Peter Sloly
Peter Sloly spoke 1578 times across 2 days of testimony.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Religious document, please.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'll take the Bible, please, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Peter John Michael Sloly, S-L-O-L-Y.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good morning, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good morning, Frank.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct. Well, just 27 and change, but thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, that's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I was.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I received Incident Command System training from 100 to 400 levels. I received additional training here in Ottawa, I consider it 500 level, essentially it's a District Operations Commander, which allows you to command a multi-site major incident over a protracted period of time. So I had designations up to, I don't know if it's the right terminology, but a 500 level, and I had practical experience at every one of those levels in terms of being part of Incident Command. So either being an Incident Commander, what is now known as an Event Commander, Major Event Commander or Major Incident Command through to a District Operations Commander, mostly in my time in the Toronto Police Service and also during my two tours of duty in United Nations Peacekeeping Mission.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I received Public Order Unit training, both through the Toronto Police Service. It’s a little bit fuzzy now because it’s going back to the early 2000’s, but there was also a provincial standard training course that took place out in a rural community that I can’t remember. And then there was national training sessions that we did from British Columbia across the country.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was fortunate enough to have been selected by then Chief Fantino to represent the Toronto Police Service. I think at that time, I was the first senior officer for a municipal police service to be part of a UN peacekeeping mission that had been organized through the RCMP. I was deployed to Pristina in August of 2001 and completed two tours, coming back home in 2002. I was the Canadian contingent commander. This was a mission where the police of jurisdiction actually had full powers of policing, including use of force detention while building up a local police service. It was also during 9/11 and a very significant and complicated and volatile zone.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It just tested, and stressed, and challenged, and grew me in literally every single way possible: physically, mentally, emotionally. I’m a very spiritual person. It allowed me to see parts of the world I don’t think I’ll ever get back to see again. And to be involved in a unique, challenging, and often tragic set of circumstances, but one that opened my eyes to the conditions globally. I had a chance to work with 53 different police services from around the world, and so that was also an opportunity to learn the good, the bad, and the indifferent of progressive policing at the turn of the century.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably a little bit of nervous energy in there. But thank you. I will try to slow down.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I trust it is, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M’hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, when I was being recruited for the position, it was very clear to me through the recruiter on behalf of the Board that through their consultative process with service members and community members, that the Ottawa Police Service needed to be significantly changed. Operationally, administratively, from an HR standpoint, the usual sort of change processes that large organizations require on an ordinary basis, and very specifically, culturally. Internally, there was a culture that was less welcoming, less inclusive, less diverse, less equitable, and that had impacts on things like workplace harassment, member moral. Externally, that translated into a real or perceived level of trust in the broader community, but specifically in racialized and marginalized communities, that the service wasn’t, in some cases, appropriate enough and that there was a declining level of trust and confidence. Any one of those things would have been a major change agenda for any external chief coming in. All of those combined required a significant effort of changed management and changed leadership that I was asked, on behalf of the Board, as the incoming chief, to deliver over the course of my five-year contract.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not sure the Commission has all the time in the world for that list. But, I mean, I think the most simple thing to say is any effort of change is going to be difficult, particularly in a large organization. In this case, I believe the Ottawa Police Service is over a century old. And these were long-standing structural deficit issues. Needed investment in recruiting through staff development training. Leadership development in particular was something that repeatedly our membership identified and external auditors identified. And those things just don’t -- that’s not a light switch you can turn on and off. It’s something that you have to build and grow and almost organically move through the organization. Operationally, while they were excellent in some ways -- I just want to be clear, Commissioner, the Ottawa Police Service, and one of the reasons why I came here, had a reputation, deservedly so, of being one of the best operational police services. We’ve heard about their expertise in planning, their ability through missing persons investigations was second to none. They had really advanced -- in some cases, advanced HR systems that were to be seen as a best practice. So this was not a deficit across the board, but there were significant deficits in very specific areas that was contributing to some of the cultural and morale issues. My attempt in the first three months was really to go around on a listening process in small groups, large groups, internally and externally, to identify those areas, bring a command team that was, even in the early days, a struggle, there was significant challenges at the command team level, but people were leaning in and doing their best. I would say, though, that the challenges really came in in March of 2020. Three significant events. The suspension of one of my two Deputy Chiefs, the culmination of a significant internal criminal corruption investigation where three of my officers were arrested after an extensive joint RCMP/Ottawa Police Service investigation, and of course, the declaration of the global pandemic, two months later, the death and murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives movement, and the Defund movement. I think that signalled the start, not just here in Ottawa, but across police services in North America, I suggest around the world, as a significant change in the level of public trust and confidence in policing and the broader justice system. It certainly had material impacts on police services here in Ottawa. The Defund movement put significant pressure on our Board and our Council to adjust the policing budget in regards to size and to change police service delivery in terms of integration. And these were real challenges on top of the significant challenge of change mandate that the Board had explicitly and expressly given to me as the incoming chief.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, the command structure, I believe to this day, but I might be wrong, is the Chief of Police, two Deputy Chiefs, and the Chief Administration Officer. Within my first three months in the position, I lost one of those Deputy Chiefs to a suspension. That then required me to accelerate a succession plan that truly wasn’t ready for acceleration, and bring in a series of three-month assignments to the rank of the superintendent. I had two very experienced senior officers at that time. Both superintendents had a lot of experience. And so I rotated them for the first year. But within that year, both of them retired. And after that, the rotation went further into the superintendent ranks. Some were really good fits, some struggled. But it was a very suboptimal situation. In 2021, in the early part of the year, the Board made the decision to end the contract of my Chief Administration Officer. That then required me to look at my command level, and the only person that I could put into that position was Deputy Chief Bell. So essentially, for the full -- almost the full year leading up to the events of the convoy, I had one full-time Deputy Chief who was in a civilian position as a Chief Administration Officer, and I was rotating two -- for the most part, two uniformed Superintendents through the Deputy Chief process. Again, full respect to those individuals. They stepped up, in some cases volunteered. When I asked, they stepped up and they did their very best in very, very difficult circumstances during probably the most difficult time in Ottawa Police history and in policing across Canada. And so I have nothing but praise and thanks for them, but it was a sub-optimal situation that everyone was struggling to make the best of.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, the suspension of Deputy Chief Jaswal was in 2020. The subsequent retirements of my two more -- two most senior Superintendents happened over the course of 2021 into 2021. The separation of the Chief Administration Officer was in early 2021. So for the majority of 2021, that circumstance of Deputy Chief Bell being in an administrative function and two Superintendents operating in the uniform function was the situation that I was managing with.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It has a cascading impact on down the way. As you move any officer from one level to the next on a temporary position, not a permanent promotion, you then affect the next level and the next level. I remember once in Toronto someone said every time we promote a new Chief, we have to change out seven positions below. I don’t know if it’s exact calculation, but that’s the ripple effect. So it not only destabilizes the executive level, it destabilizes, to a degree, the other parts. There are always benefits. I mean, people are given stretch opportunities or given leadership opportunities earlier than they maybe normally would have. And again, some rise amazingly to that. Others do an excellent good job, and others struggle. But it does create churn in the organization that was already in churn based on all the changes that were mandated by the Board and the massive external churn by the factors such as the death of George Floyd and the global pandemic. There was another factor that, for me, as a newcomer to the city, as an outsider Chief, I think we can all remember in the early days of the pandemic the lockdown and the requirement not to meet in public was significant. One of the most important ways that any leader can get to know their own members and the community or the clients that they serve is to meet in person. So much is lost on Zoom. Emails and text messages never cover it, as we’ve seen in testimony here. But I lost that opportunity three months into my mandate to actually sit down with my members in the cafeteria and have a cup of coffee with them, to have small group focus group meetings, which I did extensively in my first three months. And even when we could get together, we were masked up so we couldn’t see facial expressions and we were spaced out across a big gymnasium, so we couldn’t really communicate. We had to literally shout at each other. I think all of that, unfortunately, meant that we couldn’t build the level of cohesion internally or externally during a very critical, contentious period of time. A sustained critical and contentious period of time. But we did our best.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think it’s actually been well articulated. I will only add, Mark Ford, who -- his father was the former Chief of Police here, an excellent Chief of Police. Mark was an excellent leader. He was one of those first two Superintendents I brought in on rotation along with Joan McKenna. Mark actually was the most experienced Incident Commander and one of the most experienced Critical Incident Commanders. Unfortunately, he retired some six or seven months before the events that we’re going to be substantially focusing on. So that would be one example of many where we had people who had, you know, gone past their pensionable time, had given their life blood, literally, to the organization and to the profession of policing and had made a decision, as many executives in many different parts of civil society, to take their well-earned retirement and go on with their life with their health intact. We celebrated his departure, but he was missing from our team and we really needed our best people to be in the best places possible.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, there’s a -- there’s probably a not police saying about police officers. I suspect it applies to everybody. There’s two things that every cop hates, the way things are, and change, so it was going to be difficult no matter what. Nobody wanted things to remain the way they were and everyone was fearful of change to varying degrees across the full human spectrum, of course. And this wasn’t just a tinker around the edge change mandate. It was to go right to the heart of the culture and to the most difficult parts of that culture, the darker part of that culture, things like systemic racism, systemic misogyny. The trust factor between police and the broader community, but very specifically the racialized and marginalized and indigenous communities here in Ottawa. And those were the most contentious topics in policing for my entire career going back to 1988 in Toronto. Any Chief of Police or any command team that took on any one of those issues would be taking on a major, major challenge. Taking them on in the middle of a global pandemic, in the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement and the defund, abolish police movements just made it that much more complicated. But it was still necessary. It still had to get done. Not because it was my mandate. It was just the right thing to do for policing. It’s what our members actually wanted, and it certainly is what the community wanted.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Committed to the direction, worried and tired from the effort to have travelled as far as they did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I mean, I could answer that in any great specificity. Clearly, there was a range. I think -- I don’t know which one of the witnesses presented -- I think it was Inspector Beaudin from the OPP that talked about the range of crowd dynamics. Human nature is human nature, so no matter what organization you’re in, you’re going to get some five percent that will adopt everything that’s said without questioning, five percent that will resist mightily anything that is said with all sorts of questioning and then some range in between of people that will move if they’re incentivized or if they feel there’s a sufficient altruistic value around it. I think those crowd dynamics play out in any crowd, including the group in this room here today.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My recollection, sir, was a February 13th Hendon Report.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry. January 13th. You may need to check me on dates a little bit. I believe that was a report that came into my inbox for whatever reason that day, and it was an extremely busy period. We were still dealing with a multiple-death explosion in our city that killed some five -- four or five people. But I did have a chance to glance through the report. Certainly there was enough information for me to know that this could be a significant event in the near term. My recollection is that I forwarded that email to Deputy Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. I understand that there hasn’t been an email to show that, but that was my recollection. But irregardless, somewhere on or around February 13th there was a direction to Deputy Chief Bell to commence an intelligence review of all the circumstances around what was being purported to be a convoy coming to our city and to lead the over -- oversee the work of developing an intelligence threat risk assessment that would then inform Acting Deputy Chief Fergson’s assignment to develop the operational plan for the event informed by the intelligence threat risk assessment.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you very much. Just to take a back -- a little step back, all operations, not just Emergency Preparedness and Incident Command or Critical Incident Command, but all of our Operations, from traffic management order management, crime management that we would should be intelligence-led, information, best practices, evidence-based best practices should inform for the most part our systems, our policies, our procedures, our practices, and the evaluation of the outputs and outcomes that came from that. So that was an overarching theme. How it applied within Incident Command, Incident Command Systems, Emergency Preparedness was again, a weather report that says there is going to be rain tomorrow, well let's try to validate that to a greater degree. Is it going to be raining in a city this large? Is it going to be raining and flooding in one part, or is it across the entire city? Because that will then assess the amount of resources we need and the sequence of events we need to apply. That's an analogy, that's not meant as an actual example. So Intelligence-led as much as possible. Understand the nature -- the context of the situation, the factors involved, the nature of the threat, the risk of the threat, the likelihood of it actually taking place, and the resources necessary to mitigate in the first instance and respond to in -- at the back end. And then to recover from, the recovery period, which I suggest this is still a recovery period Commission, with the City of Ottawa and the Country of Canada. Does that answer your question, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. I believe Interim Chief Bell did reference his own views on the advancements that we had made, particularly in the previous year, and he's absolutely correct. That we had made significant advancements around our Intelligence-led approach to our broader Operations, crime, traffic, order management. Order management is a subset, includes Critical Incident Command and Incident Command System. We had made significant strides in making sure our Information section and our Intelligence section were lined up with our Operational sections, and that we had sufficient crime analysis, administrative analysis to execute and continuously improve on those processes. We did not specifically take on Intelligence-led Threat Risk Assessments as a very specific product. Our priorities at that time were crime, traffic, order management was not at the same level. I think in 2021, we had our -- a very high level of gun and gang related shootings, and so crime, traffic was the number one issue in the community, always is no matter what jurisdiction. So those were really our one and two priorities, and order management was probably at the third level. Because we actually had up until that point a very good record, a very good record of planning and implementing plans and successfully ending a range of demonstrations, but we had made progress. I did make it very explicit, particularly, this one I'm not 100 percent sure on, but particularly around the events in mid-2020, when we started to see large events coming into the city, Wet'suwet'en, Black Lives Matter in June, Justice for Abdi in the fall. These are complex, volatile, political, trust factor events that were contentious and could have gone a thousand different directions. I was very, very strong at that point on the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment driving the Operational Plan, and in that period I think we did make some significant moves forward around how the intel TRA threat assessment supported, enabled, enlightened the Operational planning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's my recollection, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. I can't say I read every single line, it was probably more of a skim-through read, but I did read it, yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This is potentially going to be a significant event, that we probably need to get some people working on the Intel side and starting at least to put the framework of a plan in place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my recollection of forwarding it, but that's certainly why I assigned Deputy Chief Bell to lead the overseeing of the Intelligence Risk Assessment and assigned Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson for the Operational Plan. By the way, those were their functional areas of responsibility. Deputy Chief Bell, again, I think has testified that the Intelligence was one of his directorates, and that the Planning Section was one of the directorates that Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson had just inherited. She had just started as the Acting Deputy Chief in January 2022.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I did, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
After that first week, that February 13th week, we may have raised it in discussion at -- I had a regular nine o'clock Command meeting, and whatever the deputies would lead their respective areas of command and talk about major projects, things that should come to my level, I have a general recollection that we would've have discussed it at least once or twice during that first week period. Coming into the second week, the week leading up to the weekend of January -- I'll just remind myself to slow down a little bit -- coming up to the weekend of January 28th, 29th, and 30th, I recall that being almost on a daily basis. And I think towards the end of that week, or middle to the end of that week, we had my nine o'clock meeting and then a separate Command briefing on the Intelligence and planning of the -- of - - around the convoy events.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. Going into that first weekend before the weekend of the arrival, and then through that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My early impressions was there was, to some degree, some doubt as to whether or not this was actually going to materialise.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Going to materialise. Whether this series of convoys, it was focussed I think mainly in the British Columbia area, but whether or not it was actually going to materialise. Clearly, as the days went on and Hendon reports came in, mainstream media, social media started to follow it more, there was certainly a sense that, no, there is going to be something that comes from as far away as St. John's, Newfoundland, and from Vancouver, British Columbia, and other parts in Ontario itself. The briefings that I was getting was that those two areas were working together. Our Intelligence Group were connected in with all of our policing partners, municipally, provincially, and federally. The Ottawa Police Service Intersect Program had been engaged early around information- sharing, intelligence-gathering, Operational Planning, deconfliction coordination. All of those things were sort of standard for any major event that had occurred under my tenure as the Chief of Police, and had been well-established going back some 15 years under previous chiefs of police. So there was nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly things from a process standpoint, I saw what I expected to be the level of communication, coordination internally, communication, coordination with our key partners in the National Capital Region, and even more broadly, given the national scope of what was unfolding, that we were engaged with a range of other police services across the country.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, all of the reports, the briefings that I was receiving through my chain of command was that this was going to be a weekend event, some arriving the Thursday, more arriving the Friday, the bulk arriving for planned or at least scheduled events on the Saturday and the Sunday. That there might be some remnant that would stay behind, but that remnant would be similar to other demonstrations that had come through where people stayed in the National Capital Region for a variety of reasons, but in some cases, setting up small tent cities that would at some point over the subsequent days, weeks, and in some cases months, would be gradually, through a measured approach, with multi-agency involvement from NCR and the City, they would be eventually moved either to a better location or moved back to wherever they had originally come from.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was on the mailing distribution, so it came into my inbox. I could also see there were other Ottawa Police Service members on the distribution. And by that point I had explicitly asked and had been told that members within Deputy Chief Bell's command and Intelligence Directorate were receiving Hendon reports, were involved in Hendon-related briefings, and that those reports were informing the Intersect discussions, the Threat Risk Assessment.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not every day, sir. I would -- if I had the ability I would, again, usually skim through a document. I do recall sort of, in the middle to the back end of that week, on a daily basis, doing a deeper, more full read. But at that point I was anything -- anything that was coming in, including emails from private citizens about this, I would try to skim read and if there was something relevant, I would usually just forward the email over into Deputy Chief Bell’s command, and copy in his Intelligence Directorate Commanders to make sure that they had the information and they could collate that into their larger threat risk assessment.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, the latter. The sum total of everything that I was reading or being briefed on, that was the -- on balance, the assessment.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Maybe -- I’m not sure ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Every Chief of Police or Commissioner is accountable and responsible for everything in the organization. But I had delegated, specifically delegated those responsibilities to the two individuals, Deputy Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson to oversee and ensure that there was an appropriate level of threat risk assessment and forming an appropriate level operational plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. On any issue, whether it was an HR matter or a Professional Standards Investigation, if at any point there was a data point or a context issue, something that didn’t seem to make sense, I would always ask a question, just to make sure that I understood the circumstances that they were dealing with. And if appropriate, I could provide advice, or direction, as required.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s entirely the direction that he had; that was his responsibility.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just I want to be clear about something; Deputy Chief Bell, himself, wasn’t to sit down at his desk and conduct a threat risk assessment. But through the resources and the Directorates that he oversaw, to oversee that there was an appropriate threat risk assessment; yes, that was his directions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that was a best practice that I had learned and developed over the course of my tenure in Toronto and other areas. It was something that was, to some degree already -- significant degree already in place here in Ottawa. But I wanted it at the highest level possible. And I think Deputy Chief Ferguson -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson gave that in her testimony, that that was a clear expectation that I had made coming in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’ve seen a document in disclosure that is titled Threat Assessment. I don’t recall receiving and reading that document. I did read the Threat Assessment that was embedded in the Pre-arrival Operational Plan that I received on January 28th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, what I’m referring -- sorry ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir. What I’m referring to, I believe, is it just a briefing note. I don’t know what that would have been in the form of. It could have been an email that was sent around before, last night that had -- that that said there was no intelligence to indicate this was going to be violent. But it wasn’t the threat risk assessment document in any of its versions that I was referring to.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And I laid out a series of, I guess, it’s four points here of data that had come into my awareness over the course of the night into the morning, including the email that I forwarded, that would suggest opposite. So it was, again, just a reminder; there’s contradictory information, just make sure that that is incorporated into the overall threat risk assessment, and that is as optimal as it can be, so that the plan can be as optimal as it can be.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s the first time I’m seeing the document, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At this point I wouldn’t say unprecedented. I think he’s -- actually, Sgt. Chris Kiez is one of our best Intelligence operators; I had a chance to interact with him quite a bit when I was at the Police Service. I think he actually uses some very important language here that caveats his comments. Talks about “recent” years, “not ever”. And he does that several times in here. The -- what he is describing is very accurate. We’re seeing, generally in protests, I’d suggest over the last 15 years, in the age of social media, a greater level of mobilization. And increasingly last decade, a greater level of -- a variety of funding and logistical support. This email took me back to Idle No More, the -- oh, my gosh, my memory's failing a little bit, Commissioner, sorry, but the Occupy Movement, where these sort of sentiments, crowd size, crowd dynamics, logistics, mobilization, larger disaffected populations, polarized populations that would give direct or indirect support, would directly protest or indirectly protest. I'm slowing myself down a little bit here. These were elements that we had seen. What Sergeant Chris Kiez is saying in here, my interpretation of it, is that the planners need to be aware this is likely going to be bigger than recent events. He didn't give a timeframe. Is that two years? Is that 10 years? And so we need to be cognizant. So it's a good alarm bell, but it's not a five alarm that he's ringing right now.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
A very ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- very healthy warning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, first of all, the deputies would ensure that this information is being shared amongst the planners, as was directed from an Intelligence operator over to the planners. I would want to know that they had sufficient systems in place, that when a briefing note like this was produced, that it would go from the Intelligence Directorate to the Planning Team, and that it would be, again, used in real time as they were developing plan in real time. And these are real time systems. It's not one first and then the other. In real time, information is coming in, very fluid, very fast moving, very complex situation. My sense from the briefings that I was getting was that that process was in place, and it was functioning sufficiently.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On a specific level like this, no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I saw Hendon reports that had elements of both, sir. Again, elements of both. And the totality of all of the Hendon reports that were specifically prepared on the topic of the convoy events prior to the arrival of the events themselves, I would literally have to go back through them all. And I think you and I have talked about this in previous interviews. A line in one report, unless you've read the entire report, can be misleading. One report, unless you've read all the reports, could be misleading. So it's the totality of the information. And even then, the Hendon reports, as excellent as they were, and, Commissioner, I want to be clear, I've expressed my gratitude to Commissioner Carrique on multiple occasions, even after my resignation, about the quality of the intelligence support that we received from the OPP and specifically around the quality of the Hendon reports. But in the totality, sir, I do not recall, and to this day, even with the benefit of hindsight, I do not have any clear impression or saw any clear conclusions that we were going to have anything more than what I was being briefed on by my team. This was going to be a Thursday, Friday, mainly Saturday, Sunday event, with the potential for a smaller group to remain behind, but in numbers that we had managed previously.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Known unknowns. They know they need some information, but they do not have the information and therefore can't validate the other parts of the assessment and that there needs to be some effort to acquire that information and convert it into intelligence sufficient to close one or all of the gaps.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's how I interpret it, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That we're going to have two days of activities. That they don't know what those activities will be on those two days.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You're absolutely right. In the larger context of all of the Intelligence information -- sorry, what was the date of this report again?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm certain that by the 25th of January, we were into the cycle of briefings where this is a 3, 4-day event, mainly the Saturday, Sunday, so even at the point where these known unknowns were being listed, while we couldn't tell you what the agenda of the activities were going to be, there would be some activities. There would be people demonstrating in the city. It would involve some level of vehicular traffic, likely involving large trucks. But you're right, none of the information in these known unknowns fills in hour by hour or block by block of time as to what exactly would take place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, that actually almost reflects I want to say word by word, but certainly the sentiment of some of the intelligence that was in the Hendon reports. I can't remember the date of that. I do believe, and, again, I stand to be corrected, Commissioner, evidence in-Chief was led by Interim Chief Bell that talked about the heavy equipment. There were efforts made to interdict, to prevent that from coming in or at least mitigate it. And I believe he said that this is not information I had as the time of Chief, so I'm relying on Interim Chief Bell's testimony, that in fact much of that heavy equipment did not make it into the downtown core and he described differently some of the equipment that did make it down there than what has been reported on previously in media.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. I mean, it could be as simple as I think a term that other people have given testimony on. Just need to kick the tires on different parts. Just make sure you ask questions at different levels, strategic, operational, and, yes, sometimes tactical, to make sure that they're aware of it and they have put some effort into it and there's a reasonable approach to how they're going to address it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
