear from -- directly from the heads of the different agencies or law enforcement heads.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Now that I see it.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Look, I think over the course of like, from the beginning of the occupation, when it became an occupation, there were numerous people who were trying to suggest anything they could to try to find a way to assist, and I think that’s what Anne was doing here. And I've received -- and I believe it's part of the documents as well that you've received -- I received suggestions from numerous other people as well. MPs were raising names with us. There were suggested names of MPs from other parties who were coming forward wondering if they could help. There was a lot of people that were trying to find a way to figure out if an engagement could work, and no one was able to take it past that first thought. And so no one could figure out who they should talk to. There was no clear leadership on the other side. There was no clear understanding of what they would even be talking about. The police were already, as we were being informed through the Incident Response Groups, they were already engaging at a certain level and so it wasn’t clear what this engagement strategy would be, let alone if it could have any effect. And you know, I think there's a difference too between engagement and negotiation. And the prime minister and the Cabinet, the government, wasn’t prepared to negotiate public health measures that were rooted in science. I'm not -- I also am not sure, and I think a lot of people weren’t sure at the time that really, that that’s what this was all about. And so figuring out what the topic of the conversation could be let alone who it could be with that could have any effect on changing the circumstances, when no one could answer that question, really, these conversations couldn't -- didn’t move past the initial suggestion of "I wonder if."
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
When the IRGs began convening, just the day before, I believe, one of the things that was stressed at the first IRG or in and around the IRG really was just the need for appropriate information flow and for regular and constant information flow. And so I believe that’s what he's -- he's saying sorry for there is -- he's letting me know that there's this information that is now floating around that has already gone to some people and it had not kind of followed the usual channels, and I think he was sorry that it was the hour that it was, that we were all trying to grapple with what to do here. But I had also just received the paper previously from the clerk, I think, about an hour before, by the looks of this, and so I wouldn’t read too much into the story, and we were much more focused on the draft. And, ultimately, what was decided later that night after I talked with the Clerk and I then called the Prime Minister and the Prime Minister agreed to put it on -- with the suggestion that was coming from the Clerk, he agreed to put it on the agenda for the IRG the next day for discussion.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
In some ways, it’s what I already touched on, which is, this was one more proposal that was not yet at the place that one could act on. There were too many unanswered questions. There was no clarity in terms of who the discussion would be with on either side of the discussion, and what the discussion would be about, and what it might result. And so, you know, while everyone, including the Prime Minister, was encouraging everyone to put every option the table, and its why this was put on the agenda, ultimately, there wasn’t anything further to pursue on this at that time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I would just add that this was some -- I’m not sure there’s a Prime Minister in Canadian that has had as many First Ministers’ Meetings as this Prime Minister has because of the pandemic, and so they were such a regular occurrence and this group of premiers know each other quite well because of that. And while, you know, there are perhaps sometimes more pointed and more partisan statements made in public-facing environments, in these meetings that they have -- and I think you can see that it in the notes and in the descriptions of it -- they really -- they are thoughtful conversations. And they do come at things differently; there’s no doubt. They have different, you know, regional needs and were facing different things in different parts of the country. But, as Premier King, I can still remember saying -- you know, toward the end, he was one of the later speakers, as per the notes, and him saying to the Prime Minister, “I know you don’t take this lightly,” and this was a thoughtful conversation. And because they really were grappling with -- you know, even those who were concerned about the potential inflammation if the Emergencies Act were invoked, even those who were concerned about their specific regions, understood there was a broader national -- potential national need here, and that the Prime Minister had the authority, ultimately, and potentially -- and the need to do this. And so even those who were showing some reluctance from their kind of premier perspective of their particular province were showing an openness or a recognition, as Premier Kenney did in sort of saying, “I won’t quibble with you on whatever you have to do with the Emergencies Act, ultimately.” And I think that speaks to -- they’d had an FMM just a couple of weeks prior to this that was solely focused -- before all of this had started, as part of -- par for the course now during the pandemic, because we need to remember the time we were in, which was the height of Omicron. And so they’d actually had an FFM just -- I think it was January 10th where they were talking about the new mandates that the provinces were having to put into place, and we were looking to support them on that front. So this is a group that has navigated crisis for a couple of years together in many, if not most, of their cases.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, that's ---
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yeah.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, I completely agree with what Brian was just saying, and I would just add that it was extraordinarily important to the Prime Minister that it be - - that he be true to what he set out in the beginning when he invoked the Act, and that it wasn't going to last one minute longer than absolutely necessary. And so that was the entire motivation behind when the revocation happened. The same way, you know, safety and security was at the core of every meeting he was having throughout, the politics and parliamentary issues were on a completely separate track from that decision-making.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The Privy Council leads these briefings that you're referring to.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
