Kim Ayotte
Kim Ayotte spoke 269 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I prefer to swear on the Bible, please.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Good afternoon.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Very nice to see you, thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I have.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I do not.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That is correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I’m not aware of any permits being sought and I know that none were issued.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
There were no permits granted for Porta-potties for the City of Ottawa. I personally authorized the use of some Porta-potties at the early stages of the protest.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct; it was not in response to a permit request.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, they do, through a Director, Roger Chapman.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, through the Fire Chief, Paul Hutt.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I did not. This would -- this was authored by our Public Information and Media Relations Department; however, we do provide input into it. And this is a document that’s prepared for me for media releases or for media events where I may get asked questions in certain areas, and these are the messages and responses to some of those areas.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, “demonstrations peaceful”, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
So in Ottawa, we work under an Incident Management System, which is document also recognized by the Province of Ontario with regards to any type of incident or any type of event that we’d participate in. Through that system, we identify incident commanders or agencies that have jurisdiction and agencies that play support roles. And in this particular case, as it was a protest or demonstration, it fell under the authority, the sole authority, quite frankly, of the Ottawa Police Service and we were playing a support role. So we would assist, or we would attend and do By-law enforcement; however, we would always report to police with regards to what we were seeing and if there were any potential threats towards our officers with regards to, you know, violence or anything of that nature, then we would certainly back off and ask for police support to go in. So initially, that was the mode of operation. We would report to police, and we would allow By-law officers to issue tickets. Our primary purpose was to maintain the emergency routes on the first weekend to ensure that vehicles -- the emergency vehicles such as firetrucks and paramedic vehicles, et cetera, police vehicles can actually make their way around the city as all of those things were preplanned prior to the demonstration to look at every risk and every building, to identify how we would respond should there be an incident at any one particular building.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I was.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, what happened is on the 29th, which I believe is a Saturday, we received information through the EOC, through our Emergency Operations Centre, that By-law had encountered some difficulties in the field, and that now the police have established a red zone and By-law was to not issue tickets in that red zone unless it was approved or through the NCRCC, the National Capital Regional Command Centre, and that By-law was escorted into that zone, and that was on Saturday the 29th.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, it was, with the understanding that any single point of contact could cause a potential serious incident or riot, and that was something we heard regularly from the police, so we were very cautious on that front, and we advised our officers to be very careful not to be that point of contact that could initiate a riot. And as a result of that, we were asking them to be very careful, and if they were fearful for their safety, that they should, you know, back off and seek police support before issuing any infractions.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes. What we mean by By-law acting as it normally would, again, as a support function to the police. It's tantamount to if we have a major house fire, fire is in charge, and they're incident command, and then the police come up, and they don't tell police what to do, but the police support the fire operation. Actually, a better example would be if there was a shooting and there was a victim inside of the house and our paramedic service was to respond, they wouldn't just run into the house after the victim without first clearing with police who are in charge of the incident because of the severity of it, clearing with them that it's safe for them to go in and do so and actually take care of the patient. So there are agencies that have jurisdiction based on the severity or the incident they're dealing with. And in this particular case, a protest was a police jurisdiction, so we would take -- By-law would not report to police, but they would certainly take their direction from police if required because the police were the agency having jurisdiction.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's how it always works for protests in the City of Ottawa.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I received notification from the EOC through regular briefings, and we receive a lot of them, that, yes, there was -- By-law encountered some difficulties. I wasn't given all the specifics with regards to what had happened, but I was told that as a result of that, the stance has changed and that a red zone's been established, which is probably concurrent with the red zone that was established for traffic management, et cetera, and that By-law should not go into the red zone unless a director approved -- I can't remember the exact words used, but there is documentation on this -- and supported by protection of the Ottawa Police.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
So the red zone would fluctuate throughout the protest based on the amount of vehicles coming in. So originally, the red zone was, you know, primarily the downtown core, and then it expanded to include Rideau and Sussex because of the activity there. It also included Coventry eventually. And then it expanded up south of Wellington based on the vehicle location. So again, where the protesters were, were generally where the red zone would expand and contract, based on police activity. And so it was fluid, quite fluid.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