To answer your question, no. If you’re asking -- and I don’t want to interpret wrongly your question, so if I go in the wrong direction please pull me back, as the signals became stronger and stronger, what I would expect is, first I would know the signals were getting stronger, and clearly, we did. Secondly, that whether I asked about it or someone offered it, that we would have a constructive discussion around mitigation for those signals. I can tell you, I think it was -- well, I can tell you. I think it was the Wednesday that I received my first formal request through Acting Deputy Ferguson to reach out to fellow Chiefs of Police and request additional resources. If I’m wrong on the date, Commissioner, I’ll stand corrected, but middle of the week, I reached out to London Police Service, York, I believe, Toronto asking for general resource officers, but particularly Public Order officers. It’s my recollection, again, I stand to be corrected, that around this date or on this date, I had another request to reach out for more Public Order. I believe in Commissioner Carrique’s testimony that he was aware of that request. He had two Public Order units that were sent to Ottawa. I don’t believe they were under our ICS control, but they were in the Ottawa area and available. So that is what I would call Inspector Lucas signalling we might be overwhelmed by the numbers, we’ll need to bolster our abilities to not be overwhelmed. Particularly that would be Public order assets, and I had a specific request to get more Public Order assets and I made that request in this case to Commissioner Carrique. And thankfully, as he did -- provided those resources as quickly as he could.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
First of all, while I have the greatest respect for Inspector Bernier, he was not involved directly in the planning or the intelligence threat risk assessment. Police services and organizations are wonderful places. Everyone has an opinion. The briefings that I was getting from the commanders that had been assigned to the task, the people that they had assigned through their responsibilities to produce the information, some of which is displayed on the screen here, did not indicate that there was a bizarre disconnection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think they were. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. An important question, Commissioner. If I’m going -- deviating too far, please pull me back. But probably one of my top recommendations for you to consider, sir, while we had excellent intelligence and particularly excellent support from the Ontario Provincial Police, this was, from the very onset, a national issue. It was a national event. It started in British Columbia. It was joined on the east coast and it brought convoys from the southernmost point in Windsor. Probably the greatest number of participants and vehicles and vehicles came from our border with Quebec across the five interprovincial bridges. The vast majority of the formal intelligence threat risk assessment reports that we relied on came from the Ontario Provincial Police. To this day, I have a question. Why wasn’t I getting intelligence threat risk assessments on a regular basis of the quality that I got from the OPP from our federal partners? And I want to be clear, they contributed meaningfully and I’m grateful for their contributions. But I’ve said this in the Parliamentary committees and I’ll say it again to the Commissioner. There’s a structural deficit in our national intelligence threat risk assessment process. I’m grateful for the Ontario Provincial Police for filling that gap and doing so to the very best of their ability, but it was not optimal for us or any other jurisdiction that faced any element of these events. And one of my recommendations, sir, with great respect, is that there needs to be an investment in our national intelligence threat risk assessment structure organizationally, institutionally, through integrated organizations and institutions. Some of that will be a financial investment, but it doesn’t all have to be a financial investment. It needs to be an investment to bring this country truly into the 21st century where we are two decades, two and a half decades in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There is no doubt, sir. And I’m sure you will ask me multiple times over the course of my testimony could we have done better. Absolutely. I never had a chance to do a debrief. I suspect -- I understand that Interim Chief Bell has conducted some or completed one. I’m not sure of the status. And I’m sure within that document there will be many, many, many examples of how we could have done better and need to do better going forward. I believe in his testimony lessons were already learned and applied to subsequent demonstrations, so if you’re - - long way of answering, there’s no doubt that we could have done some things better.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Low-hanging fruit, and I believe it’s already been rectified to some degree. A substantive element of our intelligence and information directorates, I would suggest even in other functional units and directorates, the ability for us to conduct open source social media and other online information gathering with the caveats of Charter rights, privacy rights. Absolutely, that would have to be a very transparent process. I stand to be corrected, but when I became Chief of Police, we actually had a unit that would have, by description and definition, fulfilled much of that function. Not all of it. It was either zero percent staffed or staffed by one person because we did not have the financial resources to put human beings into those budgeted positions. We didn’t have the internal skill sets even if we could find a human being to sit in there. I believe that’s been rectified to some significant degree based on testimony from Interim Chief Bell, but that is something it took me almost a full year, two years to convince the Toronto Police Service to do, and this is going back 2010-2011 after the events of the G20 -- actually, before and after when we finally got our first -- it was called a cyber group, but really, it was for pre-intelligence and post- investigative online capabilities. There are very few police services anywhere in Canada, municipal, provincial. OPP is an exception. I don’t know about Sureté du Québec. RCMP and the OPP are the only -- and Toronto Police Service are the only ones that I would comfortably describe as a reasonable extending to optimal level of capability in that area. The Ottawa Police Service did not have that capability.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, with this caveat. I’m a police officer, not a lawyer.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, I did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; yes. Yes. Sorry, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, first of all, just an observation. Deputy Chief Bell made the request on the 27th. Again, if you recall my earlier testimony, this was a four-day event, starting on the 27th, continuing to the 28th, which is the Friday, with the main events on the 29th and 30th, the Saturday and Sunday. This legal opinion, while helpful to a degree, arrived technically in the middle of what we were already dealing with. There were already vehicles in the city, protest vehicles. There were already protesters and demonstrators in the city as we were receiving, reading, and considering this. This did not arrive a week before, or even a day before; this was already in the middle of the events. With that caveat, this is helpful. It certainly articulates to a greater degree what I think most of the police officers, and even my general counsel, Christiane Huneault, would have known and could have articulated differently. It’s not definitive; it’s advice, not direction. I understand that’s counsel’s job, but there isn’t a definitive line that says, “Because there might be any level of any one of these five points you therefore must go to some substantive interdiction, prevention, blocking of the events that are going to happen.” Again, language is important, and I think you and I have talked about this before. The reference of the lawyer who draft this says, “The convoy” I believe. There wasn’t one convoy, ever. There were multiple convoys and there were multiple other individuals and small groups, and I think Supt. Morris used better language than I will but affiliated groups that joined or left on a daily basis. I’m always mindful when I read, particularly advice documents that use a pejorative term, when what we were dealing with in reality was a massive group of fluid interacting individuals and groups where there is no one leader, no one spokesperson and no one thing to deal with. This was helpful, but not particularly instructive.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe I recall seeing that number by Inspector ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- with your indulgence; Commissioner, with your indulgence? I do want to be clear, though; what was listed in those five points materially happened on Saturday, the 29th. Those -- I think Deputy Bell gave excellent evidence on his own; I won’t repeat his testimony. But what we saw in terms of a violation of our community’s rights, our business community’s rights, the level of unlawfulness, and assaultiveness [sic], in the broadest sense of that terms, including the literal sense of that term, was not what we expected, and was overwhelming, not just for the Ottawa Police Service; most importantly, it was overwhelming for those communities that were most directly impacted by those events that weekend and every other day after that. So this was helpful because it, to some degree, anticipated -- anticipated -- that there would be competing Charter rights; there would be significant mobility challenges; there would be an impact on our emergency services in the ways that they were described theoretically on the page. So there was usefulness in this exercise. It was just a little too little, and already in the middle of the events that were still unfolding around us.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. And as I’m reviewing this document and we’re having this dialogue; all of these things were actually within the operational plan. I believe Insp. Lucas has given evidence to you, sir, that he considered that number; he considered it, that through the combination of the PLT negotiations engaged by OPP and OPS officers, that there were agreements made with as many of the convoys as possible that would significantly reduce the impact of such events by parking trucks and arranging bus or rideshare into the downtown core that would alleviate much of this; that they recognized that emergency lanes need to be kept open; there were significant amounts of planning, detailed out on the traffic plan and other plans. Again, evidence led by many others in that regard. The Ottawa Police Service were neither ignorant of this; and, more importantly, they had taken steps to reasonably mitigate this, based significantly on the intelligence and information available; and ,as we’ve heard by other OPS members, including Insp. Lucas, Deputy Chief Bell, based on the previous experience they had with similar types of events in a reasonable similar timeframe. So I think, again, this was an informative document; it validated much of what we were thinking; it provided a more clearly articulated legal basis for what we were thinking; and we put in place the mitigation pieces that I felt were reasonably presented to me in advance of this, and we had the support of an excellent group from the OPP and their PLT as well. We’ve heard that unfortunately, the majority of those agreements were broken. Let me be careful of my language, and I believe, sir, it was Insp. Lucas that gave an insight that I was only aware of in his testimony. I believe it was the Windsor convoy that arrived first, and largest, into the city and occupied the majority of the red zone area along the Parliamentary district. Once that happened, the convoy’s -- again, relying on Insp. Lucas’s testimony, if I get any of this wrong, I will walk that back. But once that happened, Insp. Lucas described something, I think he called it, like, a chaotic scramble of convoys breaking off and going anywhere. The traffic plan collapsed. The extra resources held in reserve had to be immediately actioned to try to get the agreements that were in place, get the trucks to the designated parking zones. None of that was accomplished in the morning of, and I guess the early afternoon of Saturday the 29th. The Windsor group had claimed, for the most part, Wellington Street and the Parliamentary District, and everybody else wanted to get as close to that as possible. I shouldn’t say everybody else. A lot of other participants for almost the full duration of that event, tried to get to that most prized and prolific public place. And that was another complicating factor on our operations, our traffic plans, our PLT operations, even our POU operations. So I think we had an informative legal opinion sought at a reasonably early opportunity, received literally in the middle of the event, certainly within less than 24 hours. Stop me if I’m going on too much, sir. But my last point in this, and it’s a what-if, and I don’t want to engage in too much conjecture, but other witnesses have provided this what-if. I believe Deputy Chief Bell talked about this. Assuming that even on the 28th, Commissioner, that we decided to lock down the city, close off all the interprovincial bridges and the offramps from the 416 and 417 highways, we would have needed, in Deputy Chief Bell’s estimation, 2,000 officers. I think it would have actually been more. Even if that was our wish, even if that was the clearest conclusion that came from any of the Hendon Reports or any other combination of intelligence or legal opinions, on the 28th of January, we were not going to get 2,000 extra officers into the city and deployed on a plan that could execute and implement anything that relates to this.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On the 29th, sir. Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Two things. First of all, we did take active steps. Roads were closed. We’ve heard repeated testimony from OPS and OPP senior officers that there were efforts to manage the convoy’s on-route and on the King’s Highways. A new term. I’m so used to the Queen’s Highways. But the King’s Highways. And so there were mitigation efforts. Second thing, and it does relate to the first, the biggest mitigation effort was the work of the excellent PLT teams, from the OPP, which is best in class PLT program in the country. I hope I haven’t disrespected my RCMP colleagues, but that’s a humble opinion. Take it for what it’s worth. They have an excellent PLT program. But our PLT was engaged. I believe from Commissioner Carrique’s evidence, or it might have been Commissioner Abram’s evidence, engaged as the western convoys crossed Manitoba, and they were engaged with all the other convoys. So PLT had negotiated, in good faith, and had received good faith agreements, small A agreements, because I don’t think it's a contract, that the 3,000 trucks would be mitigated substantially by their willingness to move those trucks into pre-designated areas and carpool, for lack of a better term, into the core. They had agreed not to block the emergency lanes. We had no indication, even on this date, that we were going to have the type of public display of unlawfulness, a terrible term, and my English teacher will turn over in grave, assualtiveness [sic] in the broadest sense, sensory, as well as physical. Hate related incidents that we saw materialize and metastasize on the 29th into the 30th and beyond.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- fast and furious.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In preparing for today, I read through some of my notes and I think I shared with my counsel, I was reading the 9:00 o’clock briefing on the Saturday morning. Whether you find this as validation or not, Commissioner, but the 9:00 o’clock briefing that I received on the Saturday morning, the 29th, was still talking about a weekend event. It described we might have a tent city at the end of this. Tent city in the vernacular, meaning that we would have some five, six, seven, eight, maybe 20 tents somewhere in an NCR park, Confederation Park, and that we would need to remove it, as we had in previous ways. And I’d seen that done during my tenure. There is a bit of a back and forth that I’m quoted in as saying, well, can we make sure that we have our ESU, which is our Emergency Services Unit, down on the ground, and when everybody -- when anybody brings out a tent, can we, in a very smiling and polite way, ask them not to put their tent up so we have less work to do after the weekend? That is literally the substantive assessment. Traffic plan is working, PLT agreements are in place, convoys are arriving, officers are ready to go, INTERSECT is stood up, NCRCC is stood up, and we might have a bit of a tent city to deal with. That is consistent with all of the briefings, intelligence, and operational, on balance, in summary, that I had been receiving up until that point. That wasn’t the case probably by 11:00 o’clock in the morning. It happened that quick.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My understanding and my observation was by 11:00 o’clock, we had a significantly embedded, clearly beginning to occupy, and in some cases fortify, elements of Wellington Street, the Parliamentary District, and other parts of our downtown core, that we were not able to maintain the agreed level of cooperation with the various convoys and that the traffic plan and the staffing and reserve staffing was significantly, if not already, fully exhausted. I do not have the detailed descriptions that have been provided in testimony here around what was taking place in the NCRCC, and I can’t validate or invalidate the level of chaos and potentially the occasional F-bomb that might have been thrown around in that room of dedicated professionals who were having been, excuse my term, punched right in the nose and engaged in a standing eight count, trying to get the city back to a level of safety as quickly as they can, and also trying to keep our Ottawa Police Service members and our partner agency members, our city workers, residents, business owners as safe as they possibly could in a set of circumstances that, at this point, sir, clearly was unprecedented. Clearly was unprecedented.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The morning, early afternoon of the 29th, which essentially stayed on a steady state with varying degrees of crowd dynamic and other injects, like alcohol and drugs, into the evening. But that was pretty well the next 72 hours.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s a very polite description.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
However many convoys there were, that’s how many firehoses were coming. Add 10 more firehoses for all the other odds and sides that showed up, with three more firehoses in for the minus 35-degree temperature, four or five more for the level of fatigue that our officers already had going into those events, 43 more firehoses for the level of public trust in policing based on all the events that I outlined earlier on, and I think that’s a more accurate assessment of the amount of water that we were taking on at that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I received an estimate. I never made the estimate. As high as 5,000 trucks and 15,000 participants is the upper end number that I received -- I recall receiving on the Saturday. I said 5,000 trucks. I want to be careful. 5,000 vehicles, predominately trucks, but that might have included a range of other vehicles that I can’t detail for you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My understanding through testimony is that they managed to keep the Wellington lane -- I always get this confused, the south lane open for much of that day. I don’t know if they lost it for portions or at some point between the Saturday or the Sunday they lost it or made a decision to close off Wellington and then create an emergency lane access egress through other street combinations. I’m not clear on the details, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s a very important question and I think it was touched on at some point in testimony. The downtown core was like, clearly was the epicentre and hyper volatile, hyper complex, like I won't be able to provide adjectives, so I'll just leave it at that. But you could drive south of the 416, is that right, 417, into literally still downtown neighbourhoods, and you would hear honking and you'd see, unfortunately, Canada flags stuck on vehicles and behaviour that was clearly anti-social, but it dropped off significantly once you got south of the 417. Further out into the Kanata's and the other parts, there were probably micro things happening, I'm never really sure of it. So the City would be aware of it, it would be obviously on TV. Social media is exploding at this point and people are dialled in to what's going on, but from a physical standpoint, physical location, you know, 98 percent of it was in a micro concentration, hyper concentration of activity, and trauma, unfolding trauma to our community in the heart of our city, in the heart of the Parliamentary District. And I don't want in any way forget, I know there are federal representatives here, but the trauma impacted on federal employees, elected officials, public officials, the entire infrastructure and ecosystem that represents our Nation's Capital, the Parliamentary District, and the, I believe Mr. Champ quoted, 18 or 15,000 residents in that aera. I don't know how many businesses, I know the Rideau Centre was closed. All of that happened literally within hours, and the relief did not come I believe until February 17th, 18th or 19th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
First of all, I'll never challenge the feelings of a member of our community, they're their feelings, they're as righteous and as accurate as they need to be for the human being that expressed them. So I'm no way challenging wherever that sentiment came from. I can tell you that I met with, spoke with, walked around, and talked with many of the residents, the business owners, I was at a Business Improvement Association meeting that was referenced by one of the witnesses, and I heard a range of sentiments. I saw a range of responses from incredibly resilient and understanding and patient people. An elderly couple, both of them infirm and wheelchairs, travelling through that minus 35 degree temperature, stopped me as I was getting out of my SUV, while doing a live call on a board meeting, on February 1st, I believe, and talked to me. I had -- I think Chair Deans was talking, and I was literally talking to this couple, "Chief, we know your guys are doing the best you can. Please, it's hard for us to get around the sidewalks. We're trying to do our shopping. We know this is really tough on your team, please do your best for us." So yes, I heard expressions of hopelessness, I heard accusations of abandonment, but I would say the vast majority that I received directly to me was around resilience and patience. "Get this thing resolved as quickly as you can, as completely as you can", but resilience. And a level of understanding as to what the officers on the ground, and I don't say just officers, the members of our organisation. The partners that were deployed already from OPP, RCMP, London, God bless them. I think people understood how difficult it was, but they didn't see the situation resolving in a day, in two days. And I think it's reasonable for people to feel really aggrieved that there isn't a clear solution or a timeline to a clear solution that they could tangibly see and anticipate, and we were simply not in a position to provide that to them ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- at that time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This is always a little tricky part for me, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir. It's okay. They were doing their very best under inhuman circumstances, like the city was, like the community was. It was too cold and it was too much. But they did their very best. And I'm grateful to them. And they should be celebrated. Not celebrated, that's the wrong word. They should be understood.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I've given this testimony in Parliamentary Standing Committees. The level of disinformation and misinformation was off the charts. It was crushing to the members' morale, it was crushing to the Incident Command Team's morale, it was crushing to my Executive Team's morale, I suspect it was crushing to the Board. It was crushing to everybody. It was unrelenting. It was 24 hours a day. And I think by the end of the weekend it had become a global story that mainstream media was following, and none of it was portraying in any way accurate the hard work of the men and women of the Ottawa Police Service and the partner agencies that stood with us. None of it. To this day it hasn't. And that is very unfortunate because public trust and confidence in any police service I believe is the number one public safety factor. When any Police Service loses significantly public trust and confidence, that in of itself is a massive public safety threat and risk. It materialises in so many ways. I don't know if the Commissioner wants me to expand on that, but I'm happy to do so. And unfortunately, as quickly as the events unfolded on the morning and the afternoon of the Saturday, public opinion against the Ottawa Police Service and its members turned just as quickly and to the same unprecedented levels that were unrelenting, at least from my entire experience, up until February 15th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's just respect for your profession.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My view is it was unlawful the moment a law was broken in or relation to the events. And so for me, that was clearly the Saturday morning. I don't want to in any way interpret Deputy Chief -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson's impression. I think I would position the 31st as we now know this is going to be a longer-term occupation. There are fortifications and there are -- there is alarming level of public safety issues at large and we're going to have to pivot our plan to now address the current context and near future context that we're going to be dealing with. So it's in that context that perhaps -- again, I don't want to misinterpret, but perhaps the full Command is fully on the same page and the Incident Command Team is pivoting the plan now into the next phase of this occupying period.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know if there's any significant decision. I mean, we needed a much -- we needed a significant update on the intelligence threat risk. Much of that was in place in the buildup and iterations, but we now need it to escalate to another level. And again, that cycle of intelligence threat risk assessment to then feed the pivoting operational plan to what extent are we going to need different resources, greater levels of resources in one area versus another area, and to what extent do we need to build out sub- plans and other things. For me at the Chief of Police level is what resources are we going to need. What do I now need to do to inform and/or engage other levels including the oversight body of the Ottawa Police Services Board, the City of Ottawa and other factors. And I will be -- I was still trying to understand really what had just arrived in our city, what really was it, and even just level set my own understanding, never mind the work that was being done on behalf of me through Deputies Bell and Acting Deputy Ferguson.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understand -- I think I understand the theme behind it. I would probably use different language, but I think it's definitely a what just happened, how do we now need to reorient, to reassess, and then start to address the situation going forward.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, there was no need for a new plan. There was a need for an evolution of the plan that we had, an evolution of the threat risk assessment that was in that plan. Again, I want to make it clear, there was only ever one plan. There were many iterations of it. There was only ever one threat risk assessment. There were many iterations of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On the Monday the 31st?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably the number one thing at that point was staffing, staffing, staffing, staffing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, without the -- with the absence of my notes, but as simple as how many more officers can we redeploy from our overall complement of policing a city of a million people in the nation's largest municipal geography to that micro-ore of the red zones and the immediate neighbourhoods around it. I think, by that point -- again, I stand to be corrected if the records say otherwise, but that point, we had already started to look at changing our shift hours to create a greater volume of officers available, officers and civilian members. I don't know if we had, at that point, reached out to the Association, the Ottawa Police Association to start to negotiate a whole different shift schedule. That might have come later on in the week, but that was the focus, and then external resource requests that went to OPP and other police services to send additional resources atop of what they had provided us already.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Predominantly, it sort of happens at two levels. You know, the agency-to-agency relationships would already be, you know, phone calls and text messages to people that they knew in other agencies. You know, you'll get something formal from the Chief, but we need X, Y and Z. And then the formal request would come up through Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson and then I would make a reach out to the respective agencies. So probably my approach for the main may have deviated every now and then, would be a text message to the Chief of Police or Commissioner, saying that you'll be getting a formal request, but I'm looking for X or Y or Z. And then my executive assistant would produce the document and I would forward that formally. But once I got a positive response, the positive response I would then forward to our Legal Services Department, and they would go through the process of enabling a memorandum of understanding, an MOU.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe by the 31st, I'm certain there was -- I'm really off base, but Coutts, Alberta was already in play at that point. On the Monday, I don't recall any other Ontario sites. I don't even think the announcement of the -- no, on the Monday -- oh, sorry, on the Tuesday, by then, there might have been some sort of indication that there would be an event in Toronto around Queen's Park.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But I don't think there was any other active sites in Ontario. There were, I believe, some demonstrations at other provincial capitals across the country, but for sure, Coutts was active and clearly being televised and we're seeing I was getting briefings from Commissioner Lucki on the events out there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So maybe I could just give some context to the meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So this is the Tuesday. We are into the -- significantly into the pivot at this point. I had received varying levels of input, some of them just random emails, some of them very specific conversations with people with a lot of experience in unprecedented, unusual public safety events. And the validation that I was getting from small i information to large I information based on expertise was this was unprecedented. This was larger than your police service is going to be able to handle. It was national, and in some cases, international in scope. It was fueled by significant funding, significant misinformation, disinformation and polarization, just to name a few. This meeting was my first attempt to sit down with Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson as the Major Incident Commander. I had invited -- I'd asked for Inspector Lucas to be at the meeting. He could not attend, and I respect his reason, although I don't know it specifically. I think Inspector Marin was sent as his designate, I think, but he was a senior officer from the ICS team that was there, Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll, who was the ESU Commander, our POU Commander. And he ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Emergency Safety Unit, I think, or Emergency Services Unit. Sorry, it's been a little bit of time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Essentially, but broader -- I think actually a broader use of trained officers that are actually more effectively deployed, a really good practice here that Ottawa should be recognized for, Ottawa Police Service should be recognized for. And I had brought with me the two PLT supervisors because I had information, feedback internally that our PLT members weren't being optimally used and were feeling out of the loop of substantive discussions like this. And I had requested that the two supervisors be there, and they were there, and you see their contributions later on in the notes. But this is the substantive first time that I'm sitting down with the Incident Command thread, strategic, operational and tactical, asking what are you folks seeing? How are you assessing this? No decision's being made here. I need situational awareness. I need your assessment. We had been blessed with commanders of some expertise and experience from other jurisdictions that were in that room. I think London was there, can't remember if Durham. I believe there was an OPP commander. I can't recall, but there were at least three other agencies in the room. So it wasn't just us talking to us. There was a healthy amount of external expertise. And we went through what I would call -- I won't say it's a whiteboarding session, but a consultation, discussion session that I wanted to get at some point to, okay, well, this is good. Now what's the move forward coming out from this? So that's the context of this meeting. I'll pause there if you want to come back to the question that you wanted me to ask -- answer.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So around -- I'd say around the mid point of that meeting, I would have almost turned to Michel Marin and Mike Stoll, who were sitting to my right, and said, "What's the level of POU that you would think we would need to start to dismantle the red zone and end the occupation?" And then there was, like, a real-time discussion between my folks and the other POU commanders in the room, but there were others that were chiming in. It was mainly a POU discussion, and I've been in them in many other times before, so I know how this feels. I just sort of sat back and watched this new generation of experts do their thing, and it was kind of cool to watch. And within a really short period of time, it was almost unanimous. This may not be the exact language, but it was close to it, we're going to need everything in Ontario and a bunch more from across Canada. That was one of the moments where I truly understood the scale of what we were facing. Everything in Ontario and a bunch more from across Canada for me was state visits, an Olympic event, G8, G20. Nothing else requires that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's when I truly understand from people with amazing expertise, from different jurisdictions, add onto that whatever other resources we're going to request, that's somewhere already in the range of 6, 7, 800 officers plus investigators, plus boots on the ground officers, plus dispatchers, analysts, special constables to handle mass arrests. The number is going to be well north of a thousand, and it's way more than we will ever be able to supply within the Ottawa Police Service, within the eastern region of Ontario, within the province.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know. I'm assuming this is the PLT contribution to the discussion, so I don’t -- these aren’t my notes, and it doesn’t seem to be attributed to one or both of the supervisors. I don’t know if this is their briefing contributing in totality, so I’m not sure what that means.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, there were some 20 people in the room and it was really an open forum discussion with people just contributing ideas in a very fluid way.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry. Can you -- I’m just not sure the context or date or time of this, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