We may have added information if we'd heard it through Minister's offices or through open source information. But the briefing on all the matters you're -- would have been led by the Clerk of the Privy Council, the Deputy Clerk of the NSIA.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
KT usually does refer to me.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don't know.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Well, no, I don't remember in that level of detail.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Is there something you're looking for in particular?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don't know.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don't know what this call is.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
As I said, I don't know what this call is.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
(Inaudible response)
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, that's not my understanding.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I can’t speak to what’s written here.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, if you wanted to pull up notes of mine from February 4th, that might be helpful.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
But I can’t speak to these.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I have notes from a lot of days that have been provided.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
M’hm.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
From any day I have notes on.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I unfortunately don’t know what meeting she’s taking notes from here without more context.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It may or may not even be a meeting I was in.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The Emergencies Act came up at numerous occasions, as we’ve said earlier in ---
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Earlier too.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, I think I can answer any questions you might have around that.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Is there something you’re curious about that note in particular?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I believe you’ve had an opportunity to speak with Minister Blair.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Publicly?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I mean, there were questions from the media where Ministers were speaking about the Emergencies Act long before it was invoked.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The Emergencies Act was something that was discussed at the beginning of the pandemic and it was a public conversation at that time, as well as a private conversation. There were calls for the Prime Minister - --
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Are you talking about -- I’m not sure when you’re talking about or what about.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
They did look at the Emergencies Act at that time and there was some public call at that time, and it was determined, because the Prime Minister was very reluctant, as he was during the occupation this past February, to invoke it. And so there’s been conversations on various occasions about the Emergencies Act over time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I genuinely don’t know what this note is, as I’ve already said to you a few times.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So I don’t know specifically, but I ---
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
But I could surmise that “Flag to KT” means it’s probably a bit of a to-do list of things she wanted to flag to me.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
They were obviously deemed irrelevant to what we are talking about today.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don’t know why they invoked it there.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don’t believe that this is a phone call any longer.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes, it said “Flag ---
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
--- to KT” at the top.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
She is not normally in meetings with Cabinet.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Generally. What do you mean?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I do.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
They have.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
They do.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Can you remind me?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That sounds right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That sounds right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Not at the time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Not at the time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
During the Inquiry I’ve heard a fair bit about it.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I couldn’t speak to what information they had access to.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It certainly felt that way.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think it was challenging for everyone, and that’s why it was important to bring everyone together at various points. But I do think there was -- you know, I think the number of people, including Mr. Vigneault, have spoken about how figuring out the social media space is something that needs to be done coming out of this.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Absolutely.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Of course, and that’s something we took very very seriously.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Of course.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Ipperwash was actually something I asked after, and we got a verbal brief on very early on. I think it was actually even before it all got -- before it became even an occupation because it was something we were very preoccupied about respecting.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Fair.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It was extremely volatile.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I believe that conversation was a ways into the occupation already, so I don’t think I can agree or disagree with whether or not these things always take time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It certainly did in this instance.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
These were things we were briefed on, yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, I believe -- and I believe this was the first call of the opposition leaders that was earlier on in the occupation; is that right?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I'm pretty sure it was the first.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I know he worked with somebody in the OPP.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I'm not sure.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I do believe that’s what the deputy minister said.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It wasn’t discarded as an idea. There was nothing to act on. I do think those are different things.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