By-law's role outside of the red zone was to continue to enforce City by-laws, recognizing that if they encountered any vehicles with protest paraphernalia or any type of suggestion that vehicles were involved in the protest, which happened in certain hot spots throughout the city, whether it was the Vanier Church or Bronson Avenue, that if it was related to the protest, it still required some sort of police either support or notification that you're going in and enforcing your laws.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, it depends on the call because some of them were -- whether it was anti-masking, pandemic type calls, or whether it was, you know, parking calls, or noise was a big one, obviously, illegal fires, et cetera, so in the hot zone, following the 29th, yes, those calls would go to Ottawa Police to triage and the NCRCC if they were to be acted on.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, that's a paraphrasing of what I had been advised of through the EOC.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Well, in the -- the enforcement stance changed, and I believe it was in approximately February 4th, where police wanted to take a more aggressive enforcement posture and they established a special team where By-law and police would work together, and just go out and start ticketing in full force. And so that was called a quick response team, I believe is what it was called at the time.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
In the red zone, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct. And if I didn't say so earlier, it was primarily as a result of officer safety. You know, our officers are not trained to the level of police officers. They're not equipped with the same type of tools that police officers are equipped. They are trained to deal with contact -- or conflict, but mostly verbal and so, I mean, we were very concerned about what we didn't know; right? I was not informed of all of the intelligence that the police had with regards to the element of the crowd. And what I was basing a lot of my decisions on was based on what I was seeing south of the border when, you know, buildings are burning, and riots are happening, and people are dying. And when we were preparing for a worst-case scenario for this event, that's the image I was trying to, one, avoid, but, two, prepare for in the event that we got to that point.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
In my head, I believe it was around February 4th where they established those quick response teams and that’s where they would work together.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It was for everybody’s safety; right? Our concern is not just for the by-law officers; that’s my primary concern because they’re my -- they’re not my officers, they work with me, but I’m also concerned for the protestors’ safety, for police officer safety; there were lot of people in the protest who weren’t angry but there were a lot of people in the protest who were angry. So, you know, we have to protect everyone.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I can’t speak to how the 311 triaged the calls at that point in time; I know that By-law would have worked with them directly to say, you know, here are the, you know, standard questions, you know, questions you would ask and based on the information you received, it would either go to the police or it would go to By-law.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
For most part throughout the incident and not enforcing what they do for a living was a moral hit for the by-law officers. They were frustrated that in the media they were being criticized for not doing their job when in fact they were told not to do their job and, you know, for the senior leadership, we understood why that was there. We tried to relay that to our by-law officers, but yeah, there was a moral issue and a want to go out and do their job, and they certainly proved that in the follow-up protest that came to town, whether it was Rolling Thunder or even on Canada Day, they enforced a lot of their activities then.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Exactly as by-law did; it would go through the NCRCC. There was a fire representative in the NCRCC in the event that there was a major incident that would occur; they were able to provide very quick situational awareness on what the incident is and how they were going to deal with it from a fire perspective. But with regards to enforcement of the fire code and open air burning, it was the exact same thing; we would either receive a complaint through 311 or -- and we would advise the NCRCC and they would say, you know, we know we have a fire. They go, yeah, we know it is -- we know there’s a fire there and the police would actually make the decision, do we go in or don’t we go in? Some of it was based on their resources, others was placed on the criminal element that was holding the fire, but for the most part the fire took -- not their authority, but certainly direction from the police with regards to it. And they did it on several occasions where they did go in and put out fires.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Exactly, always with OPS support.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct, and that was seen with regards to the removal of the flammable liquids at two of the sites where there was, you know, an accumulation of a quantity of flammable liquids.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Fire services would go out and do inspections on their own, whether it was under cover or whether they were, you know -- just to see what they can observe; they would report back through their chain of command and they would get direction from the police on when can we go in and deal with this issue. Report the risk and then let the police identify when the police had the resources to deal with the risk.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Okay, thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Agreed.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
We were trying to get security around the Cenotaph in that it had been desecrated, you know, several instances had occurred overnight, and we wanted it protected, and so I put the request in through the EOC to contact the federal government to see if they can provide security services and/or a fence around it so that we can protect this very important site, at which time I received notice that yes, they wanted it in writing, so I proceeded to put it in writing.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, they did.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It came through me through the EOC, which has an OPS Sgt. at -- in the EOC. So I believe it came through the OPS, and that they did not have the resources to secure and protect the site, and they were asking if the federal government could actually provide that security.