“Call with Mayor”, and the time stamp, at least from the entry, is 1:30. Okay. Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Fortunato.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s my Executive Assistant, or was my Executive Assistant.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At this point, I actually didn’t have an assigned scribe, so I was trying in real time to capture information around conversations that I thought were important or a point that I was trying to remember, so it’s not a consistent practice with every single meeting that I would go back and do this. That’s the context of the note. I don’t know if that answers your question, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Some of it. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I can guess what’s coming, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There may be not be a policing solution to this.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
For all the reasons that we’ve talked about. The size and scale of the events were not going to be able to be handled by any one police of jurisdiction, certainly not mine. That this was a national scope event started from corners of all parts of Canada and arrived in our city. It was already, by the 2nd, in several other locations, Kutz, specifically, I think by the 2nd. There would have been some indication that Queens Park in Toronto would have been a location. This was borne out by a wide variety of polarizing issues, not the least of which was the vaccine mandates, but there were many other anti-government sentiments expressed at all three levels of government. And some of this was just people looking to come into our city and participate in an event, to have an unruly and, in many cases, unlawful party. This was the underpinnings that created this event and brought it substantially into our city. We’re well beyond the Police Services Act mandate of me as a Police Chief and the Ottawa Police Service and the police of jurisdiction, and we were going to have to engage other elements of civil society and likely all three levels of government to make in some way a meaningful contribution to a sustainable solution to the end of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe there was a -- I can’t remember if it was a Board meeting or if it was a Council meeting that the Board was in attendance at. There was a range of questions for hours, and at some point one of the questions elicited that response.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If there are 35 million people in Canada, probably 35 million different ways.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. Largely misunderstood but, by a lot of people, very understood.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
A lot.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It needed to be more clear.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That the Ottawa Police Service is doing and will continue to do everything we possibly can do. Just to be clear, that was literally the substantive answer I was giving during that meeting. All options are on the table. We’re doing everything we can. We’re calling all the staffing we can. We are rearranging our plan. We’re calling out to our partners. So before that statement was made -- it wasn’t made in a vacuum. We were hours into a long meeting with multiple questions from multiple stakeholders. I believe my Board were present. I stand to be corrected. City Councillors, the Mayor, “What are you doing? How are you going to end this? When is it going to end?” Please understand, we’re doing everything we can and we’ll continue to do everything we can on a repeat loop, but at some point this isn’t going to end just by the Ottawa Police Service. Even if we could find a way to get all the resources we need, it’s going to come back again next week, the month after, Canada Day. This is a larger movement or series of movements. This is a trend that’s happening across the country and around the world, and so there needs to be more than just a policing solution to it. That’s the context. Now, I did reflect on it and in the days and weeks and now months after that I’ve, in opportunities like this, expanded on that short phrase. I think there’s ample documentation in my notes, note scribes, to talk about me explaining this further to the Chair, at Board meetings, in other conversations and meetings. So I didn’t just leave it till now to provide a more fulsome explanation. Within hours and days of it, I was trying to provide that more fulsome explanation to my Board oversight and to other public bodies and civil actors.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, like my earlier comment, sir, everyone is entitled to their opinion and is certainly entitled to their feelings. And I can understand that if that was the only thing they heard from me and they were not available to hear all the other efforts I made to clarify that, that that could leave them with a sense that we’d just given up. So I’m not challenging that. But let me clear. I don’t know if that is different from any other statement I’ve made around the role of policing in society. If you recall my earlier comments when I introduced my approach to policing and how I did it, the police are not going to solve guns and gangs and drugs on their own without education, health care, social services, the volunteer sector, communities themselves. The police are not going to be able to solve sexual assaults on their own without advocacy groups and legislative change. So there isn’t any major aspect of policing, crime management, order management, traffic management -- even traffic management, we can’t patrol the amount of highways unless we have bylaw changes, signage changes, engineering changes that are well beyond the remit of the police service to demand and deliver. So for me, this is a consistent them that I have spoken on and acted in accordance throughout my entire policing career. It wasn’t, for me, an unusual statement, but it was heard in unusual and unprecedented circumstances and misinterpreted broadly, badly.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t rule that out, sir, but I think I made enough efforts after that to clarify that and, demonstrably, the Ottawa Police Service kept -- with its partners, kept putting out everything we possibly could for as long as we could, I would very strongly suggest well past where we should have been. Our actions should have spoken louder than words, but unfortunately, by Saturday afternoon, there had been a cemented narrative and I don’t think it ever changed. My statement probably didn’t help it, but I don’t think it was really changeable from that first weekend.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, if their comment was based on what was said without the benefit of hearing all the other explanations, I certainly attempted, through the larger calls, to establish the things I just talked about. We are still looking -- we are still doing everything we can. We’re seeking all the help we can. And if we can get 1,800 resources, or whatever number the final amount is to come in, then we could take care of the unlawful aspects of this. But there were broader implications and underpinnings that could bring it back to my city or any other city or jurisdiction. And so sustainably, to resolve the situation, we were still going to need larger civil society, all three levels of government. I don’t know if this is the time to interject around any of the levels of declarations of emergency, municipal, provincial, or federal, but clearly we had indications, and I believe that there were assistances from those various levels, the injunction, the private injunction. And so there are clearly examples where some additional efforts were needed beyond the efforts of the police to resolve it. Local community mobilized themselves in mostly constructive ways. In some ways, less constructive. But there were efforts across the board, from private citizens to public institutions, that contributed ultimately to that success. While I respect the comments of my peers, I want to be careful with my language here, I don’t know any major operation, including that one, that did not benefit material from the supports outside of police organizations themselves. And I think that’s unfair to the contributions made by broader civil society, including all three levels of government.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know if that’s what they intended in their comments. I want to be clear about that. but no police organization of any size, operation of any size, that I’ve ever been involved with, that had the clear level of success, no deaths, no serious injuries, no significant damage to infrastructure, no rioting, no burning police cars. I don’t know if any size operation that didn’t materially benefit from the consent and cooperation of citizenry, the injections of material resources or advice, expertise, from other experts outside of policing, legislative change, et cetera, et cetera.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I did recall it was the 1st, but I’m not going to quibble.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. In terms of the surge of numbers, and then the extra dynamics of convoys coming in or not coming in. definitely larger in scale, and more complex.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think on that date, I received a briefing on the three options I’d asked for from the meeting on February 1st, the POU options. So that’s a substantive subplan development. By then, we’d had major changes around our internal staffing capabilities, decisions around how to redeploy resources around both the events for the convoy, as well as policing the rest of the City, which still had to happen on a 24-hour basis, obviously. We had made announcements around our efforts to try to address the disorderly, unlawful, and assaultive behaviour, the hate type behaviour that was happening directly in the communities most affected around the red zone, variously described as surge and enforce and contain. So those are some of the examples of overarching -- we were now planning for a week’s cycle, as opposed to a weekend cycle. Requests had gone out to partner agencies not just for police officers, but for planners, people with expertise in PLT, POU, recognizing we didn’t have the expertise or the number of people necessary to do the type of planning and sub-planning that we needed to do. I know I’m going fast, Commissioner, so if you need to me slow down, I will. So there’s a range of activities that are engaged in involving the prearrival plan into an in-event plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So this is the second Saturday. You’ll recall what happened on the first Saturday. Point number two around close everything, at the meeting that was held, that was qualified, I want to be clear about that, clearly access and egress -- access into the city and access into the downtown core was one of the major reasons why that situation on the first Saturday so quickly escalated and metastasized into the events that we’re feeling right now. It was reasonably predictable at this point that we were going to have another large influx of convoys, ones and twos vehicles, and walk across bridges demonstrators that would again likely overwhelm the number of resources, even at that time that we had in the city. And so that was a major public safety risk that, on the second Saturday, was now even more likely to happen. And so that’s the point there. The “Surge, contain and enforce” was announced on the Friday morning at a media conference. And this was specifically to address the level of ongoing disorderly, assaultive, hate related behaviour that our downtown communities and businesses were experiencing, particularly in Councillor Fleury’s ward and Councillor McKenney, although I’m not sure she’s in office now, but former Councillor McKenney, her ward. And the overwhelming amount of community complaints, business complaints were coming from the unlawful, assaultive type behaviour in that area, and we needed to -- that “Surge, contain and enforce” is not for the red zone. That is for the areas outside of the red zone. And the reference around the stacking the day shift and the night shift is to hold back the night shift officers, and then deploy the day shift officers so we have a larger amount, at that time, to be visibly present in the mid- morning to mid-afternoon when the bulk of those arriving demonstrators and activities, unlawful, assaultive type of activities, would be taking place. The third point is around probably less of a public safety piece, but still unlawful, unsafe. Funds that were enabling, to some significant degree, the ongoing activities here, and other locations, but certainly here in Ottawa. Fuel. The trucks needed fuel and we were already trying to deal with the jerry cans and that, the open flames, propane in residential areas that I think has already been spoken about. And the fun. Probably not the best word to use, but these were, I think, significant emotional and psychological impacts on those that felt captured, abandoned, that elements of the demonstration and the convoy events were fun, where they were suffering. And I think there was a reasonable need for us to take whatever lawful and ethical actions we could to stop it or discourage it and negotiate it in some way, and those were largely the actions that PLT, I believe, we’re involved with.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This is me crossing that boundary, and for a very specific reason. It's the first full week. The entire Service is fully deployed and fully exhausted. We are getting massive complaints from our community, and they are suffering. By this time, they are suffering. The resilience I talked about was still there in a lot of people, but it's waning. We are now reasonably able to predict the cycles of increases on Friday, Saturday, into Sunday, and down. We know what's coming, and we knew what hit us the week before. And this is the Chief of Police calling a special Incident Command meeting to say, "Are we ready? Do we have the capacity? Are we able to significantly alter what took place last Saturday to what is going to take place this Saturday? And I need to look around the room and eyeball everybody and get a nod or a headshake and then figure out what we need, you need for resources." So I framed out something that people come prepared to discuss and invited them to that meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was stepping into the Operational levels to make sure that strategic intent was really clear to the Operational Commanders.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I thought it was Superintendent Chris Rheaume. I found out at the meeting that transpired later that in fact it was Superintendent Jamie Dunlop.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If you scroll up to the top of this, please? So this is... What's the timestamp on this email? Sorry, I just can't see it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, that doesn't make sense.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So I think this around ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's around five or six o'clock. So to give you context, Confederation Park had become a significant site that we were conducting PLT negotiations. The issue of fuel coming into the downtown from Coventry Road was escalating. The level of complaints, legitimate, desperate complaints coming in from businesses and residents are escalating. We had spent most of the Thursday and Friday trying to build towards the announcement on the Friday of the surge and force, contain. The statements "all options are on the table, we are putting all of our resources on the ground. You will see a visible, different amount -- visible -- a greater visibility of police officers engaged in a wider array of activities, including enforcement, to address the substantive complaints and concerns affecting our community." And I know I went way too fast there, so I'm going to take a breath and let people catch up. Coming into the Saturday night, I woke up because I wasn't getting a whole lot of sleep those days. I woke up somewhere around three o'clock in the morning, could not get back to sleep. Checked the situation report that came from Duty Inspector Frank D'Aoust, and he laid out information that is contained in this email. The Confederation Park, I'm not reading exactly, but the Confederation Park negotiations ended badly. The Indigenous Elders that had come in were treated badly. There was an attack on one of our sergeants at one of the sites. Other City workers were being attacked. This, for me, was an alarming situational report in the middle of the night that no one else was likely reading, and I wouldn't have been reading until I had woken up with my alarm at five o'clock in the morning. But I read it. So I got in the shower and I got into my car and I got down to the station, and I changed into my gear, and I looked around. We were thinly staffed. I understand why. There was not much to staff with, and we were thinly staffed. And when I went down onto the, we call the Zero Level of our Headquarters, and asked the watch commanders there and the sergeants, "What's our staffing levels look like for 9 o'clock, 10 o'clock, 11 o'clock when the bulk of the resource -- when the bulk of convoys are coming in?" The numbers I got were really concerning. The level of threat from the situational report from Inspector D'Aoust at three o'clock in the morning was alarming. So overnight we had an escalated level of threat at multiple different sites, and in the morning, I wasn't getting a sense that we had the staffing commensurate to what we had announced and what we actually needed. And so I needed to make sure that I could pull together an Incident Command Team and ask these Operational level questions to be assured that we were in a better state of affairs than what I was getting at that point in the morning. And I think that is a reasonable level of situational awareness for a Chief of Police in an unprecedented crisis to ask of their Operational Commanders.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were conceived by me, they weren't directed by me. They were -- these were the areas that we were going to explore at the Commanders meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At what point was that? Is that the subsequent meeting that we had when I called for the Incident Command meeting?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just -- I'm a little confused, sorry, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The three-pointer that I put in my email writing is not the Ops Plan I'm referring to here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. I sent a meeting request. I'm concerned about these three areas. We're going to discuss them. We have this meeting, and I'm saying, "Our Ops Plan is the right plan. What I want us to do is implement the hell out of it." So surge and force, contain was part of our Ops Plan. Implement the hell out of it. That means you're going to have to have enough resources to do that. To surge into the neighbourhood, you -- I think the number we said was, I might get the numbers wrong, but I think it was 30 per shift over 3 shifts in two neighbourhoods, where you would see 15 extra uniform officers in those neighbourhoods. But if we can't staff to that level, we can't implement the heck of out it, or even implement it. So the staffing request is around make sure that what we've announced as part of our excellent Ops Plan, which is not changing, has the staffing to implement it. That's the reference. The reference around the Traffic Plan, we're supposed to be reducing the amount of convoys coming into the city. Make sure the Traffic Plan is staffed adequately and implemented effectively, so we don't have the same level of surge of trucks and vehicles coming into the downtown, but we're not changing the plan. There was a clarification, and there was a misunderstanding from Inspector Frank D'Aoust and I first contacted him at probably four o'clock in the morning, where he interpreted close everything as literally get the OPP to close every highway off ramp of the King's highways across the entire municipality of Ottawa. He would need probably a thousand police officers to do that, and I would never intend that to happen. I would never need that to happen. I never needed it to happen. That misinterpretation has stayed alive to this day. I clarified in this meeting, down to off ramps that give direct access to the downtown core where our red zones area, that's what I need. I wanted all the interprovincial bridges closed because all of them give direct access to the downtown core, and I wanted to know that we had more roads closed internally than we had the weekend before, but I never publicly in the media, and I never in these meetings said get the OPP to close everything, everywhere, and keep it closed.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My best recollection was around the concept of all options are on the table. We are looking at greater levels of road closures including highway off ramps and interprovincial bridges.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir. I wanted to ensure that the resources that had been said that would be in place were actually going to be in place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Actually, if you scroll up a little bit, sorry. Right there. "On February 4th, Chief Sloly announced at a press conference that [the] OPS would be making greater use of road closures, including closures of off-ramps for Highway 417..." There's no statements there saying that we're going to close everything.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, but the plan was already to have those staff in place. I wanted to make sure they were actually available. A lot can happen in 24 hours. Potentially, without me knowing, the Incident Commander could have developed a plan that was going to take resources away from those commitments. If they had said we can't staff your surge and enforcement because we've got all those neighbourhood officers doing something else, or we had a shooting in the west end last night and it's an extensive scene and we can't redeploy our traffic to that, then I would have understood. We couldn't staff what we planned. But we weren't trying to figure out just then if we had the staffing for what we had announced. That is not correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was told we had the resources, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If that was the case, and clearly, there was no understanding that the resources were available and reasonably predictably going to be available, that would be problematic. That was not the case in this situation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe so, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So those were the locations where our red zone -- Rideau, Wellington and SJAM are the three basic footprints of the red zone. Those were established, I believe, through the Incident Commander up through Trish Ferguson. She was the first that I recall hearing about the red zone and the footprints were described to me in subsequent meetings from probably the Sunday through until now. Confederation Park, as I had advised, I think that started up somewhere around the Thursday. I might be mistaken, but Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, but certainly had escalated to a significant event for us to be managing on the Thursday night, Friday into the weekend. So those weren't my priorities. Those were already priorities established by virtue of the briefings I was getting, the situation reports that were coming in to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm sorry, what general priorities? I maybe ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, we were dealing with a demonstration, so that's literally the entire theory of operations, number two, surge contain and enforce was to address the trauma impacting our communities. And shutting down the ability for this thing to sustain itself, again, those are just priorities that we'd been working on literally since the previous weekend. Those aren't new priorities. That's essentially what we have been working on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, in terms of shutting down enabling factors, at a broad level, that was already well underway. We already had established I think through Deputy Bell and Christiane Huneault contacts with the City to try to shut down the GoFundMe. I may not be using the right terminology, but not allow those funds to continue to enable the ongoing occupation of the city. Diesel and propane and wood had already been established through briefing cycles coming up to me as priorities that the Incident Commander and the team were working on, and there's lots of communication around that, and questions and public forums, so that was already well established. I would probably agree the fund piece was something that I had inserted in there, but clearly had become a significant problem and a public trust problem. And so that's probably the only newer element but already a well-established part of our briefing cycles that we had been discussing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’ve explained -- again, I’ve explained that, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- the context. That that was misinterpreted and then clarified in the meeting that happened subsequent.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The pre-planning document.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, well -- then let me further explain. I’m not enforced -- I’m not introducing new priorities. I am asking; “These are the priorities that we’ve set. Are we able to implement them? We have a plan. Are we able to implement them? Do we have the resources? Are we ready to go this morning?” Because we weren’t ready to go the last morning. We did not have the ability to have the resources to address the level of surge coming into the city, and now we have additional priorities that we’ve identified over the week. I wanted to make sure -- I’m not setting new priorities, I’m ensuring that we have the resources to actually fully implement, the vernacular, the heck out of the plan that we have in place; it’s an excellent plan. Do we have the resources? Can we fully and effectively implement it? That’s my mindset going into the meeting; that’s why I’ve called that meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Even that, sir, I would suggest, clearly, we were already aware of the issue of the bouncy castles and the DJs and the dancing and the fireworks. That was -- that’s a very short list of all the things that were afflicting the neighbourhoods in and around the red zones. Open barbeques; people blocking lanes, tearing masks off people’s face. I could -- I could go down the list and detail the incredible range of assaultive-type behaviour. But the broad thing is shut down these enablers and let’s not allow our city to look like it’s a theme park in the middle of a public safety crisis. I hadn’t introduced anything more than articulate the obvious. And these were briefings that I was being given for days in advance of me calling this meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There’s only one ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There’s only on plan, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s the basic template of our operational planning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, please do. Okay, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know if I was referring to this plan. I don’t know if I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know if I’ve ever received it, but at whatever point I was last briefed on our plan, that’s the point of reference that I’m making on the Saturday the 5th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, unless there’s sub-plans that have those priorities identified in there, I can’t recall ever receiving or reading through this version of the plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had been briefed on versions of plan. You’ll recall I only got the pre -- I only got the pre-operational plan on the 28th; two days, technically, into what the event was. So I wasn’t required to sign off on these plans. There’s no signature block from me. I’m not approving plans. They’re happening on a real-time basis, so I don’t have a timestamp in my head that I saw a document at point zero and said, “That’s the excellent plan.” The briefing cycles that I had been getting, I have an understanding of what the priorities are, how they’re being resourced, how they’re being -- going to be actioned, what requests for resourcing is coming to me. But that’s based on a briefing cycle, not me sitting and flipping through pages of a plan saying, “Wow, this is excellent; this is the one we have to implement.”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, it was delivered to me the morning of the 28th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