In a manner of speaking. You’ll find throughout a lot of the texts that I submitted, a lot of different tweets as well as information from the Prime Minister’s executive assistant who lived right in Centertown and was keeping him posted on what it was like on the ground.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, it’s not, actually. So what you can’t see there is that also in this chat is -- was the Prime Minister’s Executive Assistant -- or was executive assistant at that time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
And so that’s an example of what I was just describing.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I’ve heard a number of things to do with the jerrycans over the course of the Commission.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think especially, in the early days, there were a lot of different numbers coming from what we were seeing on social media, what we were seeing reported from mainstream media who were, you know, walking around and doing their own counts, as well as what was coming in from different law enforcement agencies.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don’t think it’s a question of whether they planned to clear them but that there were, on multiple occasions, where we were being briefed that things were going to happen that then didn’t happen. So we found ourselves three weeks in with things continuing to escalate.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Correct.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That's right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Later that day, that's right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Usually the Privy Council Office, led by the Clerk, puts forward an agenda for a Cabinet meeting, and actually, usually John's team here will go back and forth with them a bit on it in case there is any insight into, particularly into time management of the meeting. But they will present that to the Prime Minister.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Input would be fair, yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The Prime Minister.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, not really. I mean, the Clerk of the Privy Council would be the person who would advise and -- advise on officials in terms of who should attend, and then there is usually a few from the Prime Minister's Office who attend, and the Prime Minister agrees with who those are.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Only of our own team.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think I just said that, but I'll try again. Is -- so the Clerk, in terms of officials on the public service side, and ultimately, it's the Prime Minister who decides who he welcomes in the Cabinet room. But the Clerk will advise and sign off on a list from an officials perspective, and then there's usually some representatives from the Prime Minister's Office.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Of course.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Again, the Privy Council Office, and so it's the Clerk who will, and her teams, who will put together the information, and we may have some supplemental or additional information from a political perspective that we may provide in a briefing ahead of Cabinet, but the documents come from the public service side.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes. I mean, we'll ---
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
--- provide feedback. Sometimes they'll ask us from the public service side what our thoughts are around, especially as it relates to meeting flow and what might be most useful, that kind of thing, for the ministers.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
The same process as I just described.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So things were moving very quickly that day, and we were on the brief ahead of the Cabinet meeting, and so I imagine we probably added some thoughts in terms of how the meeting might flow, but that would have been the extent of it that day.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I'm not even sure if we would have at that time.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Sorry, I'm not sure I know the difference between the last one and this one. I thought we were just answering about documents. So same answer.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So as I said a couple of times, in the briefing ahead of Cabinet we will provide our insight, our advice, our best advice and feedback in terms of how the flow might work, and just ways of approaching different things, but that's really the extent of our involvement in preparation for the meeting, whether it be documents or information.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I am not sure whether whether it was part of the documents.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
On this?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So all of these assessments were provided to the Incident -- the IRG earlier that day, and then that was really rolled up and reported out to Cabinet in the evening.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Correct.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I can’t speak to that.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I’m not sure what we can say.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I’m not sure, from a document perspective. There were certainly discussions around it.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I’m not sure what document that is.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No. Yeah. That’s not familiar to me.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That’s correct.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That would be Phil Proulx.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That’s certainly what he was conveying.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes. We were hearing it from local members of Parliament and they were hearing it from many of their constituents. We were hearing it from staff, we were hearing it from members of Parliament who were in town. It was -- and everyone was -- from a staff perspective, was having to work from home during this period or almost everyone was. There were a few essential staff able to go in but that was because we couldn't access our offices because of the occupation, as well as Omicron, we were working virtually during this whole period.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That’s right.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I'm not sure.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Why was there a verbal? What do you mean?