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That sounds correct, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That is correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Well, there were two issues there. One is, towing of small vehicles, we were still accomplishing that, but we had to work within the red zone, and the emergency routes were staying clear. So I think the protestors got the message early on that we were going to have zero tolerance in the emergency routes for the protection of the citizens and themselves, and the buildings of the City of Ottawa. And but secondly, is the larger vehicle towing was the real challenge for obtaining those tow services. And so we reached out -- well, the EOC again reached out looking for resources. We were getting it from all different directions. The police asked the EOC to see if they can make some contacts. The police were also making contact with various tow companies. They were asking if we had any contact with the province, so through the EOC again, we were contacting the province to see if they had resources. The mayor suggested that, you know, Mayor Tory in Toronto had contacts. We did receive those from the mayor. And again, we would inquire with regards to the availability of towing. And for the most part, it was no, they didn’t want to participate, and initially, they were sympathizers, for the most part. The other thing was that it was their client group, and you know, their reputational risk down the road with regards to losing those clients. I didn’t hear damage to trucks much, but then they came out and said it was a driver safety issue, and that’s what they kept bringing forward all the time following, you know, other discussions with them. Any leads we had or any possibilities of towed were passed down to EOC or sorry, the work was being done by the EOC to make these contacts. They were provided to the police and police ultimately made the contacts and got the appropriate tows to end the protest.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes. We had those contracts. They were still willing to do the smaller vehicles. There were delays in obtaining tows at times, and that caused some issues, but for the most part, we were able to tow if we needed to tow smaller vehicles.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It's not the first thing you mentioned. It wasn’t because we couldn't get the tow trucks. It was primarily because the emergency routes were being maintained and they were open. And that’s what we normally find with a major event, is the first few hours, you get a lot of people who aren't familiar with the closure of the emergency lanes or keeping those -- the no-tow zones, and then, you know, they get towed and then the word gets out quite quickly that those are no-tow zones and -- or tow zones, sorry, and then, you know, things self-correct, to a certain degree.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That was our priority of towing, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes. Only certain routes had emergency lanes. Again, these were all preplanned, so part of our planning cycle -- and we do this for all events and demonstrations -- is we have a City department, Transportation Department that actually has experts that look at traffic flows and you know, how to best manage the traffic and the incident. And it's called TIMG, the Traffic Incident Management Group. And they work closely with police to identify, you know, how are we going to manage the incident that’s being proposed or coming forward? And they would close certain lanes; for example, Kent Street was closed completely. There was no emergency lane on Kent Street. And there were a few other streets like that. But for the most part, we had the emergency routes that we had identified through the group were maintained throughout the protest.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
We were able to access it through other streets. So, you know, the streets that are running perpendicular or parallel to it, the buildings were accessible by other means.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It's not an ideal situation, but it was the best situation that we could come up with based on -- -
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Every building was preplanned in that they would -- you know, fire and paramedic service would look at their CAD and look at what they were dealing with in the preparation for all of this, and they do it for other City events such as Canada Day, et cetera. And they go, okay, so how are we going to get there if there's an incident, and what's the biggest risk incident that we have in this building. So, let's say, for fire, it would be a fire, you know, a major fire. And then how would we access it. And we ensure that we have multiple access to every building. Even so one street could be closed but you might still have three other streets that actually, you know, encapsulate or surround that building. So those buildings were all -- we were sure that we could attend all of those buildings. It wouldn't be an ideal response because sometimes you'd want to put your ladder truck, let's say, on Kent Street to actually bring the ladder or tower up to access certain floors, and that wouldn't be available. But there was always a plan to how do we actually assess and manage these types of situations when we're faced with them. So we were comfortable from an emergency service that we could access the buildings that we needed to access, given any emergency.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, so fire services has a computed-aided dispatch system, so it's a ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Computer-aided dispatch system.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
So it identifies, you know, the streets, where the hydrants are, the buildings, the height of the buildings, you know, what the risk is for the building. So, you know, a hotel would have a much higher risk level than a government building that's unoccupied, you know, or a government building that's not occupied in the evenings or on the weekends. So based on the risk level will dictate how many resources we actually have going to those calls. So it's not always just one firetruck going to an incident. In fact, sometimes people will say, "Oh, my god, that must have been a big fire. There was, like, six trucks going to it." Yeah, it might have been a false alarm. The reality is, is those six trucks were required in the event that it was a real incident, they needed to set up. There are so many different tasks that need to take place in the initial minutes to be successful that those resources need to be there.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
There were no substantial delays. We did get some complaints with regards to paramedics not being able to access, or a paramedic trying to get through a street, and it was taking a little longer, but we investigated every one of those complaints to look at it with regards to our response standards, to see whether or not they still fell within our response standards. And if they didn't, was it an acceptable risk, you know, was it reasonable. And we didn't have any high-level risks that we were concerned with, with regards to any response.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, it is.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It's Chris Barber.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I concur with him that that was approximate -- or my approximation as well at the time.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, because there were ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
--- trucks and cars and pickup - --
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