With the exception of the February 9th version.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s an excellent plan based on the briefings. I can’t recall whether or not this was sent to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He’s the executive -- was at that point the Executive Director of Communications and Strategy.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s my understanding, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, it’s absolutely false.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was told by Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson that the switch for Dunlop was because -- my recollection was because Insp. Lucas needed some time off; he was tired. I may have misinterpreted that, maybe it was Chris Rheaume. But that’s my understanding, that there was a temporary switch to give somebody days off to go and sleep, basically.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Can I see those notes, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Which day would that be? Is it the 1st or the 2nd?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely false. Never ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Never gave that direction.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was -- again, I understood from my recollection, and I don't know if there's notes to support, my recollection is hearing that Inspector Lucas was very tired. He had been -- gone through the entire planning cycle and had survived through that first weekend, and he had requested time off, and it was for him that Superintendent Dunlop was replacing. I don't recall a reference to Superintendent Rheaume. I have not recollection whatsoever of any conversation in which it was suggested to me or I directed that Superintendent Rheaume be removed as the Event Commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Zero.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And it's very concerning that it's articulated in that way.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well -- sorry. Again, here is the confusion for me, because either in that meeting or before, Ferguson, sorry, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson said "Lucas needed time off. We brought Dunlop in." So that's why I'm referring to Lucas, not Rheaume here. In my mind, my notes, contemporaneous notes are "Lucas got replaced. Why? Why didn't you tell me?" I had no idea about the Rheaume piece. I had no idea about why he was removed, I had no idea he was removed. My only context was Lucas was removed, and that was surprising for me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Even on the 5th I don't think I realised what had happened to Rheaume.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Extremely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I needed to know who was running our Operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was a massive trust hit.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think it's pretty clear, honestly. We're in the middle of what is now I consider a national security crisis, my opinion, it doesn't have to be held by others; certainly a local public safety crisis; and one, if not the most important functions is the Incident Commander. The Major Incident Commander, Event Commander, Incident Commander, that is my entire understanding of leadership capability and capacity to orchestrate all of what needs to be done across the Incident Command System just so that we can continue to provide adequate effective policing. That is a major level change, and one that was made without any consultation, any communication to me, and one that appeared to have been kept secret from me until literally it came up in the briefing meeting that I had called. I don't even know if to this day that I didn't call that briefing meeting that I wouldn't have known about it until the Sunday, the Monday or the Tuesday. What's also materially important here... If you scroll back up, please. Right there. "I asked why I was not advised" -- sorry: "...he was the new Incident Commander installed this week and was leading the implementation..." This is Dunlop: "...was leading the implementation of the preferred POU [plan]." Superintendent Dunlop was not at the February 1st meeting in Kanata, that two hour plus meeting, where we had that discussion around "where are we now, and how can we get out of this?" He was not a part of the discussion of the Public Order Unit Commanders who were expert in that area. How could he have been replaced to lead this if he wasn't part of that essential meeting? I left explicit instructions, and it was in the notes that you showed earlier, "If you need anything more from me, if you need to clarify, I'm available to you." This is clearly one of the most important things that I've asked Trish Ferguson and her Incident Command Team, who were there represented as fully as they could be, Lucas couldn't attend, you recall, for whatever reason, "This is critical. I need a set of options in three days before the weekend events come." And somehow in that timeframe, without me understanding or even knowing, a switch of that magnitude was made and then put in charge of the planning for that that I was expecting a briefing on. I finally got a briefing later in the afternoon on the 5th of those three options. Could it have meant I could've had a briefing on the Wednesday or the Thursday, possibly, and could that have meant that we could have started two days, three days, four days earlier to actualise that scale of Operations, including making the request for the Public Order Commanders on scale that I was told on the February 1st meeting? We lost time, and clearly there was a lot of confusion. Even this note demonstrates I'm still not quite sure who's running what. And for Chief of Police, with the citizens and trauma and victimisation that they were under, our own members as struggling as they were, at best I can call this a significant lack of judgement on behalf of my two Operational deputies. At worst, probably this would've been a review that I would have done after the events had concluded and looked at it even more closely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Significantly. But at that point, it was low.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
“Through”, I believe.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know if I’m better, sir. But what I can read here: “The Chief began by saying we floundered last week and because we switched -- we had switched riders partway through [something] the switch between Rheaume and Dunlop...”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
“...indicating the switch between Rheaume to Dunlop to Patterson. The Chief and the team will not change any of the players until the operation is over unless Bill gets hit with a truck.” I don’t know what that means.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never used that term in my life, so I don’t know what that means, “Bill gets hit”. Who’s Bill?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These are her interpretations of what was communicated, so I don’t agree with ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So of that nature, we will not be changing out any of the major incident command positions unless there’s exigent circumstances. If it’s 3 o’clock in the morning and someone got hit by a truck and you got to switch, switch. Tell me in the morning at the first early opportunity or call me because I had a standing position that any major issue, I could be woken up out of bed for a phone call. Operational, officer safety issue or a major issue like this, you can call me, and they all knew that. So -- but other than that, the team we have, the plan we have, implement the heck out of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. No. To be clear, things were delayed, things were confused. There was a churn of three Incident Commanders within a way too short period of time. Yes, some of that might have resulted in delays. I can’t tell you specifically. It felt to me that the POU plan was delayed because of Dunlop’s insertion and his need to get up to speed and his then reinterpretation of things. That’s about the only thing I can point to that was materially delayed. I don’t know if there’s any other material delays. But the confusion was clear. This is also around the same time, I believe, that we’re starting to get some concerns that are articulated from the OPP that there’s confusion with the Incident Command Team. I recall a phone call from Commissioner Carrique in this period where he was saying, “My folks are saying there seems to be some confusion with your Incident Command Team”. I took that to mean what was happening in this circumstance, and that’s why, on February 9th, when the Integrated Command Team -- sorry, Integrated Planning Team was coming in for their briefing that we weren’t going to do this to ourselves again.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I might have used a term like that, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not across the board. That’s not a pejorative. We were floundering around the incident command switch-outs.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe I do, but I’ll let you carry on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
One they significantly contributed to, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understand that there’s been a theme around that. I completely ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- disagree with it. From my earliest days as a -- in training as a Public Order Unit Commander and in all of my times as a Public Order Incident Commander, Incident Commander, Major Incident Commander, Duty Operations Commander, the use of engagement -- community engagement pre, during, all the way through, even in the restoration phase has been something I was trained to and did in both police services that I had the honour to be part of, Toronto Police Service and the Ottawa Police Service. While the PLT program expanded from an RCMP-OPP kind of technique to broader -- to other police services, I -- for that most part, I was out of policing at that time. I had left the Toronto Police Service and was a partner at Deloitte. I came back into the Ottawa Police Service and the term Police Liaison Team was a new term to me, but their function was not new at all to me. I had deployed such tactics, seen them work effectively and less effectively, and fail, but always had that approach. Come back out of Incident Command -- and I know I’m going too fast. Come back out of Incident Command, the concept of community engagement is something that I had been championing for and had done at multiple levels for multiple decades. There isn’t anyone on God’s green earth that would have to convince me of the necessity and the value of community engagement, trust building, negotiation, mediation, de-escalation in any aspect of policing, not the least of which in Incident Command, Critical Incident Command. I have never in my entire life as a police officer, certainly as I became a senior officer and an executive and Chief of Police, have advocated for more enforcement over anything else. My record in the public is exhaustive on that. The operational plans I led in the Toronto Police Service when I had 4,000 officers under my control, responsible for anti-gang activities, always had a significant element of mediation, negotiation and engagement. I built the Toronto Police neighbourhood policing strategy, and brought that here to Ottawa. So this concept of Peter Sloly as being some sort of ultra-enforcement-driven focused leader is a narrative that someone has constructed to attack my character, but bears no resemblance whatsoever to my actual record in policing, including my time as Chief of Police here in Ottawa, including the three weeks that I was in charge at the Ottawa Police Service during these events.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I did talk about quick wins, as I do literally in every major operation or administrative project. You need quick wins. I think such is basically standard around to do something different, you need to prove you can do it different, and it builds morale and confidence. In that concept, quick wins was my contribution to that, and I didn’t get any sense that there was a wrong or a misunderstood contribution. What unfortunately has happened is that has been tied by someone or some people for some reason unknown to me to mean that PLT could not or should not be used, or could not and should not be used properly, or worse, that somehow I had to approve every single PLT action, otherwise it could not occur. And that is a complete fabrication and a lie.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, just for correction, John was brought in partway through the events to provide additional supports and leadership to the PLT, but that wasn’t a function he had before.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s a decision that I was aware of and fully supported.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This is February 5th?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry to interrupt. I don’t have a specific recollection, but on literally a daily basis that would have been a comment that came from me. So I’m glad it was captured by John Ferguson. I’m glad I said that, because they probably deserved it based on the success of Confederation Park. I don’t have an explicit ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, whose notes would these be?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
February 3rd. And sorry, what time or what’s ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know how many meetings I would have had on the 3rd. Do you have a sense of what -- is this a morning meeting? Is this an afternoon meeting?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s not my handwriting, so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would assume so, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well somebody’s interpretation. In every aspect of policing, a measured approach is the preferred approach. From our use of force continuum through to incident command, communication, negotiation, de-escalation, risk mitigation is the preferred route. And if you can’t demonstrate you did it, even for a second, even if you had a second of opportunity, if you can’t demonstrate that you attempted to do that, then you have less legitimacy around your decision to use force. That would be the context in which I’m talking about it. What I am not saying here, to be clear, is let’s just pretend to negotiate while we put on the armour and go in there and hurt people. I would never say that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It would be really hard to understand how they could misunderstand that, but that would be the most charitable thing I could say.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, thank you for that clarification. From my limited understanding of it, there was a lot of moving parts there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the net -- I'm still not sure whether as a whole it advanced our operations. It certainly caused, again, confusion and contention among key elements of it and demonstrated that we were not at the level of maturity and optimal alignment around these things, but some good things did occur as well.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This was part of the change to the transition from the preplan into a new phase of involving more attempts to stop fuel coming into the location. We had just, I think that week, had the success of at least temporarily ending the GoFundMe piece. We were starting to see some effect from the efforts of addressing unlawful and unruly behaviour in our neighbourhoods. We were starting to get a sense of what the priorities are. We had the Confederation Park win. I would call that a full win, largely through PLT, which I've talked about. So we were starting to show that we could aim at a priority, at a problem, at an objective and get a material result out of it, not just be paralyzed into complete, reactive, immobilized periods of time, which we had suffered in the first 72 hours. So for me, this was a sign that we were starting to get somewhere towards the front foot, rather than being completely on the back foot. So while I would completely agree it was a challenge for the PLT, and a substantive one, and I won't in any way change the commentary that others have brought to it, but to suggest that it was a complete failure, I can't agree to that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And I don't want to be obtuse on this. That level of detail I was never aware of. After the fact, why didn't that happen? The morning I am briefed on it didn't happen. I have no idea if it happened or didn't happen. I think one of my complaints is I actually didn't get a call the night before to say it wasn't going to happen. So I don't know what was said by what PLT member, to who, what promise was made, I have no level of understanding even to this day what the PLT log notes say that they told them versus what happened. I've heard repeated descriptions of what took place, and even to this day, I'm still quite -- not quite sure what the sequence of events was. Clearly though, I am aware that there was a significant departure from the optimal way that PLT should be utilized, and it had a major impact on the PLT's abilities to move forward. That I am aware of and I'm confident enough in that evaluation. And that's why you will see, even more after this point, I am requesting additional PLT expertise from Commissioner Carrique. I'm reinforcing PLT and the need for it to be properly utilized, literally at every meeting that happens after this.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, if that is accurate -- again, it's one person's account, but for the purpose of -- there's so many problems in this paragraph beyond the PLT.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Staff Sergeant Ferguson contacting Deputy Chief Bell ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Staff Sergeant Ferguson contacting Deputy Chief Bell makes no sense to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Deputy Chief Bell is not in charge of operations in any way on February 6th. That is an internal incident command contact out of the Incident Command System to another deputy chief that doesn't have a functional role in the Incident Command System. So that alone is very confusing and concerning for me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Problem number two, I'm going to assume that at any given time across the theory that we were dealing with here, even in the micro-red zone and Coventry Road being a 10, 15-minute drive from that, there's a lot of moving parts. If Staff Sergeant Ferguson, who probably at that point was a couple of days into his assignment, he's not trained on PLT, and has not, up until that point, been materially involved in the intelligence threat risk assessment, all of the various iterations of the operational plans, and the subplans is all of a sudden in the middle of PLT world, he's likely not aware of the larger intelligence and the larger frame of operations that Superintendent Patterson is. Even Superintendent Patterson is probably 24 hours into his job. So there's a lot of people who've been all of a sudden moved into different positions, after a period of Rheaume, Dunlop, Patterson. There's a lot of confusion happening at this point. This is clearly an evidence of a suboptimal system trying to right itself. People trying to do the right things, but not really coordinating and in some places conflicting. And people trying to get help, but going up the wrong chains of command and the wrong chains of command getting involved in areas that they shouldn't be getting involved in. If this is accurate, Deputy Bell should have contacted Deputy Ferguson. There's a concern from PLT. I'm making you aware of it. Can you manage that back down? That would have been more appropriate. So there's a lot of things happening here. It's on the basis of one individual's concept, and that's an individual who's probably relatively new into their position and has never been trained on PLT. So ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- problematic.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That big, long paragraph ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My understanding is that John Ferguson was a trained and excellent crisis negotiator ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- but was never trained on PLT as a Police Liaison Officer. That's my understanding. I stand to be corrected.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I suspect John's substantive position is under Deputy Bell's command, and so in his brain, if I have a problem, I escalate it to my deputy. I'm assuming that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's the only reason -- logical reason why he would go to Deputy Chief Bell and not go through Patterson, Deputy Chief -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson to get a resolution to the problem that he's facing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's a big concern, sir. And again, I reiterate, I -- this is an Ottawa Police Service that its PLT program was a part-time program. PLT officers, I had approved them to get training I think in the late summer, early fall of 2021. So they're a part-time group of people, who within six months get some training. We're still in COVID. I don't know how many times they've been able to utilise that training in any substantive way before the arrival of this massive unprecedented event. And then they're literally asked to do the impossible from the beginning to the end, and do the best job they possibly. But no, there isn't a optimal optimisation within this incredible unprecedented even between that Command frame, there isn't. And even with the extra help that we got from the OPP and the arrival of experts, like Inspector Beaudin, we weren't going to be able to flick a switch and all of sudden go from OPS immaturity, to OPP excellence within the dynamics of what's taking place in real-time in the City of Ottawa.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. Well, first of all, again, Commissioner, with your -- the Incident Command System, I had the honour and pleasure in I think 2008, 2009, along with Mike McDonell, then of the RCMP, and Sue Sullivan, who was then a Deputy Chief in the Ottawa Police Service. All of us had been trained up on the Incident Command System. We believed that that was the appropriate Incident Command System for the types of demonstrations we were seeing in the new century. I hate to make myself old, but that's what we were back then. And we had made presentations to the Ontario Association of Chiefs of Police that to avoid integration challenges we should have a standard Incident Command approach across the province. We were able to get the OACP Executive to adopt that, and that became, through that process, I don't want to say the standard because I can't say for sure, it's written into the current Police Service Act standards, but that became the default standard for Incident Command across the province. We attempted to that at the CACP level. I got promoted, and I don't know where that ended up. I now know there's a national framework. Long way of saying we are going to increasingly have to bring large organisations together across potentially multiple sites. We need to be working off the same understanding, nomenclature process, we need to narrow that gap of a grey zone between Strategic, Operational, and Tactical. I would suggest we also need to narrow the grey zone around a working Incident Command structure as it sits into the regular business of policing in any jurisdiction or multiple jurisdictions. Training needs to be standardised, nomenclature needs to be standardised, equipment needs to be standardised, joint training needs to happen, and all of that has to happen a long time before a major unprecedented paradigm-shifting event, like what we just saw arise, in any jurisdiction. This is one of those structural deficits, sir, that have existed for decades in policing. It doesn't all require money, but it's going to require a little bit of investment on that end. But it requires an investment of time and resources and focus. And what this event did to Ottawa, to Ontario, and Canada was exposed that type of structural deficit. It's the same concept of structural deficit around intelligence gathering. We can't afford to duct tape our way through these incidents anymore. Unfortunately, this reads like a duct tape effort to get through a really complicated dynamic situation. I need to be clear, every name here did their best in the circumstances they found themselves in. I don't read into anything here a deliberate attempt to undermine or frustrate or cause risk to the public. It just didn't go off very well.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. On the whole, sir, I wasn't sure what his role was. I had understood that Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll would be the primary presenter of the analysis that came out of that meeting on the 1st; a range of three options, I have described them, but not necessarily accurately as to what they would come back with; and a preferred option, including the implications of resources, et cetera, et cetera. On the 3rd, if that's the Thursday, that would be the Thursday, there were two, yes, there were two meetings, one at 10:30, and then another one I think maybe around 12 o'clock, where I was waiting for Mike Stoll to give that presentation. I think the notes indicate that he wasn't available, the presentation wasn't on what I had asked for, and I was saying, "Look, I just want that presentation that I had asked for." So there were two I would call aborted attempts to provide that on the Thursday morning, the first one around 10:30, the next one around 12 o'clock or so if my mind is accurate. Finally, the third attempt, which occurs I think on the afternoon I think of the 5th, the Saturday, I get the three options, I get their preferred option at that point. So I'm still not sure even at this time why Dunlop is, Jamie Dunlop, sorry, Superintendent Dunlop is involved in the presentation and what his role in it is. My recollection, I stand to be corrected, is he wasn't introduced as the Interim Event Commander or the Event Commander, that's my recollection, and my confusion is based on that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So while it was confusing, again, I don't want to characterise it as he did the wrong thing, I just want to be clear about that, John Ferguson, there would have been options. John could have gone to the Incident Commander, which at this time should've been Russ Lucas. He could've gone to the Event Commander and explained -- attempted to further explain, and if that wasn't happening, he could've gone to the Major Event Commander, in that case -- Major Incident Commander, in that case it would have been Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. So there were options for him to engage. I understand it seems to have been he was doing his best to get people engaged around something he thought was important.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Challenging, but still appropriate. There is an Incident Command chain of command and then there's an organisational chain of command. So at any point when there is a disagreement in the chain of command, if done professionally, if done timely, and if done seeking a constructive outcome, not for rumourmongering, not for undermining, not for any other personal agenda, you can engage that chain of command in trying to reach some sort of a better outcome. I think that would be appropriate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And I -- again, I want to be careful. I received that through information that's been presented at the testimony. Myself, I wasn't aware of that, so it's new information for me. That Inspector Lucas's perspective on his changed role is new information for me. If that was materially the case, if that was known to everybody, and if it was known to John Ferguson, yes, he would then have another challenge of who could he turn to, I would accept that, but this is all new information to me too. So it's just conjecture, sorry, conjecture at this point to try to answer your question, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At some risk to go into the realm of conflict of interest in relationships and organisation, I mean, that's -- there is that challenge, but in the frame of the Ottawa Police Service at that time, there wasn't any breach of policy. And so it would've been appropriate if he felt it had, again, you know, constructive, objective, not unprofessional, not undermining, not self-seeking, to have sought the intervention of or at least to have provided his information to the Major Incident Commander. I do also recognise, if I understand the context as to what happened, this is sort of a real-time unfolding event. It seems to me, again, I may be wrong, it seems to me that there wasn't an opportunity for Staff Sergeant Ferguson to wait for a briefing cycle to raise the concern when all the people would've been around the table, and then that would've allowed Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, or even Superintendent Patterson, to reconsider. It seemed like he was trying to get a real-time decision in the midst of an operation. So the third option would've been to wait for a briefing cycle, raise it as part of the briefing cycle to try to deconflict it and make it better going forward. I don't think it was appropriate in that circumstance.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I certainly can't be quick to judge or to in any way attribute blame. But I think, Commissioner, it goes back again, these are the still need to be developed areas of consistent-across-the-board understanding of Incident Command Systems within the operation of a Policing Service that clearly, here in the Ottawa Police Service, and other jurisdictions, we need to get to a higher level. There are examples of excellence across the country, I think we need to try to raise that -- raise all boats in the harbour as high as we can, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Lots of help.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It looks like “communications”.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. I mean, specific lines, not as clear, but I recall the meeting with Commissioner Lucki and, I believe, Commissioner Carrique. I don’t know who else would have been on the call.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Those would be your sort or general duty officers, traffic directions, taking a traffic point along the red zone, patrol, just general duty officers that could be utilized in a variety of different ways.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, she outlines ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, that’s the running list that she was asked to sort of, you know, come up with on the spot. I think it’s actually a pretty reasonable list based on what we knew at that time and where we were.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not sure. I’m not sure what she’s referencing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