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So as I think I mentioned earlier today, I -- it was actually something that I raised very early on in all of this, perhaps because I worked at Queen's Park once upon a time, but it was something I was just very conscious of and wanted to make sure we knew where all the lines exactly were. And the deputy clerk, who's the former deputy minister of justice, made sure to get us information on that.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
That was literally Day 1 that I asked these questions.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It might have even been just before. It was the very first meeting I was in talking about these kinds of things and hearing about potential -- how the police were going to handling things.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No. If anything, it was everyone was extraordinarily cautious on that front.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, that was something we received on our request, but it was something reinforced on numerous occasions throughout the process.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
So we, within Prime Minister's Officer, who are here, we were briefed early on, on our request, but then the principals were repeated on numerous occasions, certainly through IRGs and through other discussions throughout. I don't think there was anyone that I worked with who was not conscious of the need to be cautious.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes, and we saw it ourselves, as well as had it reported to us, the threat of violence both to people and property. It was significant throughout and escalating.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It certainly seemed that way.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes, though also the Deputy Minister of Public Safety, the NSIA would have different parts to the briefs as well.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It was -- that's me recounting from a national caucus meeting that -- I believe that morning, where there was a presentation given to caucus members. The large part of the discussion was actually around personal security and security of the building. There were significant concerns for members of Parliament being able to get from the airport to downtown let alone from downtown up on the Hill and actually getting off the Hill was a bigger problem than even getting on it. But also, as part of that, it was discussed, or it was -- caucus were told that if it had been up to anyone other than the OPS, they would not have allowed the trucks onto Wellington, and that they had given that advice and it wasn't taken.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
They did not get into that level of detail with caucus.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes. Largely, yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It could mean a number of things. I don’t think we can speculate.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
No, the -- there was a lot of work happening concurrently at the time. And to be ready for whatever scenarios and whatever decision, ultimately, the Prime Minister came to. And so Vanessa, who you named there, who’s are excellent deputy director of communications, was making sure that all those tracks were heading in the right direction. At any point, things could have been stopped, and things could have changed, just as they were.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Speech prep -- speech prep is our shorthand for going through his remarks, which we would have definitely returned to again that afternoon. And so that means they would have done a once-through with him on what things could look like.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
To be clear, I wouldn’t call it rehearsing. The words “speech prep” literally mean preparing a speech. And so they would have been discussing what would have been going into the content and whether he was comfortable with where the drafts were at at this point.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
We’re familiar with the decision note.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yes.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
Yeah.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
He and I would have been discussing the possibility throughout the day. Until he signed the decision note there was nothing confirmed.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I don’t know what time that went out.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
We got very nimble during the pandemic where we were putting out advisories for things where we weren’t sure what the content was going to be a couple of hours later. And that’s what you need to do in times of crisis.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
There was -- I became aware of a lot of both misinformation and disinformation over the course of the occupation and the blockades. To name just a few examples, even leading into the first weekend, one was that this was even solely a trucker protest. And let alone the fact that it was solely about federal vaccine mandates. It was quite clear from very early on and even leading into the first weekend, we knew from the Canadian Truckers Alliance as was mentioned earlier and also from data that we had that over 90 percent of truckers were vaccinated. We also knew that a lot of the mandates that were being talked about were ones that were actually responsibilities and put in place or imposed by provincial level governments or even other levels of governments or jurisdictions whether they be school boards or cities. And then of course there’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation around vaccines themselves. And then personally, in terms of our office, we dealt with a number of different instances. Our official photographer was drawn into a conspiracy theory, unfortunately, where he was being alleged to be out taking a picture of some hateful flags. And he at the time was actually in isolation with COVID himself. There was no chance he was doing that. We began trying to correct that. He began receiving death threats during that period. There was also a fake letter distributed amongst people within the occupation that was signed allegedly. It was not signed by us but it was signed using my name and the prime minister’s name and suggesting ways in which we might agree to some kind of -- I don’t even know what. But this fake letter was corrected and actually made international news. It was corrected on CNN at the time. And then I personally was actually asked to stay away for quite some time from the downtown core because there was a -- it started on Telegram and then moved onto other social media channels -- a story that was created that I was going to create a false flag operation and have a horse killed and then blame it on the occupiers. So there were concerns for my security during that period as well.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
We saw it being conveyed and distributed in multiple different ways. The letter, for example, was you know -- both screen shots of it floating around on social media but it was actually being distributed in hard copy. And the other things, as I mentioned, were moving from different social media platforms from one to the other. But it was also -- we were seeing people doing podcasts and YouTube videos and different things where they were disseminating this information as well.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
I think the process was -- we tried to be methodical about it; it was very step by step, and it was seeking advice every step of the way from multiple parts of government. It was taking in a lot of different inputs, and it was doing a lot of consultation throughout. And so actually even in processes that often go on much longer than this one could afford to and say this is actually one of the more robust processes I’ve seen.
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Katie Telford, Chief of Staff (GC-PMO)
It was absolutely not. It was driven at its core in ever meeting the Prime Minister began and ended and it was discussed throughout, how do we ensure the safety and security of Canadians? And there wasn’t time, space, or desire to talk about anything else.