-- trucks. And to move the trucks, they had to move the smaller vehicles as well, and they were relocated, not necessarily all on Wellington, but they were relocated.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, he simply indicated that the police were no longer allowing trucks on Wellington.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, he's the Director of By-law Services; correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I believe I'm in the review process, yeah, up further up into the ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
--- exchange.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I see that that's what they were suggesting.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I reiterated the position that we would not be putting Bylaw officers in dangerous situations that could affect their health or the safety of anyone around them.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
As I indicated earlier, yeah, it was the position for all protests and demonstrations. It’s -- I want to say it’s always been that but it’s been that was for a long time, as far as I can remember it.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Embarrassingly, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
You caught me on a good day for these because some of my other notes are not that good.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
February 2nd.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct. Kind of like what I was explaining earlier, the red zone would contract and expand based on how the protestors -- they would expand on the weekend and contract during the week because of the amount of additional that would come in on the weekends.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I think our estimation was, you know, 500 to 1000. Like, it was difficult to tell because of all the small vehicles as well. If you included all of the small vehicles, yes, it would be over a 1000.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
The consistent number throughout the following weeks was around 400 to 500 that actually stayed behind, and those were big trucks. Those were the tractor trailers. That number would fluctuate as well because it would expand and contract, but mostly it stayed consistent because the trucks moved into the area and stayed there. They chained themselves together. They made themselves difficult to move and, as a result of that, they were there for the long haul.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct, yeah.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I have people send me social media links. I’m not the social media guru that others are but I was following some of it on social media, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I’m not sure that under -- that I can corroborate whether the information I was seeing on social media was misinformation or accurate information. I wasn’t -- I did report to my office every day, which is City Hall. I was exposed to the honking every day. I did go out for a walk and observe certain things. So unless you can give me some specific information with regards to what the misinformation might be, I’m sorry, I’d rather not speculate.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Sure.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I don’t think we have 15,000 hotel rooms in the City of Ottawa ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
--- but yes -- no, I don’t think that they were all occupied for the entire duration; that’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct, and she was the Incident Commander of the EOC.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct. That’s when it started, yes, to move the trucks.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I was trying to obtain numbers of trucks that had moved ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
--- because that was the key question that I was being asked from the City Manager and the Mayor’s Office.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Fifty-seven (57).
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, so what I read from that is that the 400 was the original number and now the police were saying there’s 357, so what had moved is 43.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's what -- yeah, that's what she says.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah. My understanding is, as I indicated earlier, that while they were moving some of the big trucks they had to move some of the smaller pickup trucks that were, you know, wedged in-between them or beside them, and that those were probably the ones jockeying for spots after the fact.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, I believe that's after I actually walked it and counted them.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, that's what she says.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, I don't know if this -- if these were the numbers that she was giving me before the movement or after. Like these -- I'm asking her for the numbers. So I don't know if we can scroll up a bit so I can just get the context of the conversation before that.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
They're using the cameras to try and identify, you know, what trucks are where.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah. I actually walked it, and a good portion of Metcalfe was clear.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Perhaps south, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That sounds correct. I'd have to actually look at the numbers, but we did provide all of those documents through the disclosure process.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Most of them were issued by the By-law Office.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
There were some contentious times, and -- so I can't say that none of them were assaulted, not that I know of.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, I just know that a couple of them got swarmed, but that they didn't get physically assaulted.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
You'd have to ask the police that. I don't capture those numbers.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I don't manage the police, I manage all other emergency services in the City of Ottawa.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I can't speak to that.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
They did.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
For the most part, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah. Just for clarity, "the" fire chief wouldn't have done the inspection, but one of his chief officers would have. So there are many different chief levels within the fire service.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I can't speak to that. I don't ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I don't know the contents of that.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, that's the only time I ever met with the organisers of the protest.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