“Gatineau and Sûreté de Québec”.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understand the question. They had already had resources in the theatre. Again, I stand to be corrected by other information that might come up. RCMP, I believe, had three, what they call, “troops”, Public Order Units in the National Capital Region. They were not under our incident command system control but they were available in an emergency and they had, certainly, a range of important duties to manage. I believe, at that point, we still had OPP Public Order Units, again not -- if I understand correctly, not under our incident command, supporting Parliamentary Protective Services but, again, in the theatre -- general area of the theatre. Within -- what I would say within the incident command system deployment, there were general duty officers from the OPP somewhere in the range of 30, 40, 50 -- and I stand to be corrected on numbers -- as well as a range of other municipal police services agencies’ contributions, London Police, Durham Regional Police. I think Toronto might have been up at that point. Most of those were Public Order Unit officers, though, as opposed to general duty officer. That’s my recollection around the January 31st.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, so those would have been -- I’m assuming that that would have been a refined list of requests that I received from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson who - - she had -- she would have received through her incident command chain of command.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I may not be understanding the question, sir. Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not that familiar with it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, I’m just not seeing it on my screen. Am I missing?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Oh, okay, sorry. Thank you. Sorry, I missed it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m aware -- I’m aware of the language in the Act but I wasn’t, in my mind, referencing this. If it happens to fit it, that’s fine.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- I was simply sending a communication to another chief or commissioner asking for resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I will say, I have never in my policing career relied on this section so I don’t have a -- other than what’s written on the page, this would seem to be, if we needed more officers, we could ask the -- or resources, we could ask the OPP. But I -- I mean, if this -- if this is intended to -- and again, I’m not aware of what’s underneath this. If this means, “We can’t manage -- we can’t adequately and effectively continue to be the police of jurisdiction. Can you come and do this for us?” I wouldn’t interpret that that way and that was certainly not the intent of me sending that letter to OPP Commissioner Carrique to ask for those resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe there’s certain conditions that would have to be met. They couldn’t just arbitrarily make that decision.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If I felt the conditions in Ottawa required that level of intervention from the OPP or any other police service, I would obviously be making that request and therefore be very comfortable with it, subject to all the usual discussions as to how that would transpire. But I was not making that request.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M’hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We were three days, 72 hours into a situation. I don’t think anybody in Canada at that time really understood what was going on and I think it would have been irresponsible and unnecessary to burden another police service with that level of request without having any real understanding. So I just don’t think there’s -- listen, you could talk to other police chiefs and they may have their opinions but as of the 31st or the 2nd, when I sent that letter, that was a not situation that I was considering at all. That’s not a situation that anybody had raised to me either within the Ottawa Police Service or from the Police Services Board, just not in the realm of considerations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not during my tenure, sir, no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The OPP never had the resources necessary, sir. They could coordinate the resources, and they did a good job of that, but the OPP on its own could not have come in and with its totality of its compliment, provided the full level of some 2,200 officers that were required.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The quantity of resources, while being a factor, would not be, even in my humble opinion, a significantly weighted factor for such a decision as for a chief of police in any jurisdiction to request through section 9 of the Act for another police service to come in and run its police service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There's a lot of things they had, and they offered those things, and we utilized them as quickly and as effectively as we could. And ultimately, through to my -- end of my tenure and beyond that, there was a very successful outcome. But you've asked me before, did the circumstances in Ottawa rise to the occasion of what I now understand to be a function of section 9? No, they didn’t, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, what's the date of this, please? Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The short answer is yes. I don't know if we got everything that we asked for and when we got it, but again, at this point, I have no concerns whatsoever. I think this is more just I'm actually seeing some of the most well turned out OPP officers and vehicles operating in and around my -- in fairness, they really just looked good. They were like the cavalry coming over the hill and they were just really well turned out, really professional group of officers. So I'm just complimenting Chief to Commissioner the quality of his people.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, just -- again, the date, is this February ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- 2nd. So this is again, this would be around the time that we are pivoting the plan. We know we're going to need -- this is the day after the February 1st Kanata meeting. We know we're going to need a substantive amount of POU, short term and long term, and so this was a request that I sent out to the RCMP for POU at least. I don't know if there were other things that we asked, and it seems that the substantive response here is, you know, "Our POU units are deployed. You can't get them." Reasonable. I'm not challenging that. They're having their own resource challenges and they're exploring the possibility of the other 50 resources. I'm assuming they're police officers, but there might have been a variety of different knowledge, skills, and abilities that we were asking for.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's 1,790 odd, but yes. I think the number 1,800 has become the most functionally used number.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, the date of this again, sir, sorry?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. So again, just context- wise, there was an emergency board meeting held on February 5th. During that meeting, the public session, I received a direction from the chair of the board to produce a list of all the resources that we thought we would need to -- my words -- safely, successfully, lawfully end the events in Ottawa. I needed explicit understanding from the chair, did she need that on the spot or could we -- could I and my team take that away and then provide a more thoughtful and full response, and she said yes, the team had -- I had asked can they try to turn that around in 24 hours, and I think by this time, which is almost 24 hours later, we had a substantive list that was drawn up. And it wasn’t just police resources, this also included discussions around what other things could the City help us with, increase bylaw fines, other potential supports from the City and civil society. I think we were looking at the insurance industry, whether they could help us to address some of the issues around the trucks and vehicles. So that’s the background to, I think, this meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, without the benefit of notes, but at some point after the board meeting, there would have been a request at two levels within the Incident Command System for their planners to identify the number, types of resources, and associate that to the overall operational plan and the relative sections -- sorry, sub-plan sections -- then across the organization. I asked each of the functional commanders -- so that would again include Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson in her functional role, Deputy Chief Bell in his functional role, and Chief Administration Officer Dunker in her functional role to identify supports. The reason for the two, sort of, coordinated requests, we needed a certain level of capability, resource capability, and predictability within the incident command structure to work under that structure to achieve the goals of ending the events in Canada, but we were still struggling with staffing for our policing jurisdiction responsibilities. And I don’t know if at this time we’d finished the negotiation with the Ottawa Police Association for the shift schedule change, but we were struggling on both ends, staffing to a level beyond just maintaining the red zone through the incident command piece, and staffing to maintain our contractual obligations and member health and wellness requirements in the general police services to the rest of the million residents in the city. The sum total of those 1,790 odd resources reflects all of the different aspects that we were looking for and they were broken down short-term, mid-term, longer-term. The bulk of the resources, I would suggest, were more short term, A significant amount was mid-term, and then another amount would have been long-term. That would have been assisting in prosecutions after the fact, the case management, crime analyst, all that together. But the bulk of that request really was in the days and weeks, as opposed to the months and years portions of some of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Later on the 6th?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, just so many different - --
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- meetings. If you could show it to me, I might have a recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just for clarity, sir, just while the document is being searched, my understanding, and I stand to be corrected, I had a meeting with my command team on the afternoon of the 5th, after the board meeting was over, where I was interrupted for part of the meeting, had to leave to go out for a phone call and come back, and it was in that meeting I said, “Look, we’ve just gotten direction from the Chair. We need to produce this over the next day. Start thinking about what you need. This is a big lift that we’re going to have to do.” Then on the 6th, after my team had worked through the night, through the day, the number of 1,790 odd was broken out into various functions. So if it -- Supt. Abrams’ recollection of that comment, it should have been, in my memory, on the 5th, not on the 6th. But I stand to be corrected.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s a very strange interpretation by Supt. Abrams. What I can tell you was that at one of the meetings that I recall on the 5th, maybe it was the 6th, but what I recall on the 5th, I said to my folks, “Up until now, I’ve been getting requests that I would call incremental. What we need to get through this day or this weekend. What we need to do, and what the Board Chair has asked us to do, is what do we need to get to a safe, complete, successful, sustainable end to the events happening here in Ottawa? This could take weeks, so I need you not to think incremental. I don’t want you just to think in a short-term cycle of planning. I need you to think exponential, short, medium, and long-term.” It’s in that context, I don’t know if I gave the exact if they say 100, 200, but “Don’t let your thinking be incremental. You have to be able to consider the full range of resources. We’re not going to get to be able to make this request again, so think about everything you might need. A special constable, crime analyst, computer dispatcher, someone who can do open-source social media. Whatever you don’t have right now to meaningfully contribute to the end of this -- these set of events, or to not be able to continue delivering our basic police services, this is the time to put that resource request into this.” So I was not, in any way, trying to put any other police service in a situation where they would need to give us tings that we did not need. If it was interpreted that way by Supt. Abrams as a guest on that meeting, that’s unfortunate. If it was reported that way to the Commissioner, that’s very unfortunate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You’ll very rarely hear me agree to an or. I’m always an and person. So it isn’t one or the other. Particularly in fluid events that literally up until the day of the 29th, no one really knew what was coming, the plan will always need to make adjustments, in real time, sometimes. But at any point, where you have to make a commitment to some portion of the plan, you need to have some relative insurance of the predictability of the resources available. So these are not consecutive exercises. They are almost inevitably concurrent exercises. A lot of my concern about how this whole issue has been portrayed is it’s been portrayed as one or the other, and the preferred one seems to be planned before resources, consecutive. In this instance in real time events, whether they be natural disasters, or unplanned protests, or protests that are so fluid in the making that you don’t have the benefit of months or even weeks of advanced planning, you’re literally making resource requests in real time as the threat assessment or the context of the circumstances change. We saw that play out in the pre-arrival plan. You asked the question earlier on. As the warnings increased, did your resource requests increase? Yes, they did. Not because we stopped everything and wrote a perfect plan for the next resource request. We continued with the planning process, while we continued with the intelligence process, while we continued with the recourse request process. And quite frankly, that has been the way that I have seen Toronto Police Service work in all my time there, that has been the way that the Toronto Police Service supported many other jurisdictions, that is the way that my experience with the Ottawa Police Service was during my time as Chief. I had never, never once before in my entire career been asked to provide a fully detailed plan with subplans laid out, timing, and exact details and logistics as to where people were going to sleep, what uniforms they should bring, before we sent out a request in good faith to good police partners and said, “We’ve got something big. It’s happening right now, or it’s happening two days from now. This is our best guess of what we need. We might need to fine tune that. Can you help us? Yes or no?”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s my recollection, but again, if my dates are off, I stand to be corrected.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Can we just -- I’m seeing -- sorry. I’ll let you finish. Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It looks like it was my mistake. But just refresh my memory. Can we go to the 5th? Is there any reference of the Board meeting on the 5th of February?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, my recollection -- sorry to interrupt you, sir. I shouldn’t talk over you. Sorry. My recollection was that we started those discussions immediately after the conclusion of the Board meeting on the 5th. Now, that might have been the command team and I, my immediate chief staff, might have started that discussion and then on the 6th, the Incident Command Team and other command areas were briefed and then involved, so there might be some -- a bit of a bleed-over from my recollection, me actioning these things on the 5th, to whatever the meeting was on the 6th Superintendent Abrams was participating in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not suggesting it’s in error. I just recall having discussions with people in my organization about the staffing numbers immediately after the Board meeting where I’d been given that instruction from the Board Chair. I wouldn’t have waited until the next day to start having people engage in the exercise of -- the planning exercise around getting that number.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe, yes, it was, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, it looks like there was - - it was announced at an emergency Council meeting, I believe.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. So it definitely was not the normal process. There were a series of communications from the end of the Board meeting on the 5th through the 6th into the 7th as to what role the Board and the City could play in supporting the Police Service to get the needed resources. The substantive outflow of all of that was a desire by the Chair and the Mayor - - they arrived at that through some level of discourse to have a joint letter to the other two levels of government to seek their direct support in securing those resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the ordinary course, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These were extraordinary circumstances, and so -- and there was an increasing and significant desire, would be the -- I think not quite the right word -- for the Board to be seen as actively supporting the service in one of its few ways that they can, which is securing resources for adequate and effective policing. Again for context, the start of the February 5th Board meeting, the Chief -- sorry, the Chair in her opening comments talked extensively about whether or not circumstances in Ottawa would allow the Ottawa Police Service to be able to provide adequate and effective policing. The transition from her opening statements to me was a question directly to me, “Chief” -- I’m not quoting exactly, but as close as I can -- “Chief, do you have the resources necessary, the ability to provide adequate and effective policing in the city?”. And then there was a substantive period of that Board meeting spent on that topic. The sum total of that was the request, the direct request from the Chair, for the list of resources that we would need. This is not ordinary, but I do believe it falls somewhere within the realm of the Police Services Act for the Board to make sure that we had the resources necessary to provide adequate and effective policing. And I believe this is one of the ways in which, again, Chair Deans may -- former Chair Deans may choose to frame it differently, but I interpret it as a genuine effort to exercise some level of their mandate to support getting those resources. There was then the additional layer of whether the Chair would sign this alone or the Mayor would join in signing. I wasn’t very much involved in that, so I can’t really speak to it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I presume someone could come to that conclusion on their own. I’m not sure why it would be so enlightening because I think almost every public statement that I made after January 29th, I talked about how desperately we needed resources and how we were seeking resources and asking for resources. I think in the middle of the February 5th Board meeting, the topic of resources came up and, in fact, in the middle of that Board meeting, I received a communication from the RCMP saying that 250 officers were arriving and I literally made that announcement on the Board meeting. So nobody should have been surprised, I think reasonably surprised, on the 7th that we were significantly in need of resources and that we were going to be asking for a lot of resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. Again, listen, I think there would be as many opinions in this room or all the rooms across Canada on any one of the aspects that took place here, so I’m not in any way going to try to suggest that no one should ever hold that opinion, including another police leader. But I suspect they would have the same problem about previous political announcements around staffing numbers that took place the week before.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I can appreciate concerns raised certainly throughout this process and in discourses well beyond these walls. This is -- this, again, is not an -- not a practice that I’ve experienced in my policing career where there would be a requirement for detailed completed plans submitted and then analyzed prior to any substantive release of resources. It wasn’t -- it wasn’t in my experience around planned events like the G8-G20, and it certainly wasn’t my experience in unplanned or highly fluid and contentious events like the one that we experienced here. If this had become a new standard and a new expectation in policing, I was not aware of it, and I had, at that point, been a Chief of Police for over two years. Secondly, we did have a plan. It was an ongoing, evolving plan. I would by no stretch of imagination suggest to anyone, the Commissioner or anyone else, that it was an excellent plan. It was a robust plan, given that we were still pivoting from what we'd experienced just a week before. Canada was still trying to figure out what was going on across the country, just as we were trying to figure out exactly what was going on in the city. And we had been literally using every resource possible, just to get through hour by hour, day-by-day operations and the planning for those operations. There was no additional capacity to be able to produce such a level of standard plan while we so desperately needed those resources. I think, unfortunately, it became a misinformed issue around an unrealistic expectation, and, unfortunately, that caused a lot of concern across the board, inside our organization, and clearly outside of our organization.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, from what I've heard and what I've seen and what I knew at the time, yes, there were occasions where officers were not optimally deployed. And I tell you, I have never been involved in any police operation where we have brought in resources from across our own city or brought in resources from outside of our city in two police services, including my time in Kosovo, where there was suboptimal deployment and utilization of resources. What tends to happen is the Incident Commander almost exclusively will be from the police of jurisdiction, who will utilize the resources that they know best and use the most frequently, and then go and tap into the other resources. Inevitably, that means that the external resources will be underutilized. It is in no way surprising for me to have heard that at points during the entire three weeks that I was involved in this, that there might have been officers from some police department that didn't get their briefing at the right time and may have even spent the better part of the day not doing the things that they thought they were going to be doing. I'd experienced that many, many times myself.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's probably very true, sir. Our officers were exhausted, frozen right through. They needed relief and there was no other place to get relief from. And that's part of the reason why the very first request on the 31st of January that Trish Ferguson announces to the RCMP Commissioner and the OPP Commissioner is to send us some general duty officers. Our people are asleep on their feet, or they're frozen to their post. I'm not surprised. That is not an optimal situation, but that's the reality of what was going on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. Thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to have a second go round on this. The concept of a measured approach I think that's been talked about usually in terms of PLT and secondarily in terms of use of force, a measured approach is we need more resources. Let's ask for it. We need help with the planning for those resources. Let's get that. We might need to integrate our operations to a greater degree than we have every considered before. Let's work on that. Okay. So we've got -- we're getting more resources. We are stepping up integration. Our planning now is getting to a much greater level of efficacy. Now we're going to consider a unified command. That is a measured approach of stepping up. I think it would be irresponsible, as I said before, and I'm sticking to that, I think it would be unprofessional and unwarranted to go from, wow, we just had a really bad weekend, let's get the OPP to come and police our jurisdiction to we just had a really bad weekend. Let's figure out how we need to get better and start to use everything we possibly can, and let's be as clear as we can but as quick as we can in requesting the things that we can reasonably anticipate we'll need in the short, medium and long term. Let's be very open to, as we have always been in Ottawa, even during my time, to integration. Nothing was off the table. I think I probably said that statement 453 times. Everything's on the table, including greater integration, and including unification. And ultimately, through greater integration, ultimate unification, and some 2200 officers, the Ottawa Police Service as police of jurisdiction, and the amazing supports we received from across the country were able to safely and successfully end the events here in Ottawa.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just on that point, I just want to be clear, and I think it was -- I understand somebody clarified this before. There were instances where clearly that was happening. I believe Superintendent Abrams was the direct conduit to Deputy Chief Bell, organization to organization. He raised it. I believe it was received well and it was actioned. I don't recall that being a continuous problem or a problem of scale. I will not deny that it happened sporadically, and particularly in the early parts, but it's my understanding it wasn't daily occurrence on scale where hundreds of officers were sitting around being unutilized or underutilized. I just want to make that clear for the public record.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And again, that level of underutilization is something that I've experienced in my entire three decades in policing. That was not a unique situation to the events here in Ottawa.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I've ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- I think I've said that repeatedly myself, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We needed external police agency's help primarily for the Incident Command System to address the crisis happening in the downtown core. We needed less help for the policing of the rest of the city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We still needed help there, but we were nowhere near by comparison.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not sure they wanted what you're suggesting Section 9. I never received any suggestion from Commissioners Carrique or Lucki that they wanted to come in here and bring the necessary lift of 2,000 plus officers, and have them on the ground here for days, if not weeks on end. I stand to be corrected if there's information out there that's different from that. Here's the challenge. Then you're going to have to get three levels of government to invest differently in three levels of policing. I don't know how the formula would work, but if we're to go down the what if scenario that you're asking me to entertain, and please, if the Commissioner doesn't have time for this or you want to move on, just let me know. But here's scenario number one: Take a percentage of every municipal police service, just say 10 percent, fold that up into the OPP because every single year some event is going to come to some municipal police service where they don't have enough resources, so automatically the OPP will get 10 percent cut of every police service because when, not if, they will be required under the new components of section 9 to come and take over policing for a day, a week, a month, they have the lift to be able to do that. I don't think any mayor or any regional authority is going to go for that, and I don't even think the Province would want that responsibility. Now, just layer in that on top of the RCMP. With how stretched they are with contract policing, national policing Indigenous policing, force protection internationally, there's probably eight functions that not one of them are staff adequately. Now are you going to take a 10-percent cut from the Provincial Police Services to allow the RCMP to do that? And now you come to the National Capital Region, where there are six police services operating in here at any given day. How do you divide the pie there? I understand the intellectual desire to explore that. The practical and financial side I'm sure merits the effort. I think what we need to do is get standards across the board, really clarify how and when we work together in integrated and/or unified, clarify the gaps between the Strategic, Operational, and Tactical, and how that fits into police of jurisdiction adequate and effective. That's going to be a lot cheaper and probably a lot faster, and it can be iterated over the course of time for lessons learned from experience to experience. You're talking about a major structural change, legislative change that would take years to hammer out and then years to get to a point of efficacy.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. Well, I think it was around 12 o'clock. Again, for context, if I get the dates wrong, I believe somewhere around the 6th or the 7th there was a communication between myself and Commissioner Carrique, where we had talked about a significant increase in integration. I forget who raised it, whether he did or I did, but we were very quickly in agreement that that would be very helpful and that we would need then to bring in folks from -- senior folks that had experience and expertise and that type of thing. He referenced Carson Pardy almost immediately. That name, I believe, came up in our first conversation, and I welcomed him and anybody else that he could send to support that. And to his word, I think within 24 hours we were contacted, 24 hours after that there was an initial meeting out at the RCMP Headquarters. That was a meeting, unfortunately -- I realise I'm going really fast, so I'm slowing myself down now. That was the meeting, unfortunately, that because of the distance to travel to and the Teams meetings problems that we had, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson was only able to get a portion of her Incident Command staff on there. While there was somewhat of a productive discussion, it didn't get to the level where there was any substantive move forward. There was an agreement to have another meeting on the 9th of February, is that right, the 9th of February, and there was additional efforts during that period to continue to improve and evolve that plan. A substantive lift that day. I referenced earlier on that I got involved in that lift to try to elevate the plan to as great a degree as we possibly could for these partner agencies coming in. I believe around 12:00, 12:30, Chief Superintendent Pardy, Superintendent Abrams, RCMP Superintendent Lue, and I forget, there were other members, but those were the three primary members of the team, arrived at our headquarters. Take a pause there. But that was the context to the start of that meeting. I had my Command Team and my Incident Command Team there as well.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M'hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. And we debriefed from what happened the previous night, looked to see where we could again continue to evolve the plan in advance of this next meeting, and put every effort into that so that again we could have the best product available. It was clear to me that this -- the arrival of this team was not only to support what we're -- the ongoing efforts here, but they needed to assess where we were with our ongoing efforts here, specifically, assess the plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I see a note here 7:10. I don't know if that's accurate, but that would seem about right. It was relatively early in the morning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Ancient Greek civilisation, an old myth about a multi-headed monster. When you cut off one head it would grow back.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Bit of creative license on my part, but the idea was we were struggling to take a section of the red zone or Confederation Park and then hold it while we continued on. And so that was a constant challenge as our officers made efforts to secure portions of the theatre, particularly in and around the red zone, that the challenge was as much to take the portion and then to hold the portion. The concept of the Hydra, if you can cut off the head and cauterise it, it can't grow back. If you can take a piece of ground and hold it, people can't come back. We can then focus on a smaller theatre with more resources, smaller theatre more resources, smaller theatre more resources. That's the concept behind the ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These are Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson's recollection of that. I would not in any way characterise what took place in that meeting to reflect what I'm interpreting and language here. So again, without the chance to hear these concerns and understand... We had a very healthy discussion, yes, around whether the term "negotiation" should be explicit in I believe the mission statement, but other than that, I'm not really sure as to why she has interpreted things the way that she has chosen to do so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir; it’s my statement.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We had had the challenge of the previous week where senior people were swapped out without any communication; where we had delays around the development of a significant portion of the plan, that being the Public Order Plan. This was a reminder to folks about the problems that we incurred -- we encountered last week. We are now bringing in a significant amount of resources, a significant level of integration, and we simply cannot have a individual make a change that could affect the strategic intent of what we were trying to accomplish at this point. We needed to have -- on the positive side, we needed to have a full commitment across the command team that we had reached a position now that could move forward with. There was still going to be evolutions of the plan and subplans and as resources became available, but that the base of the week and change of pivoting from where we were into this new position, particularly with the request of resources and integration, this required a very firm and full commitment from the command team going forward.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Lightly, at the strategic level, no major changes in the plan; no major changes in the concept of operations, the elevated integration with RCMP and OPP, and the senior ICS assignments -- Major Incident Commander, Event Commander, Incident Commander -- without discussion first. Probably the only thing I forgot to add in there, unless there were exigent circumstances. Again, obviously -- I shouldn’t say obviously. Exigent circumstances is always implicit in any one of these circumstances.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s the concept of exigent circumstances, sir. That would not fit within what I was relaying to these folks here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir. At the operation level, no. Again, I’m very clear: No major changes to the plan. No major changes to the concept of operations, not objectives, not subplans, not operational decisions made during the course of the day. The elevated integration, I wasn’t going to have a Superintendent, an Inspector, a Staff Sergeant or a Deputy Chief tell the OPP and the RCMP, “You know what? We don’t need that integration, never mind what Sloly says.” So this was me being very clear. At the strategic level of where we were, no major changes outside of exigent circumstances, for these areas.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, thank you. (SHORT PAUSE)
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
February 9th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, to be explicit: No changes to the architect -- sorry; the architecture of the plan. But that is not me saying, “You can’t have a tactical change; you can’t have an operational change unless I approve it.” It would be -- even if I wanted that, it would be impossible for me to validate, approve or not approve, every single aspect of any potential change to the plan. It would just be impossible. I would never have said that. And I can see any experienced person in that room taking such a literal interpretation and walking out, particularly after being in this theatre for almost a week and a half. And if they had that interpretation, with the maturity and the rank in that room, I would have expected them to raise clarification.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M’hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just that. It was made clear to them that the folks that have arrived here have come with clear instructions from their Command to assess the level of our planning, the adequacy of the resource requests that we made, and then to -- assuming that we could come to that arrangement of integration, to then move forward on building that out. But they were coming to assess where we were.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, first of all, these are Trish’s -- Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson’s words. I won’t challenge her emotions or interpretation around it but they’re not the conversation that I was leading at this point. I had a very clear discussion about two elements. We are going to be assessed on our quality of our planning and the relevance to the resource requests and if we cannot provide enough substantive justification for what we’re looking for, we’re likely not going to get the level of help that we need. Secondarily, I did talk about the politics that are happening in and around this entire event. By this time, it is a national event with global coverage. By this time, I had had several interactions with all three levels of government and the board. It was clear to me that there was increasing intense and, in some cases, I believe, undeserved and unhelpful political pressures happening to the Ottawa Police Service, pressures that could affect our ability to secure the resources. So I was letting them be aware, giving them situational awareness and allowing a conversation to happen in a very tight room with my command team so they could have as much understanding before they went in front of the group of external agencies to have that conversation. I didn’t want there to be any surprises and I wanted them to be as fully informed as possible. An example would be the day before this there was a public motion put forward by a significant number of city councillors asking for the Ottawa Police Service to remove the police’s jurisdiction for the purposes of the incident command. So these were very live, real-time issues. There were others that they were less aware of. So I tried to give them indications as to what was going on without going delving down into unfortunate details of it. It’s in that context that I think Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson may have thought it was a conspiracy theory. These were very real experiences that I was aware of and I was trying to bring my command team to a level of awareness so they could appreciate the challenges that we would have to show a unified approach around this going forward. And if we didn’t have a unified approach, the type of politics could very quickly divide and conquer us.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If you’re asking whether Chief Pardy -- Chief Supt. Pardy and Supt. Lue were there for political reasons, no. I think they were genuinely assigned and they came with genuine hearts to offer the help that they could to understand what was going on and offer the help they could. But I’m very much aware of the politics that comes to play on the heads of chiefs of police and commissioners. And I’m very much aware of a number of issues that my colleagues at that rank were facing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
None so ever, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Trust, no, but I was very explicit on two points. Integration means that the Ottawa Police Service remains police of jurisdiction, and that the Ottawa Police Service remains in control of the incident command system, and that the resources I’m asking for are to be under the control of the incident command system. Those were the only three caveats. If they couldn’t agree to those three caveats, we’d probably have to go back to the drawing board in some other way to get the resources and achieve another type of integration. Those were the three caveats. It’s not a matter of trust. It’s simply a matter of the baseline aspects, the redline aspects of our ability to move forward under and integrated model.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I don’t, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s in the Police Services Act, sir. We are the police of jurisdiction.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And we did that every single day of my day in -- of my time in office -- joint forces operations. I invited in the RCMP to do internal criminal conduct investigations. We did that every single day. That is a very, very different thing from we are no longer the police of jurisdiction in the Nation’s Capital for a million people. The Ottawa Police Service will no longer be the police service even though we’ve been so for a century and change. That is a very different concept of operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can think of examples where yes, a investigator would come out. The lead investigator in the criminal conduct investigation was from the RCMP but professional standards were still under my control as the police chief in the police of jurisdiction. The decision to lay charges or not lay charges from the Police Act were still under Part IV from me as a chief of police. But if I’d abdicated that role and responsibility, then it would be up to the RCMP lead investigator to decide on the totality of the circumstances around that case. So yes, hundreds of times, probably thousands of time I’ve integrated police services for a wide variety of things -- administrative, HR, human rights, operations, Guns and Gangs. I have no trouble whatsoever with that concept. In my time in policing -- got to be careful here. I can’t think of a single time in my 30 years in policing where a police service said, “We’re done. Somebody else come do this for us.” I stand to be corrected but I can’t recall a single of that happening.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Potentially, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think a very healthy discussion, “Look, we have a local need here but we now have a national set of events.” I think by the 9th, Windsor might have been starting -- kicking up around that time. Toronto had just got through their Queen’s Park piece. I think much of the Prairie provinces had one or more things going on. Coutts was still very alive. So yeah, this is a healthy discussion around, “Look, we know we need a lot of resources but we also know you’ve got a lot of other resource demands happening.” Around this time, I believe there was a steady, almost daily call of all chiefs that were facilitated by the OPP and they had already, I think, established two levels of resource integration, one on Public Order Units explicitly and another one on general resource requests. So we were already in a provincial/national Theatre where we are trading off resource requests against risks on a scale that I’d never experienced. And I’m not aware of any police chief from my generation that says they experienced something similar. So that’s the context of the discussion taking place here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I know what was taking place here. I don't think these notes are particularly accurate at this point, and I suspect there's a lot of back and forth and people are talking fast, as I am now, and there's a little bit of catch up time here. So I will build off these notes, not ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They're not accurate. So first, there was a discussion. I forget who raised it -- it might have been Supt. Abrams, but I'm not 100 percent sure -- around how many staff had been sent over, and again, I said, "Well, there was that miscommunication from the Solicitor General that that left the impression that 1,500 officers from the OPP or from across the province were here in Ottawa on a daily basis." And I again explained the challenges, the public trust and confidence challenges that that caused us, that then pivoted out of that discussion into -- again, I don't know who from the OPP would have led this, but I don't think this is an accurate statement, but it probably captures the theme -- "Can't build a plan without a plan." This is the chicken and egg discussion, should we have a plan in force before you get the resources? And I'm saying, "We are planning and we know we need a level of resources we can find to the plan. I need a commitment of resources." So that’s the gist of the discussions that are taking place, probably in rapid fire, and the scribe is, in this case, Christiane Huneault, is doing her best to keep up.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I just referenced Christiane Huneault.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sorry if I've left that impression. She -- Christiane Huneault is many things wonderful and an excellent general counsel. She, for a period of days, offered to and took on this role of being a scribe. We were just so thin on resources, she offered to do that until she could free up Vicky, Vicky Nelson, I believe is her name. I'm not suggesting that the effort on the 9th was an insufficient effort. That was a very dynamic meeting and there was a lot of points being made, and she was doing her best to capture them. I'm only saying they're not actual quotes that I can attribute, and she hasn’t attributed the people. So she's done her best, just not able to say who said what exactly when.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The notes that she provided were incredibly helpful for me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
All of them, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t -- put it up, I just -- -
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- can't -- there was lot of things you just said there, so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. It was a tense meeting at times. We certainly got into very contentious discussions like the discussion -- sorry, I'll slow myself down. We got into contentious discussions like the discussion around the Solicitor General release of the 1,700 number. I could see if, at during those points, Chief Supt. Pardy, who I believe was selected appropriately and sent quickly and came with the view of supporting -- I suspect that would be the same for Supt. Lue representing the RCMP -- they were not aware of and had not been involved in these events. I suspect they weren’t even following all the events, and certainly not the political aspects of it. They were operational people coming in to provide an operational support. In that context, I could understand why Chief Supt. Pardy might describe some aspects of it as disrespectful - - get the right words here ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- "somewhat unprofessional and disrespectful". I needed to be very clear on behalf of my service and my city and the state of public safety that we're in that we needed the resources, that we needed them as quickly as possible, they needed to be predictable, sustainable resources, and not, as we had experienced so far, through nobody's fault, but we can send you this, but if an event comes to us, we got to pull them back. Without any predictability of resources, I don’t want to get back into the plan first versus the resource request -- but absent the predictability of resources, planning for something that you can't resource becomes a waste of time, and we had no time to waste, and we had no resources to waste. So again, I come back, it's an "and" not an "or". The rest of this, I don't know if you want to go -- me to go through bullet point by bullet point ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- and comment?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Suffice it to say we discussed political -- the political pressure aspects, and that is always an uncomfortable conversation to have between police services.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not sure I understand the question, sorry. I may have just missed it. I apologize.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s right.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Before that, they'd have never thought about the Emergencies Act. I think I might have been made aware of it over that weekend. My challenge, literally, up until my last day in office wasn’t additional legislation or injunctions, it was resources. In fact, there was a period of time where we were hoping there wouldn't be any injunctions or emergency declarations because they would give us more powers and we didn’t have any resources to implement those powers, and then we would be accused again of not doing our jobs or not using powers available to us. So for a significant portion of my time in office, discussions around injunctions, discussions around emergency declarations were maybe that’s something that we actually don’t want at this point. I was never consulted explicitly on the Emergency Measures Act that was put into place on February 14th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I remember the discussion. I can't remember word for word, and certainly, that last line would be basically summarising what I just tried to tell you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Tools are great. If we don't have the resources to use them, there could be problems with that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't have an independent recollection. This appears to be the first time I'm hearing about it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And it certainly wouldn't have been anything more than a day before, if there was any other discussion on it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't have an independent recollection. If you could take me to a leading note or ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That would be in line with the sort of type of discussions. I can go back to the there may not be a policing solution to this. This would be in line with that line of discussion. We have three levels of states of emergency. This is obviously more than just the OPS.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. Sorry, I know I need to answer.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can't tell you that because I resigned office within 24 hours.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know what she's referring to, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, she may be relating to elements of Coutts, Alberta, or other parts that they're involved in. I don't know if she's explicitly talking about the theatre that I was involved in. It's hard to tell what she thinks could be done. These are certainly elements that we were doing in Ottawa. Where we couldn't arrest, we were getting information to lay charges after the fact. The Ontario Provincial Emergencies Act had just been announced on the Friday. We were still looking -- I don't know if by this time on the -- by on the Monday that we'd even had a substantial briefing from our legal team as to what those powers were and whether or not our Incident Command Team had considered how to roll them into the ongoing evolution of the plans. I can't disagree with the position of the Commissioner, but I can't say that it applies entirely to the circumstances that I was dealing with.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We meaning the Ottawa Police Service?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I come back to it, sir, we didn't have the resources to fully effectively utilize the private injunction and the elements of the Ontario -- you got the Provincial Emergencies Act at this point. So I can't tell you that I would even have an opinion on that, other than we were just trying to get resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- I do recall, just as an example, I forget which day it was. It could have been the Saturday or the Sunday. It feels like it was the Sunday. One of those trilevel calls that you referenced with Rob Stewart and Commissioner Lucki, it was the only time that Ministers Mendocino and Blair were on the call, and I joined it late for some reason. I think I had multiple competing demands. And there was a question asked. Maybe it goes to what Commissioner Lucki was talking here about existing legislation, but a question was asked of me by Minister Blair, "Have you considered doing by-law enforcement?" Which I thought was a strange question. And I said, "Yes, we've been doing by-law enforcement from the very beginning." And then he asked a second question, "Well, have you considered towing trucks?" And I said, "Yes, we've been towing trucks from the very beginning, but we don't have sufficient officers to do full enforcement and we don't have sufficient trucks to do extensive towing." Maybe that has something to do with this we haven't exhausted all the tools comment, but that's the only context that I can think of.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There was a discussion in there with the Chair around the quality of support that I was receiving inside the organization and my own sense of where we were at at the leadership level. A reasonable question from the Chair of the Police Services Board at the direct employee level that the Board has with myself, and in this case only Deputy Chief Bell because Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson was not an employee of the Board. And I gave my best answer to her, there were some challenges. I mean, I actually think these notes capture it well. I -- there would be elements of some of those leadership challenges that would need to be reviewed in an after-action report, again, I didn't have a chance to ever conduct that. And I had made decisions on the fly in the midst of this very fluid situation to address conduct issues and park them or address them and move on from them completely. But I also gave the caveat that there had been incredible levels of stress and fatigue, and that clearly no one, including myself, could claim that they were always operating in their best, at their best.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. It's an important question you're asking, and it's a -- not an easy question to answer. So please if you can give me some leeway here. There was a significant trust issue. That's the only significant trust issue that I was aware of and I thought had a material impact on the events that transpired over those weeks, was the switching out of Superintendent Rheaume for Superintendent Dunlop. And we've been through that, so I won't go back to it. When I realised what had happened, as close as I can, good discipline should be in the smallest -- small "d" discipline, should be applied as quickly to the event. I immediately called a meeting with the two Command Officers. I asked them a straight question, and to their credit they gave me straight answers. I wasn't happy with the answers, meaning I was disappointed that they had chosen to go that route, and I expressed that immediately and clearly. And then I counselled them immediately, and I told them what good behaviour would look like going forward, and then I moved on from it. And as I said earlier on, they both in their own ways worked back towards demonstrating trust and capability. What I was asked here was overall what's happening, and I related that circumstance, but there were other elements of a lack of cohesion within the team. People making assumptions. We've already elements of people taking a rumour and assuming it's truth and how that impacted a range of issues from PLT to whether or not there was a plan to whether or not the plan had been approved. So those were issues that I was dealing with on an ongoing basis. They were difficult issues to deal with. They took time and energy away from everybody involved, including me. And in some cases, they caused confusion. So those are the types of things I was trying to relate to the Chair, but I was also trying to relate the context in which we had found ourselves, unprecedented, uncharted, unrelenting pressures, inside the organisation and outside the organisation, to not leave with her with the impression that we were having some sort of a mass internal revolt. That was my understanding at that time, and that's what I tried to relay as honestly and as fully to the Chair at that time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were very different plans in that they were significantly more evolved. The 13th was significantly more evolved than the 9th plan, but they were the same continuity of iterations from the pre plan that we had on January 28th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And again, I understand the perspective of Chief Superintendent Pardy that he did not consider what we had presented to him as a plan. I disagree with that assessment. It may not have been to his standard or the OPP's standard, but it was the plan evolved since January 28th through several iterations, some of which we've seen here today, that was signed off by Inspector Lucas and Superintendent Rheaume, and continued through until the next signature blocks appeared on the February 13th version of the same plan. I can appreciate Chief Superintendent Pardy might not have known of the iterations that preceded it, he might not have understood our business processes and policies, and he might have assumed that this was a brand new plan. I'm also aware of an email from Superintendent Lue of the RCMP that shares my impression, that the February 9th plan was being used by the Integrated Planning Team to build on. And that is entirely my understanding. That is why when I sent the email to Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, "send me the latest version", I wasn't talking about the February 9th plan. "What was the latest iteration that had developed since then? I just need to see. Is there a new org chart? Have you got an updated mission statement? Have you got a better sense of objectives you want? Are there subplans that I should be looking at?" I just needed an update. And I was having phone calls on a daily basis with Commissioners Carrique and Lucki in which there was these constant questions of "Have you signed off on it?", and I would respond, "I don't sign off on the plans." "Well, we heard it's with you." "It's not with me. I haven't even been briefed on it yet." "Well, we've heard it's you that have to approve it." "I don't approve the plans." I have to tell you we went around and around on that. And this is me trying to finally just say, "Trish, whatever is the latest version send it to me. If it's been signed off, please send to me quickly so I can forward it to Carrique and to Lucki -- Commissioners Carrique and Lucki." And that's exactly what I did at the end, I think somewhere around nine o'clock, I said, "Here it is. You can see the signatures on it. It's Bernier, it's Lue", sorry, I should use their ranks, "Superintendent Lue, Chief Superintendent Pardy, and Acting Superintendent Bernier. It's signed off. It's done." I never had to approve it, there's no signature line, it’s being implemented. I think there were still questions after that. I cannot, to this day, understand why there are still questions about whether or not the plan was approved and signed off. It had been approved. It had been signed off.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think we were well positioned. I wouldn’t say we had reached a position of certainty but we were well positioned. We had, at that point, a significant level of integration. We had received significant levels of resources including expertise, including experienced leaders of the quality of Chief Supt. Pardy, Supt. Lue, and others. I think at that time, we actually had the strongest of the different iterations of incident command teams with Acting Supt. Bernier as the event commander. I think at that point he had a deputy commander in OPP Insp. Springer. Both of them seemed to have a very good rapport. And Insp. Springer, I believe, was one of the most experienced and trained incident commanders, if not in the province, across the country and there really seemed to be a sense of structure to what they were doing, and they were building in position that, in my experience as an incident commander and the roles I played in Toronto Police, were very useful for us, and I can see how they were being applied here. So my sense was we had a strong and increasingly stronger plan, a strong and increasingly stronger level of integration, and finally, demonstrably, a greater level of resources coming. But it was that last area that I still that there was -- there were challenges in getting those resources. And it’s in that particular aspect that played probably the biggest role in my decision to resign my office.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We had a very strong integrated team. We had very strong leaders in that team. There was clarity around the plan. I suspect, yes, when there’s a leadership change, there’s always a sense of there’s a change, and that change alone, as you’ve seen in decisions to replace a hockey mid-season or whatever, the team plays well for three or four games and the old challenges that hadn’t been addressed yet come back pretty quickly after. So I don’t in any way challenge the notion that the change created a change but I do note that the level resources flowing was incredible at that point and that within three or four days there was sufficient resources on the ground to execute successfully the operations that have already been described in this court.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I think I started off my testimony here today, Commissioner, with my thoughts on public safety being one of, if not the number one reason -- public trust being, if not one of the number one reasons for public safety. I gave lengthy descriptions throughout the course of the day here around the impact of public trust in the first day, that Saturday. The public’s opinion, the opinion of three levels of government, opinions of civil society leaders, that I think unfairly and unnecessarily laid the blame of this thing on the Ottawa Police Service. We did our very best for as long as we could. We sought the resources and the help that we could. We integrated and implemented those resources, ultimately, successfully. But on the morning of February 15th, it was clear to me that the trust factor in Ottawa Police Service was still headed in the wrong direction and the only person that could take that pressure off the Ottawa Police Service was me and I made that decision to resign from office to get the resources on the ground to support the safety of our communities and, quite frankly, to support the safety to health and wellness of our own members and out partner agencies that were, at that point, in the theatre.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s just how I was raised. It’s who I am. Everything after that is just what I did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good to see you too.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, ma’am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was ultimately my decision. There was a lot of factors that went into it. Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There were significant pressures. It was clearly, to me -- it was clear to me that the Board, specifically Chair Deans, had lost confidence in my position, and that was a factor in my decision.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
From statements made and -- yes. The totality of the circumstances, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On the evening of February 14th, I received a phone call from the Board Chair essentially asking would I consider resignation?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm aware of some of it, but I'd be happy to receive more context or information around it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Twenty-one (21) days into an event of the size and nature that we were dealing with, and 9:30 at night, at the end of I don't know how many hours and days of in that day I worked, you get a phone call from your Chair discussing rumours and then pivoting into, "Have you thought about resigning?" conversation, for me is a pretty clear indication that I no longer had the confidence of the Chair, and by the Chair, the Board of the Ottawa Police Services.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I told her that I put my heart and soul into this organization, the mandate that she had given me, and that I'd be seeing this thing through, and that at 9:30 at night, it was a very inappropriate conversation to be having with me. I wasn’t going to be giving it any more consideration.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The almost 11 hours' worth of continuing to manage the situation in this city on behalf of the Ottawa Police Services.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm a little bit -- I realize I'm not supposed to referencing other people's testimony or evidence presented already, but I am aware of a very alarming text, apparently from Brenda Lucki, Commissioner Lucki to Commissioner Callique. I wasn’t aware of it before my decision, but I am now aware of it now. So I don't know how to relate that into this situation, so ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. That’s more helpful for me. I had direct experiences with officials at three levels of government. I had direct experiences with three levels of government over the course of the time of these events that left me with a clear sense that I had no -- little to no support from elements at those three levels.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Municipal, yes, definitely. There was a motion passed -- motion presented. I don't think it was passed, so clearly, yes. I don't remember if any of the Board members, the three councillors that were on the Board voted in support of that motion to remove the Ottawa Police's jurisdiction, but there was certainly, I'm aware, at the municipal level, significant pressure on the Board for that to take place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Still, a clear indication.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't remember the 3,000 to 4,000 number. My memory is around 3,000, but I don't think at this point it matters.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I did hear that from Inspector Lucas.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was -- sorry for interrupting. It was a specifically called meeting for the purpose of the convoy. I have a recollection -- I stand to be corrected -- our regular January meeting was, I think, the week before, and there was some discussion at that level. But by no means was it a briefing and I wouldn't expect the Board to have sufficient information to even form substantive questions. But I just recall there might have been some mention of it at that previous regularly-scheduled meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These minutes are not verbatim minutes. I would prefer to look at a more detailed record. These are all taped. They're available on YouTube channels. These minutes of meetings were never intended to be verbatim minutes, so I'm not suggesting the number wasn’t given, but I can't tell you whether or not it was. So that’s my challenge with trying to refer to these as "scribe notes" or "detailed minutes" of what was discussed at the meeting. They're substantive summary points as opposed to what we've been using as scribe notes. I just ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know who gave that answer, ma'am. I don't know whether it was in relation to a direct question here. There was some context missing. I just don’t know.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, just to be clear, I don't think anybody had a fixed number. The 3,000 vehicles was, I believe -- and again, I stand to be corrected -- an estimate that Inspector Lucas, through his traffic team and his planners felt that could be accommodated, but that doesn’t mean we were going to get exactly 3,000 vehicles. We could have got 5, we could have got 1. He was looking at an upper range that he could accommodate, but that wasn’t a prediction of the number of vehicles that were expected to arrive 72 hours later.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. I -- this was a formal Board meeting, but I had been in regular daily contact with the Board. There were calls that took place this week with the Board Chair, was on with the mayor and team. So there was a number of other discussions, communications, formal meetings that took place in this timeframe were questions around what we had, what was coming, were we ready, “What messaging should we be providing? are you getting enough support from the city?” There’s a range of other meetings and communications. This was just the only formal board meeting ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- where there was -- specifically for these events.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There was the possibility that smaller group could stay longer as opposed to everybody arriving was going to be staying longer.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I honestly, at this point, can’t remember.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’ll take your word for it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We answer the questions given to us by the board in the public meeting and the board has the opportunity to move the meeting into in-camera if they choose. I can’t control their decision on an in-camera meeting, nor do I control the questions they ask in the public session.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I will accept that that was her explanation but, as the board chair, and a very experienced board chair on multiple boards, she would have known that that was an option.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Nor would there have been time, quite frankly. I would have gone to a board meeting if directed to do so but that would have probably not been the most optimal use of our time given the circumstances that were unfolding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. And again, just by way of context, my recollection -- again, I stand to be corrected -- was that we had -- within the Ottawa Police Service, we had discussed a range of options as mitigating factors, risk- reducing factors, and an injunction was one of them. This was before the arrival of the trucks, in the pre-planning phase. Once the event unfolded, as I’ve described earlier, on the Saturday, there was an attempt to step that up, and I believe that is the call that you’re referencing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We were seeking to now ask the City to get involved. It would be a City injunction, not an Ottawa Police Service injunction. We had now just seen what had landed in our city and so we had a much better understanding of what we were facing, different from the sort of blue skying of, “Well, let’s consider an injunction,” before. And so now we’re having a real discussion about the real problem that is unfolding in our city and asking the City to start to put their minds clearly to the possibility of an injunction. But we were not, at this point, strongly recommending or anything; we were just keeping all of our options on the table and trying to engage the fullest range of City supports that we could.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It would be a range of different things. And again, it would be the City’s injunction. It would be their decision to decide what to put into its injunction. We were giving them some base-level ideas from a policing perspective but we would not be the only perspective necessary for them to make a decision and to include causes within that injunction.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At that point, we were doing the pivot on the plan and we were just looking at all the options that we could.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Maybe just rephrase. Officers always have the discretion as to whether or how to use enforcement actions. And certainly, the crowd dynamics made it very difficult for them to do that. I know you phrased it, “There were enforcement actions not being taken.” Officers were applying their discretion around enforcement, inciting other public safety issues, and officer safety issues would have been a part of that discretion.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, yes. Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, it could have added a range of different things. Again, it’s not an area of expertise that I have. There could have been heightened fines. There could have been new bylaws passed. There could have been, though an injunction -- maybe there would be some way to engage other elements like insurance bureaus, hotels. Again, it’s not an area of expertise. I’m not a lawyer. I don’t believe I’ve actually been involved in the drafting and carrying through of an injection all the way. I would have relied almost entirely on my Legal Services team to have those conversations and they would have been entirely informed by the needs of the incident command group.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, thank you. I can’t imagine why I would ever say that. I think this is the 30th so this would be the Sunday. I mean we’d seen -- we had seen massive public safety concerns across the downtown in the red zone. They were well-publicized on mainstream media and social media events of assaults, threatening behaviour, hate incidents. I don’t know how he would have taken the impression from us that these were just minor bylaw issues, public frustration, and who’s going to pay the bill. I suspect all those areas were part of our discussions but he would only have to look out of his window at City Hall to understand what was happening in our city at this time, a significant public safety event happening in our city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I have no recollection of that and I couldn’t believe that I would ever express that to him.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Perhaps he talked to other people before or after.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was a tinderbox waiting to explode. It was not a family festival.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