From my recollection, the discussion was around how were we going to move the trucks out of the residential areas, and that there was limited spots on Wellington Street. So I wasn't 100 percent sure we could move all 400 trucks onto Wellington. Actually, I knew we couldn't move all 400 trucks onto Wellington Street, and that their agreement, from as far as I was concerned meant that they had to make sure that those other vehicles left town and left the City of Ottawa.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
And they said yes, that they had secured ground or -- and that's farmers' properties outside of the city.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Okay.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, we -- they told me that, but I was also aware of that through other intelligence reports as well.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I can’t agree with that only because I didn’t see a lot of protestor vehicles moved except for the ones we allowed on to Wellington; so there seemed to be some movement onto Wellington, but no movement out of the City as was agreed to. So if it would have been a good faith movement on both parts, then I could maybe agree to that, but I can’t today.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It got stopped by police, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I am not confident that would have happened.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
But the delta was, they didn’t control all the people in that block; they said they wanted to control all of them and they hoped that they would have all of their buy-in, but they didn’t. They had difficulty moving the 40 to Wellington Street because people didn’t want to move.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, I can’t speak to that; you’ll have to ask Staff Sergeant Drummond about that.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
They do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, of course.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s a very good question and I don’t have that answer for you; I don’t know the minutia of the regulations. My background is the Fire Chief and now I’m managing all of this, but I don’t have that knowledge.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I would have to get that information for you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That would be reasonable, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I believe I understood the question, but I’m going to kindly ask you to repeat it.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I do not.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I do not believe that the protestors were feared -- feared getting tickets or fines.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I can’t say that 100 per cent, but certainly in my opinion very few would have left.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, I believe that stuffs in -- that information is in the disclosed material; I don’t have that, but it was in the, you know, 10, 15 officers generally work an area and we would have had that many out that day.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, but on the 28th that wasn’t -- like it would have been normal practice.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It might have; I can’t speak to the police operation. They may feel that because of the threat, that they would require more than one officer and one by-law officer to attend those situations,
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That sounds right.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
You did the math; I’ll agree with your math; how’s that?
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Right.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, sorry, over 3,000 were issued.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, they are.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
True.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
As I indicated earlier, not that I’m aware of, except for the swarming.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Not that I’m aware of.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
We were looking at all options; you still need to train the drivers and this was still being viewed as a specific time frame; right? By the time we bought a tow truck and we trained an appropriate driver, that would be one truck and we needed a lot more than one to execute the final plan.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It did not. Initially they considered but -- but they needed it for their daily operations. The bus system was still running and the buses were still breaking down and required towing, so -- and there were also from the Union, concerns about safety issues.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Not that I’m aware of.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Bonjour.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I did.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I did, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I thought it was the 11th, but I don't know.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Okay.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do, thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Very fluid, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, Wellington -- Metcalfe and Wellington.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct, February 5th.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s a boom or a it's a crane.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s an industrial crane, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, the 29th of January.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, he does.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, to my City leadership team.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Public Information and Media Relations.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, it is.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
It's the Children's Hospital here in Ottawa.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, there was.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct. We received a tremendous amount of increased 9-1-1 calls that were also false during this time, higher than normal amounts of 9-1-1 calls, so we suspected that it was related.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
I think for the most part, yeah. We didn’t know where they were going to go. We were trying to be strategic, but it was a difficult time.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, but there were a lot more infractions in that zone that could have been ticketed.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
My opinion hasn't changed, and the affidavit was sworn on February 13th.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, my opinion remains the same.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