None whatsoever. This had been assigned, I think -- again, I may be corrected by documentation, but my recollection is that Christiane Huneault as general counsel would have been lead for this. She would have relied on the supports of the Incident Command Team as well as other planning capabilities outside of the Incident Command Team within our general organization to be able to address any questions or information requests. I will say on the spectrum of million things we needed to get done in real time, this was probably in the middle to bottom half of it, so it is possible that the City was waiting for updates but everyone in the organization -- my organization was busy on higher priority items at that point. So that’s the best explanation I could give you. But there was certainly no indication that I had that we were disinterested in supporting it. We’d simply passed it over to them and washed our hands of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just while that’s coming up, Commissioner, if I may have your indulgence for a second. Sorry. I don’t know what the procedure around this is. I was asked a question earlier on and I was giving an answer and I changed midway through my answer. And it may have sounded like a complete phrase. It was a change of phrase. Can I just correct the record with that indulgence?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, Commissioner. If I get the question wrong or the context, please correct me. I believe you asked me a question to what extend did I believe that others -- that the three levels of government had lost confidence or trust in me. And I believe part of my response was I felt that all three levels had expressed very low. What I was about to say was very, and then I changed to low. It came across, I believe, as very low. I just want that corrected for the record if that’s ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, it was “low”.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But I had experienced incidents where there was clearly some level of -- low level of lack of confidence in the organization from all three levels of government.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. And again, my recollection is that as soon as that Board meeting ended on the 5th, we turned our attention to start getting the information we need. So I don’t -- I’m not aware of notes, scribe notes, that say my Executive Officer and my EA started to assign things to CAO Dunkirk, but there was no way that I would have left that Board meeting with that request in front of us and the extremely short timelines and simply waited 24 hours later to start to have people thinking about it. So that’s just my recollection, and I stand to be corrected if that proves to be wrong.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
As soon as that Board meeting was over, we would debrief right away, as we would with any Board meeting at the end of it, what are the substantive issues that came out, what do we need to do, what are the timelines, and certainly in this meeting that was the direction that needed our full focus and it would not have simply waited till the end of the next day to get to.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, we were trying to think of anything that could assist us. The concept of mediation and negotiation was clearly a live discussion at many levels in the organization and many levels of government, and so any particular advice, supports, expertise that we or the City could bring in could be helpful.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall that, but I’m not challenging the date of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was involved in discussions around it. I’ve been involved in those -- had been involved in those discussions in my time in Toronto for a variety of reasons. And literally every time it ever came up in Toronto is it may get you some money, transfer payments. It might get you access to certain resources, but it’s not going to give you -- the declaration of state of emergency in our context here in the province isn’t the same as it is in other jurisdictions in other countries. So it has, put my police officer hat on, limited efficacy to support policing operations and I have limited understanding of how it supports other city functions, but even there, my understanding is it is by no means even close to being a silver bullet.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t speak to political leverage. I can only tell you what, practically, it would provide for a jurisdiction and, in my case, a policing jurisdiction.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I wouldn’t put it that way.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We had a legal opinion -- sorry, can you just frame your question again, please?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, we requested on the 27th, it arrived on the 28th. I don’t know the date that I saw it, but it was still in and around that time. And again, the events started on the 27th, went through the 28th, heightened on the 29th, and continued through the 30th. So it arrived in the middle of the event, not prior to the event.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably my general counsel. I mean, I don’t have an independent recollection, but before we go outside for a legal opinion, I would usually run it by my own general counsel.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
By virtue of the first law broken in and around it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Too many to list.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Trite law, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- Provincial Offences Act, Criminal Code, federal statutes. Too many to list.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry, just I may have missed your question. That just having 3,000 vehicles would mean that there would be offences?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the context of a protest, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We probably have more than 3,000 vehicles in the downtown core in Ottawa on any given day.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I understand your question, and so I’m trying to be deliberate in my answer. I can’t imagine that the PLT would have negotiated, “Hey, when you come in, you can break our laws.” I suspect, and I haven’t seen the PLT log notes, but, “When you come in, in order to not break our laws, in order to maintain the free flow of emergency vehicles, in order to not create as many problems as could happen, we’re going to try to get you to do these several things. Park your vehicles here. Carpool/rideshare downtown. We will designate areas where you can park your trucks.” And in designating those areas, it would be the police facilitating that, as opposed to an independent decision by a truck driver or pick-up truck driver to violate the law on their own -- through their own decision making. That’s different from us trying to facilitate a peaceful, lawful protest.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not sure I understand the question, but I’ll try to answer it. If I get it wrong, please redirect me. And we’ve heard some, I think very helpful -- I want to be careful. I’m aware that Insp. Lucas describes a situation where there’s sort of a race to Wellington Street. And it seems that that is one of -- one of, not the only, but one of the main factors that seems to kind of end the agreed levels of cooperation that had been achieved through a lot of hard work by these PLTs. It then becomes a series of snake-like efforts to move heavy vehicles, and lots of vehicles, through the downtown core. And the traffic plan that had been set up had to be in real time rearranged. All of that chaos, yes, in all of that, we started to see significant levels of by-law, Provincial Offences Act violations. Not to mention those who were either walking, riding, or in any other conveyance, starting to do a wide array of social disorder, threatening and intimidating behaviour, physically and psychologically assaultive behaviour, and yes, hate related behaviour, and ultimately Criminal Code violations, all of which happened in near real time over the morning and early afternoon and throughout the remainder of the time of the events in the city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You’ve touched on one of my frustrations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That is why there’s clear documentation of me saying, “Are we ready to go? Have we thought about all the things we need to do? Have we considered whether we’re going to be closing more roads, more highway offramps, more bridges, based on what we learned from last weekend and what we’ve seen in other jurisdictions.” And I was really kicking the tires hard on that. And that is why on the third weekend, I issued my only direct order at the operational level: close the interprovincial bridges and close the highways that give direct access to the downtown core. I rescinded that only when the then incident commander, sorry, event commander, Rob Bernier, articulated a substantially robust traffic management plan to address the circumstances that were happening at that time. And it turned out to be a very successful plan. But that remained a significant concern for me and for the organization. There were more roads closed on the second weekend. There were more effective coordination around the interprovincial bridges. There was more assistance from the OPP on monitoring traffic around the King’s Highways. But I really still had a lot of concerns.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the fullest sense, meaning that we blocked off all of the access off ramps which I saw as a private citizen? No. To that level, that level of hardening did not exist in the three weekends that I was the Chief of Police.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, ma’am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I -- this is the first time I’m seeing the email. I don’t know the context of the meeting. Seems to be Kenny Bryden -- sorry, Insp. Bryden would be within the Intelligence Directorate. So I don’t know the nature of this.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. No, I'm not sure where you got the information that I said it was not a good thing, Counsel.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Whose notes are these?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, Task Force Officers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not that I'm aware of.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. The language used around the officers posing in photos are problematic to me. If I was not clear in my language, I'll accept that. I accept and adopt the views as relayed by Inspector Lucas. Officers will often have to do a fist bump or lean in for a selfie just to try to keep the temperature down in circumstances they're in. That is just the reality of almost any circumstance, any day, not even requiring something of this level, just in order to try to build rapport in a minute so to keep things at the right level or de-escalate things that could be escalating. And I'll always defer to an officer on that. In the broader sense, I could understand -- and maybe that’s where my comments were attributed -- in the broader sense, these photos that are being -- going viral on social media without proper context, would be extremely problematic and were extremely problematic. They were used extensively in the social media disinformation and misinformation campaigns, and unfortunately, crept into some of the mainstream media reporting as well. I think it's more in that context that I would be talking about it as opposed to every single officer I saw in a photograph doing a fist bump or a thumbs up was unacceptable. That’s never been my experience, and I would have done the same things and had done the same things throughout my policing career, and wouldn't expect to be sanctioned by a superior officer if they took the time to find out as to why I was doing it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There's no doubt that the photographs of officers -- sometimes they weren’t even officers in the Ottawa theatre that were being passed around on social media saying, "Look what's happening in Ottawa." So there was just a lot of that going on, and I can understand why the public, without the context that we're sharing here now, would just look at that and say, "Oh, that’s sympathy from the officers to the movement or various movements represented."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Primarily to set the strategic direction of the police of jurisdiction, ensure that the police of jurisdiction has adequate resources to develop, to deliver adequate and effective services, and to hire and manage the chief of police and the two deputy chief positions, or in our case, two deputy chiefs.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the same respect, they have an oversight body. Does it align to strategic purposes? Are there any policies that come into play? Are there adequate resources? What is the performance of chief and command, and through them, the performance of the organization?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They have the same role ongoing every single day, regardless of whether there's a major event or not.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, very much so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not distracting. I understand the need that the Board was trying to fulfill, but every minute, every hour, where one or all of the command and supporting personnel were not focused on managing the events was less resources that we could put to those events, less leadership that we could provide to support those who were leading those events. So it's -- there's only a finite amount of time in any day, and on some days, I spent three, four hours on Board meetings and had my two deputy chiefs there as well. I think in every occasion, we had the full command team there. So I understand. It's not a distraction, but it is a demand on time, and it's in that context of demand on time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just what they're asking for, a clearly-outlined plan that would result in the end of the demonstration.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not on February 5th, no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Because there was no way to end the demonstration with the resources we had at that time and we were in the process of pivoting the plan to put that in place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s right.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We’re still evolving that plan from the pre-planning piece. We’re still trying to gather the resources necessary to move from -- simply, at this point in February 5th, still just holding onto the red zone and not allowing anything else in there but not really able to do much more than that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There’s not much reconciliation. I mean there’s a comprehensive plan. We’ve looked at the full range of issues from PLT to POU, enforcement, intelligence gathering, traffic. We are engaging in all sort of efforts to get resources into the organization. It’s comprehensive. It’s just not into the detailed levels of sub- plans and dates and times when operations will take place, assuming that there are resources available. So “comprehensive”, it covers the full range of what we need to have in a plan. Back in the details in order to be able to say, “A week from now, with these 1800 resources, we should have the ability to execute a POU plan in the morning of, and by the end of the evening, we should have cleared 75 percent of the red zone,” I couldn’t give them that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There’s a comprehensive framework. I don’t know if “plan” is the sense -- but that’s the reconciliation I can give you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Because there was no -- at that point, there was no plan that we could say, “This will end the demonstration.”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I can’t speak to the final plan that was used in the week of -- after the 15th of February, so I don’t what was provided or not provided by then Interim Chief Bell.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We never provided an operational plan in its totality in a bound document to the board. Let me be clear about one thing. The Ottawa Police Services Board provided a lot of support to the Service and to myself, our executive team on a range of issues, but there was a challenge around confidentiality on that board. There were clearly documented events where Service information, board information including in-camera discussions had been leaked by board members to the public. And so there was a concern prior to the arrival and the events of the convoy around the confidentiality -- the ability of the board to keep confidential information confidential.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had formal documentation and correspondence with then Chair Deans around those concerns and specifically pointing to those events. It was up to her to investigate and remediate whatever issues. I never got a final update from Chair Deans as to the outcome of those concerns.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It is a factor that came into my consideration as to the level of detail that I could provide on intelligence, threat risk assessments, operational plan, or other operational details.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My evidence is that is one of the factors I had to consider, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That I was not going to be handing over an entire detailed operational plan to the board. It’s not a practice I’d ever seen done before. It’s not one that I’d be comfortable with. And from my knowledge of the Morden Report, not one that’s required.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, we did provide summaries on a regular basis.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
A document? No. In hours-long board meetings, we -- all dedicated to this, we were asked, repeatedly, questions and provided as much information as we possibly could. I can’t recall whether or not somebody provided a summary document. That, I can’t recall.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at -- well, it concerns me that she would characterize it that way. I had daily calls, sometimes twice and three times daily calls with Chair Deans. We offered the board, and they accepted, to do ride-alongs. I think four of the seven board members actually participated in ride-alongs that were by my Service Sergeant Major would actually put them in a police vehicle and drove them throughout the theatre in safe ways. They had hours with the Service Sergeant Major to ask any questions that they wanted. I had given explicit instructions to the Service Sergeant Major to answer those questions as fully and honestly as possible. So we went through a variety of means beyond public meetings to ensure that the board could literally see and be in the theatre, talk to frontline officers, have direct access to the chief of police on a regular basis, on a daily basis, including the formal board meetings. I can’t understand why Chair Deans would say that she did not have the ability to ask questions and receive information in a very timely manner.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m going to be consistent with what we’ve been doing all along. We’re not going to be changing and deviating from that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I don’t know what that -- what that means. And I know these are my scribe note. We’re going to be consistent with what we did on Monday is the substantive theme that I’m trying to relay here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Detailed plans, detailed staffing numbers, how many we’re going to have on this shift, that shift, in public meeting and documents, those are problematic questions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
For all the reasons that have been explained before. We’re just -- it’s -- this was a unique event, that’s for sure, but the types of questions we were getting repeatedly, over and over and over again; “What is the plan to end this? Like, I’m looking out my window now. I can’t see a police officer out there.” Unfortunately, these were the types of questions that just couldn’t be answered and were taking up hours of our time, literally, at these meetings.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t think I’m referring to in-camera there. I cannot go into the confidential elements of what we’re doing, I think is what I was trying to say. I would have said in camera.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, and I think at the previous meeting -- what’s the date of this?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Right. At the previous meeting, I think I’d urged them at least three or four separate times in the February 5th meeting, “Let’s go in camera.”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can give more information in camera. I wasn’t, at that point, committing to give everything that I was being asked, but I certainly could give more information in camera.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably more loose language. I don’t know if it would have meant unlawful, but I certainly wouldn’t be giving -- there are unlawful information around human resources’ things, conduct information that wouldn’t necessarily be lawful for me to provide but I’m not sure what the actual reference there is.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sure that there would be something that would allow for that to happen. I’m not sure I could give a member’s blood type or something like that, but -- there might be some limits on that, but I think in general, I can share the information with the organization.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There may be some restrictions that I’m not an expert on privacy rights to be able to say that there’s health information that we would have in the records of the Ottawa Police Service, that relates to a member’s psychological assessment that I could hand in complete free form to the Board.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I know that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And they have broken that at least on one occasion during my tenure. So that oath of confidentiality doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems with the Board’s ability to maintain its oath of confidentiality.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You’re right, but it does cause me to have to be very careful under the conditions that I do it, and this was a national security event.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Subject to other Acts and legislation, I would agree with you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It did issue a direction to me to provide the staffing numbers on the February 5th meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall now.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If it was a formal direction, I probably would have to get consultation with my general counsel, and then assuming that there was no prohibition, we probably would have provided what we could, and that would largely be a heavily redacted document.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just for clarity, I read it probably 12 years ago, but I am familiar.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They didn’t request any continuity plans, but we briefed them on our ability to maintain business across the rest of the -- police services across the rest of the municipality while we’re dealing with the incident Command as well.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was not aware of it. I became aware of some level of PLT-related negotiations happening around that location. That came up through Supt. Patterson and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson at a briefing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s a Supt. Patterson decision. I gave no decision on that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I gave no directions in regards to PLT actions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My recollection of the first time hearing that directly was when -- I might get his rank wrong but Larry Brookson, who was the head of the Parliamentary Protection Services, raised that, I think on the weekend of the 13th, 14t, with me directly.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On one -- well, one, maybe two singular -- two caveats; it cannot direct policing operations, and it cannot run counter to the operational plan that was under the control of the Incident Command.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In hindsight, yes. At the time, I thought it was reasonable.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were just negotiations that were ongoing. There hadn’t been a final outcome, and at this point, it didn’t have any major impact on our operations -- any impact on our operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably be one of those areas I would have wanted to share down one more level into the -- at least to the event commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The date, sorry, again? February?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. It would have given him situational awareness, but I would have told him, you keep working on your plan, because this thing may fall apart. We didn’t have the time or the effort to be putting a lot of resources into planning for something that hadn’t been negotiated and might never happen anyway. So I would have given him for situational awareness, but not to give him more work to be done around it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, because -- sorry. I shouldn’t interrupt you. I apologize.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Please finish your question, because I want to make sure I answer properly.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would not have wanted anybody in my organization to then get involved directly in the negotiation with -- between the City, and I believe it’s Mr. French, and the convoy organizers. I didn’t want the Ottawa Police Service to be directly involved in that negotiation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was a political negotiation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And if there was, I would have defaulted to the OPS plans.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was the condition I gave to Steve Kanellakos when he had called me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe that’s the timing, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I actually don’t have an independent recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But I don’t recall anything being substantively discussed.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
With my general recollection, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall any. Again, sorry, I don’t have my notes and I don’t have a clear independent recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know. I just wouldn’t know the level of lift, but I suspect it would be. We didn’t have a lot of resources to spare, so any amount of resources could be considered significant.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s Larry Brookson, who was leading the Parliamentary Protection Services. And I apologize, I don’t know his -- I can’t remember his rank or his title.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, that’s not how I took it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He’s concerned about not being aware of it, which I can appreciate fully. But I’m explaining that the Major Incident Commander and Event Commander would be able to brief all of our partners in the NCRR and everybody who is contributing at that point, an integrated operation about what was taking place that day, and that my understanding was PPS was part of that Intersect team and would have received that briefing. I didn’t get the impression that Larry Brookson was calling me out, or the Ottawa Police Service out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t what that reference is. I looked at that myself. I don’t know -- it obviously would be from Brookson, sorry, Larry Brookson, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- Mr. Brookson.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But again, it’s hard to -- like you said, it’s back and forth sort of almost real time attempt to get the full conversation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I mean, I remember Mr. Brookson expressing his concern around the politics, and as I’ve said, there was a lot of politics going on all around this at so many levels. But I don’t know who he’s referring to as “an administrator”.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understood by this time. I still, to this day, have some confusion as to that portion of things, but clearly by this time, I would have known that trucks were on Wellington Street.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I don't. Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know. I apologise.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It seems to be all a discussion around the relative sequence -- the sequence of events that took place throughout the day, the relative efficacy of it, challenges experienced, logistical staffing, there is PLTs referenced there. So it's a general discussion that seems to be going on. I'm not sure who's leading and who is making what points.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, it's just another busy briefing on a very difficult period of time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't. I mean, I've -- subsequent through disclosure I've seen things, so I don't know if that makes my opinion valid at this point, but I understand - - my understanding is, without getting into any more detail than that, is that the Event Commander made a decision to discontinue the Operations. And the only thing I can say to that is that would be entirely within his purview. That was the caveat I gave to City Manager Kanellakos. I said "If at any point that the Operations around the negotiation cross purposes with the Operational Plan" that we would default to our Operational Plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Around recommendations going forward or lessons learned in...