J. Gravelle is one of our commanders in the incident management system. So he used to work for By-law Services and now he works for Roads.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Kelly Cochrane. She is part of our EOC staff.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, correct.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, it was raised directly to me and we had it investigated.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Certainly. Basically, there was an alarm for a water leak, or a sprinkler head had been knocked off, and so it was an alarm call for the fire service. We -- the fire service responded with four different trucks from different directions from different fire stations, which is normal from a deployment of our resources' perspective. We don't respond with just one truck. We respond with multiple, especially for a high-risk setting like a hotel. On arrival, one of the trucks, you know, got close enough but didn't get very close and that's what was observed by the hotel. And they thought, oh my god, if there's an emergency, you know, they can't get in here. The reality is, there was three other trucks responding. People were -- the responders were already in the hotel dealing with the incident. There was no delay in the response. So, you know, this was a heightened -- a time where people were very aware of all kinds of different issues, and it was being raised through us through the BIAs and Hotel Association that these types of concerns needed to be addressed because of public safety, their liability insurance, et cetera. So while I understand their fear, the risk of this call was very low, and we had preplanned that facility daily, and we've had conversations with the manager since. So really, from a risk perspective, it was a relatively low-risk event, but it did highlight that, you know, if there was a fire, you know, we may not get all four trucks there immediately and there would be some need for movement of the protest vehicles. So while it was an incident that was looked at, it wasn't deemed as high risk as it was being first explained to us.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes, can you just go up a bit, so I can see where that's from, from Jennifer Therkelsen. Okay. Now you can go back down. So in this particular case, you know, it's a private property, so they could request that By-law come and remove the illegal vehicles. It was a truck, a construction type truck that had a legal diesel container in it. So the fear of it -- you know, as Councillor Fleury indicated last week, you know, we should have evacuated the Rideau Centre. Well, that's not accurate because the risk was still very low. So in this particular case, the police attended initially, looked at the truck, spoke to the owner, told him he'd have to move it or he'd be getting a ticket. By-law eventually went out and gave them a ticket. Rideau Centre wanted it removed. It was one of those times when getting a tow for a small vehicle was more difficult, more challenging for us. And as a result of that, it took some time for us to secure the tow vehicle to come and actually remove it from the Rideau Centre. And when it finally -- when the tow truck was finally on route, the owner moved it himself. So the Rideau Centre was frustrated that it took, you know, a day-and-a-half to actually deal with this issue. But again, when we're dealing with the whole protest, we're looking at risk and we're looking at risk-based responses as well. So, yes, there are -- you know, the Councillor was concerned about the amount of layers with regards to us having to get the police involved, and the police coming back, and then police saying they can't escort By-law because they don't have the resources. And I could understand that frustration, and I could understand the Rideau Centre's frustration. They have valid concerns. From a risk perspective, this was also a very low-risk incident.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, so -- yes, certainly. I went down to Wellington just to see, you know, how much trucks had been moved, and I noticed that they hadn't just been moved, but they'd been placed in a row where they can park a lot more of the trucks. And I think that they were doing that to try and get as much -- as many of the trucks on Wellington as possible. And so there was still quite a bit of room from, you know, Wellington from, let's say, Kent Street right down to West JAM with regards to, you know, the ability to park more trucks. Metcalf was cleared for the most part. Again, there may have been a few stragglers here and there, you know, south of Laurier, but Kent was still packed. So when Councillor McKenney was walking down Kent Street, she was right. There was no movement of any trucks on Kent Street. In fact, Kent didn't clear out until the police started their action to actually with the public order teams to move out, and then the trucks moved out quite quickly. And, but, yeah, so my walk was to just -- I’d try and identify, has any progress been made; is there still room; and are the protestors actually moving out as well or are they just trying to move everything to Wellington Street? And it was my perception, I guess, that I didn’t see a lot of trucks leaving town. I just saw a lot trying to get on Wellington St. And again, I can’t speak for Officer Drummond and the reasons for stopping it but I suspect that it might have something to do with that as well and the negotiation and the ability of both sides to be able to -- you know, the give and take factor, so.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
That is our deployment for an alarm call.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
So for -- in this particular case it was an alarm call, general alarm.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Yeah, sprinkler.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Correct. How it unfolds is, depending on the information that the 911 -- or that the dispatch centre, the Ottawa Fire Dispatch Centre, receives, you know, if it’s just a general alarm, then we proceed with our staffing for a general alarm, and that’s enough to get things started. And then if it is fire, other rigs would be coming in and they would continue come in. So that’s the general-alarm assignment. Having -- if it was a fire, if the information came in that we actually have in fire in one of the rooms, there would have been several more vehicles responding because it’s a high risk. We would have had 25 firefighters, in total, responding, so you’re looking at eight or nine rigs responding.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Of course, yes.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
And that was the concern of the Chateau Laurier but they were -- they were portraying as, “Oh, my God, they couldn’t get in at all.” Well, that was one of the four trucks. The other three ---
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No, I’m saying it’s a problem. It was a problem everywhere with the congestion. Ideally, there’s a reason why we have large roads, so that we can get the trucks set up.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Right.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
No doubt. And we plan for those but, again, we were lucky there were no serious fires.
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Kim Ayotte, General Manager (Ott)
Thank you.