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I did provide some list of recommendations for the Commission to consider in my statement. I'll trust that that will be followed up as the Commissioner determines. I was about to say we have a Board liaison person because we talked about the Board quite a bit, but John Steinbach was the designated Board liaison person at that position before I even arrived as Chief. I'm just thinking through sort of top-down from Board relationship. Intersect was there. There was a recommendation around funding and investing in Intersect to create more -- deconflict some of the problems we've learned. I -- honestly, the list of recommendations that I've provided are the substantive reviews of what needed to be in a better level to address some of the structural deficits that I've talked about. And I've tried to provide both national, well, national, provincial in terms of Police Act legislation, and local in terms of the unique aspects of the NCR region within my recommendations. I can't think of anything else at this point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think the broadest statement around understanding how to be able to be even more resilient during that level of time. I think there's a whole new level of science around sleep and wellness that probably executive leaders who face these types of sustained levels of crisis and pressure just need to understand how to develop a level of physical and emotional and psychological resilience to get through these things. How do you -- I mean, we talk about wellness for frontline officers and building resilience there. It's -- and I think that would be probably just a personal lesson learned, there just never is enough sleep. I suspect people on this Commission are sleep deprived as well, and not optimal in terms of what they're doing. So I mean, it's just a human condition.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I know for my legal team, and I'm looking at sleepy eyes all around me. So -- I mean, I said it. I think it came up in a comment earlier on when I was talking to Chair Deans, like, we're just human beings, and none of us are supermen or superwomen, and this was a super difficult situation. And mistakes were made, moments were lost, relationships were strained, meetings didn't go the way they were intended to, language was not precise enough, assumptions were made, rumours were passed around. Just -- it's just a human condition. Systems are built by human beings, policies are designed by human beings, institutions are just human institutions. And I said it before on the Standing Committee, someone asked "Did the Ottawa Police Service fail?" Canada was exposed in these events, our institutions were exposed, our systems were exposed, and our leaders were exposed, and our frontline members were exposed. Probably worst overall our communities were exposed. We just got to get it better the next time. I'm fully committed to doing that, that's why I'm here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I'll leave it with the Commission to see those areas, and I'll make myself available, Commissioner, to you, and your team at any point to expand on that. I think each one of my recommendations could probably fill another 20 pages or so, but I just think for the time here I'll leave it there and make myself available to you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good morning, sir. Thank you very much.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Done. Needs to be done.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely not, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My recollection is that I did, but I stand corrected if there's no actual evidence of that. Regardless, the discussions of the Hendon reports took place at nearly every briefing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understand that's his statement, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, that's her statement, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Except that the Hendon reports were being discussed well before those days, so I have no other evidence other than that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, is that a question for me?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I received the Hendon report in regards to the convoy on January 13th. I believe I was on the distribution for the Hendon reports prior to that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, Inspector Maloney, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
As my executive officer, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's Inspector Maloney.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, no, I don't recall this email being asked to be sent. I do recall asking for, not specifically through my executive officer, but for all previous copies of Hendon reports. The rest of the bullet points, I'm not sure where they would have come from, but they were not my directions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He may have been looking for a background on his own. I don't know to what extent the Inspector would have been briefed up on all these matters.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't recall asking for these things ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- in the way that they were asked for. He's tried to do his best to get that information, but I obviously knew all of those answers already. What I was looking for was all the copies of the Hendon reports.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can understand why. My request was to my own folks to get past copies of the Hendon reports. Technically, we should have been able to get them from our own Intelligence Directorate, as you can see by the email from Mr. Dunlop. For some reason, they weren't -- my staff weren't able to get them from our own folks, and so I guess the request went on from there. I was not aware that we had sent a formal letter to Superintendent Morris for all these reports. We should have been able to get them from our own Intelligence archives.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, and I don't manage my email inbox. I have an EA that supports that. And for whatever combination of reasons, it wasn't available to my EA, and so a request went through to the Intelligence Directorate. And subsequent to that, for reasons I'm not fully aware of, it went over to Superintendent Morris. The point is, you're right, they were available inside the Ottawa Police Service, and my request was to the Ottawa Police Service, "Produce the Hendon reports, so I can start to have an archive of them and look through them myself."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I often deleted reports that I wasn't actually using anymore and so I wouldn't have a complete access to them myself, and so I'd have to get assistance from my EA, sometimes from IT to get past documents, for a wide variety of issues.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. Actually, my evidence was I read most of them at the time, in terms of line by line. Some of them I skimmed through, and some of them I would have forwarded on to different people for actioning items.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It is possible that some of them weren’t opened; depending on the day and how much I had going on, I might not have been able to read everything that came into my inbox.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. He has my authority to do a wide variety of things, including extending to seek information in order to accomplish his purpose. I don’t give him directions and details on every aspect of what he does as the Executive Officer.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That is absolutely incorrect, sir. And I really take offence to that notion, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, there was a massive amount of information in there, including the information about Deputy Chief Bell. Obviously, this has actually become very important in an inquest. So, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s important, sir, because it provides a history of what the Ottawa Police Service received the Hendon reports and what they did with them in totality.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I could appreciate why Supt. Morris from the OPP would be puzzled about it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I testified that the trust factor had taken a hit, but that I had not lost confidence in my two Deputies. If I had lost confidence in my two Deputies, I would have taken a much more firm and direct course of action.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Lost some level of trust, sir. Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think that’s hard for anybody, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, just to correct. It wasn’t because I could not trust them, meaning I had zero trust. But yes, I would have to then take some course of action to deal with that until efforts were made on all parties to rebuild that trust, and I stated that efforts were made; thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. Supt. Dunlop was still part of a review that was going on for the Panda Games events, and it would not have been fair for him to be in that position until that review was completed.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had a momentary trust issue with Deputy Chiefs Bell and Ferguson as a result of the decision to put Supt. Patterson -- sorry; Dunlop, into the position of Event Commander without letting me know about it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; I did not indicate any such thing about my emotions, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was concerned because I was not made aware of the decision.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Because it wasn’t suitable for him to be in the position, given that he was still under review; yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I asked them for their opinions; his name was not offered back to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir, that is not at all correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You’ve actually repeatedly misstated the words, so I appreciate ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I certainly feel your pain; there’s a lot of information.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, that’s incorrect, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s not what I said.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There were instances where the Board was documented in terms -- Board Members were documented in terms of leaking information, service information, Board information. That includes in-camera information.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’ve talked about the concerns that I had from comments and actions by various levels of government; yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry; can you repeat that please, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s not exactly right, but I was aware from people in the Ministry that had made those suggestions over the course of my tenure as Chief of Police.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir. That’s not correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir. He was not the Incident Commander in the Panda Game, but he was the Superintendent overseeing -- actually, the acting Deputy Chief overseeing the area that was responsible for event planning and the event plan implementation on the day at the Panda Game in 2021.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He was not the Incident Commander and I don’t know if there was a Major Event Incident Command or Event Commander, but he was overseeing that operation. He was part of the briefings in regards to those operations. He was with me when we briefed Board and Council members in regards to those operations. So he had a very active involvement in the planning and the overseeing of the implementation of that plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You have probably more accurate information/recollection at this point than I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
First of all, I’m not aware of his CV, so I can’t comment on the accuracy of it. Your last comment, I don’t know where you’ve got that from, sir, but that’s not accurate. And then last but not least, planning and logistics for the Panda Game was not the problem. It was decisions made around removing the ESU prior to the time where the traditional public order and disorder issues took place, and I still, at that point, in January/February of 2022 had not had a report back that explained why our public order were removed prior to what we knew to be the high-risk period of the Panda Game.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Planning and logistics had nothing ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Planning and logistics -- thank you, sir. Planning and logistics had nothing to do with things -- an operational decision that was made at some level to remove the mass majority of our resources, including our public order resources, literally at the moment that the troubles would have begun.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But he was not an event coordinator ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know what his CV -- I didn’t know at that time what his CV was.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my understanding, although I don’t know when the actual change took place.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe it was around the 1st, but I don’t know the exact date.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry, did you say that Supt. Rheaume was the Event Commander until the 4th?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That does not -- that’s not aligned to what I understood.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall any challenges.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I haven’t read that report, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My recollection is that Deputy Chief Ferguson told me somewhere around February 1st that Insp. Lucas had asked for time off and that he was being replaced to allow to go home. Apparently all that information wasn’t correct. And to this date, I am still not sure what happened between February 1st and February 5th, when I was finally made aware that Supt. Dunlop was the Event Commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, it’s not a matter of belief. My recollection, independent, and to this day, is that Insp. Lucas was asking for time off somewhere around February 1st, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson provided that time off and replaced him with somebody. I wasn’t sure who that was. I assumed it was a decision that was just temporary for 24 to 48 hours. So I wasn’t particularly concerned about it. I became concerned about things on Saturday, February 5th, when I kept asking for who the Incident Commander was, Event Commander was, and I was then told at the end of that meeting on February 5th that it was Supt. Dunlop. And until that time, I had no understanding of that, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, whose notes are these, sorry?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. And what’s the date for this?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m -- I have no idea what the context of this telephone call that Ms. Huneault had with Deputy Chief Bell on February 10th. So that does not -- those are not notes that she was taking on my behalf. Those were notes she was taking on her behalf, and I have no understanding of the context.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well it’s not correct, sir, from my understanding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s not correct, from my understanding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If that was correct, then that would completely discount the fact that Supt. Dunlop presented himself on two occasions on Thursday, February 3rd, to present the Public Unit Order sub-plan that I had asked for, and that Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson was responsible for coordinating in our Major Incident Command Role. And so none of this makes sense.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What’s happening here is there’s an interchange of terms between Incident Commander and Event Commander. Event Commander is not a vernacular that I was used to from time in Toronto Police Service. We didn’t have such a designation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If you’d like an explanation, sir, I’m trying to provide that to you. So in terms of terminology, you’re right. It doesn’t make sense. But I go back to it. On or around February 1st, I believe it was February 1st, but I stand to be corrected if there’s other documentation, I was advised by Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson that Insp. Lucas was tired, that he was involved in planning prior to the arrival of the convoys, had worked through the weekend under intense pressure, that Insp. Lucas needed time off, and that he was being replaced. I don’t recall whether or not she told me who he was being replaced by. But I accepted that. Then I was waiting for a briefing from S/Sgt. Mike Stoll on the Public Order Unit Plan that I requested on February 1st. Supt. Dunlop showed up on Thursday, February 3rd, on two separate occasions, presenting that plan, and that caused great confusion for me and it also meant that we couldn’t actually get the presentation. When finally we started talking about it again on February 5th, I was then told that Supt. Dunlop had been the Incident Commander. That’s my recollection and that’s why I wrote my notes as such.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Had been replaced -- replaced Insp. Lucas as the Incident Commander. And that’s why I wrote my notes as such.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These are contemporaneous notes. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I am still under the impression that he took time off, but I've heard his testimony that he never had days off. But up until that point I was advised and still believe that, well, I was advised that Inspector Lucas had requested time off.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It turns out it was Superintendent Rheaume. I stand corrected.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I was uninformed from the 1st until the 5th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
For the most part, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, below her would be the Event Commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, not to get too off track, but then what is the role of the Event Commander?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And there are no instructions in that regard, and there certainly were no instructions that I gave in that regard either.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. But as a strategy level contact and the direct contact to me, that I would expect such decisions would be communicated to me with an explanation that I could understand in a timely manner.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, and she'd be accountable for it, given that I had raised my concerns, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, and I retained the right as Chief of Police to make a decision if I felt that it was going in the wrong direction.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I explicitly did so because it was such an important decision to make, yes, sir. But it's implicit in everything.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not so -- not at all. It's not a threat at all. It's simply stating the facts. "This is an important decision you're making. We've just had an important discussion. We are in a significant public safety crisis. Decisions of this level are incredibly important. It's your decision, but you'll be accountable for it." Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We were still struggling to retain control, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The Ottawa Police Services facing unrelenting criticism, and yes, as Chief of Police that would come with the title.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Intense pressure on everyone, yes, sir, and it was intense on me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, you just lost me there. I'm not quite sure what you're asking or asserting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My first concern was that I wasn't advised about it. Then I raised the concern that he might not be appropriate because he's still under review.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, quite the opposite. I was clear, once I understood that it was Deputy Chief Bell's suggestion or recommendation to Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, I turned to Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson and said "You're the Major Incident Commander. Whoever made the suggestion is irrelevant, you have made that decision. It's on you to communicate that to me."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never said anything to that - --
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had no issues whatsoever with Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson consulting with Deputy Chief Bell on that occasion or any other occasion. In fact, I encouraged it repeatedly.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely not, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely not, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm sorry, I don't see that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, not sure what “double- sided Incident Command?" is. That’s clearly the scribe. I guess it’s Christian Huneault, herself not quite sure what the point was, so that’s an indication of some confusion on my scribe. “Still don’t have it”. I don’t know what that refers to. “Chief outlines concerns over last week”. That’s definitely how the meeting started.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
“In the event she is shipped out”, again, that’s her interpretation of what’s being said. I can’t speak to it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. Have we left this meeting now?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. Thank you. What was your question?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, there was an incredible amount of pressure. Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. I did not see what you’re referring to before the page ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And again, is these are Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson’s notes, I think I said several times on Friday I can’t understand why she was writing these things and what was in her mind, but if that’s her interpretation, that is her interpretation. It certainly wasn’t my intention at all.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can see what she wrote. I certainly never gave those directions. I never saw emails for that purpose. I completely deny that assertion, as I have before and will continue to do so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That certainly would have been a concern. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, he wasn’t, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But they were assigned roles within the Major Incident Command structure and would have been properly briefed by all the members there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I have no reason to know why he would have met with the POU group because he wasn’t part of the Incident Command Team. He was overseeing investigations, so that’s confusing on its face.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. And Commissioner, I just want to be clear. Superintendent Dunlop had no functional role in the Incident Command system on February 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th. I only became aware of his involvement on the 5th, the Saturday. My understanding on the February 1st meeting in Kanata with the Public Order Unit officers was that I had invited the Major Incident Commander, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, the Incident Commander, Inspector Lucas and the Public Order Commander, the SU Commander, Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll. There were a number of other people who were there who were within the Incident Command system, PLT members, external Public Order Unit Commanders. Everybody that should have been there was there with the exception of Inspector Lucas, who said he could not be there. I don’t have a reference as to why Superintendent Rheaume wasn’t there ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- Superintendent Dunlop had no functional role to play within the Incident Command system on the Tuesday, the Wednesday, the Thursday. I will concede at some point in that period he was substituted in for Chris Rheaume. I still don’t know fully why or when. But he should not have been at any of those other meetings, and he was. And that was very confusing because he had no functional role to play in those meetings.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were -- they were procured to support the Ottawa Police Service and the Ottawa Police Services Board. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Navigator was procured by the Ottawa Police Service for services to the Ottawa Police Service and the Ottawa Police Services Board.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They prepared -- they prepared general reports that covered a range of topic, including general trust of the Ottawa Police Service. And yes, they broke it down in some cases to assess trust in the -- in the Chief of Police.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t recall exactly, but I’m sure it did come up in reports.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall. There were lots of reports that came across my desk, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s not correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I used the term "crush", and that was an inappropriate term at a very stressful meeting, but yes sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir. I was actually very explicit after that. And Ms. Huneault's notes talks about the context of that explicit context around note changes. The notes are very clear. There is no changes to the strategic direction, the framework, the changing of major positions within the Incident Command Team. It was not said as a blanket statement that there could not be any Operational, Tactical, or even Strategic changes, but that we were to communicate carefully, we were to act as a committed and coordinated team and demonstrate that continuously going forward.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Which notes are you referring to, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I haven't seen it. You need to put that up on the screen. And I contest Deputy Chief Ferguson's interpretations of my comments on many occasions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Unfortunately, she seems to have taken her own interpretation and great liberties with those interpretations on a regular basis, and I have stated that in my evidence in-Chief.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, you confused me. What question are you asking?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, he testified.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Vaguely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, my recollection is that Inspector Ferguson heard from somebody who described me as going as a rampage. So this would be fourth or fifth hand information. That's my recollection, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't agree with what was told to Inspector Ferguson, I don't agree how he related that to Superintendent Abrams, and I certainly don't agree with how Superintendent Abrams would relate third and fourth hand information in official channels to a partner agency as important as the OPP. I think that's all very unfortunate and very untrue.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm sorry. Again, sir, could you pull up those notes?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I don't even know what day you're on right now, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In what meeting, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I'm -- sorry, but I'm just amazed at the amount of liberties that an Acting Deputy Chief, Superintendent, relatively new and promoted Superintendent, would take in terms of interpreting my intentions. But none of this is accurate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And nobody else made notations of that, so she seems to be the only one making those interpretations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was "we floundered", sir. That's not "he floundered."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm sure you did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe we all sorted out a lot of things in that timeframe, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never accused anybody, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think the term "we" is used throughout this sentence. There was no finger pointing or blaming. You're applying your own interpretation, sir, which I completely disagree with.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't have any statement that says Deputy Chief Ferguson said that. If you'd like to pull it up I'd be happy to see it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Please, please ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Please show me the statement, then, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You keep referencing statements and then you say they're in the record or you'd be happy to put them up. If you're going to reference the statement, sir, please put it on the screen for me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I need to the statements if you're going ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- to question me about it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, Commissioner.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I have no recollection of Mr. Abrams's statement, sir, unless you can show it to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't recall the statement by Mr. Abrams, Commissioner, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I do recall Mr. Pardy’s evidence. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can understand why he would see that from his perspective, but I said in evidence-in-chief that this was a critically important issue with resourcing and that we were discussing things that had affected resourcing, and politics was one of them. So yes, I could understand it became a very tense moment in the meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe that was his decision. I don’t know all the reasons behind it. I’d heard dangerous, I’d heard resources, but it was called off. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know what she’s referencing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t even recall that incident, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall the combination of things that she’s talking about here, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And use them as bookends? No, sir, I don’t recall saying that. I don’t think I’ve ever said anything like that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Is that Insp. Lucas ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- you’re referring to?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I don’t have a clear recollection of that, but I don’t have any reason to ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think that’s what his testimony was, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was a lot of information there. I’ll just be very clear. I’ve said it again in my evidence. I never gave any direction in regards to PLT at any level, with the exception that PLT were critically important to all of our operations in this. I did everything I could repeatedly and demonstratively to support them, including bringing the PLT commanders to the February 1st meeting with POU. So I will say it again, sir. I have no idea where this narrative of I did not support, would not allow, and had to approve PLT actions. The only evidence I’ve heard so far is that someone assumes that that was my position. I gave no such direction at any time during my tenure as chief and at no time during the entire events of the convoy.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, I disagree with the entire assertion that I had some position against the PLT and gave some direction that required my approval for any PLT related action.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Supt. Abrams was very clear that he got his information third and fourth hand from sources that he never names as part of a rumour mongering mill.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And yet Deputy Chief Ferguson never points to any direction that I gave to that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry, sir, but this is a meeting with some 25 people in the room. There was absolutely no attribution to who said anything on this document, other than meeting with the Chief and the: “Chief wants something in writing […] within 72 hours…” I don’t know who made those statements, sir, and I said that in my evidence-in-chief.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sir, this is a long email. I’d need to read through this from top to bottom to understand the - --
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I’m sorry. I’m going to need to see the email to understand ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- the context.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t even know what the discussion is about, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sir, I don’t know what the information is. If you’d give me the chance to read through this email, I can give you an answer. But unless I can read through this long email, I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, and so I won’t agree to it or disagree to it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, Navigator, again, sir, please stop putting words in my mouth, Navigator was hired by the Ottawa Police Service in consultation with the Ottawa Police Services Board to support both the Ottawa Police Service and the Ottawa Police Service’s Board.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The function of the Office of Chief happens to be a function of the Ottawa Police Service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He’s the Executive Director of Strategy and Communication, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, they’re not, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t think I would call it that, but they were a company that was provided to us that had capabilities in open-source information, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, yes, John Steinbach is.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, he was. He provided communications -- daily communication support to the Incident Command system.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
ASI, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Jamie is, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Erin is from ASI.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Do you have that in the notes, sir? I don’t have an independent recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry; I’m just trying to find -- okay, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The notes refresh my memory but -- well, the notes are the notes. I don’t have an independent recollection, sir. The notes are the notes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; could you scroll back up again, please?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He’s from Navigator, I believe.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I recall the meeting, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; the meeting on February 3rd. There were two such meetings, both of them had to be ended because the people who were supposed to be there and the information they were supposed to be provided was not available. That meeting was actually held on the afternoon of February 5th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir. In any option there will always be an effort of de-escalation, mediation, communication, engagement.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; is this in the same meeting?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But are we -- I don’t know what meeting we’re in right now.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s the date. What meeting are we in?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, sir. Can you scroll up? I don’t know -- here’s a Navigator reference but I’m trying to figure out what meeting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. So I’m in a 10:15 meeting in regards to the POU update.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But these are not -- I’m confused.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. What’s the question?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was getting communications advice, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Getting communications advice.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not with Navigator.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Don’t agree.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What date is this?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What date is this, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, what I’m concerned about is that my Acting Deputy Chief in charge of -- it was Major Incident Command would have any reservations that weren’t shared with me. I don’t recall any time that Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson came to me and shared those concerns, and that would have been an expectation to me of her.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think that was what we were hearing almost universally at that point, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir. Again, you’re putting words in my mouth, and I don’t appreciate it. What I said that we had lost time, the churn of the different Event Commanders moving in and out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I made no such assertion. You keep making it, sir, and I disagree with it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. I don’t understand the point you’re making.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. I don’t understand the point you’re making.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I’d like to respond to it. Deputy Chief Ferguson oversaw the intelligence information and investigative directorates. Several of his members within there were receiving the Hendon Reports from the very first time the Hendon Reports came out. He was responsible and assigned to oversee the intelligence threat risk assessment that would inform all the operational plans going forward. Whether or not Deputy Chief Bell received reports is immaterial to me. As long as he had an understanding that intelligence was coming in from appropriate sources, was being reviewed appropriately and provided in appropriate timely manner to Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson for the operational plans, that was my only concern.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely not, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There’s a note around the naming of it. The plan itself is a concept of operations that I brought to the team that morning and laid it out in an eight- point structure, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In what meeting, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
About the eight-point structure, yes. And we had probably a two-hour meeting -- well, one-hour meeting to that function.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, to be very clear, the notes that my -- that Christian Huneault took talked about not disagreements with every aspect, but the overall structure, the removal of significant leadership within the Incident Command. It was not a blanket statement. And in fact, the entire meeting on the Friday -- sorry. Now I’m confused about the dates and times. The meeting where Hydra came up was the February 9th, I believe. Yes, February 9th, the morning, was an open planning session with the Incident Command Team, all of the Executive Team in the room to get a roundtable effort to poll that plan to the highest level possible before the 12 o’clock meeting with the OPP and the RCMP.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. What’s the question?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was a statement. Are you asking me a question?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I don’t, sir. Not at all.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He misunderstood and he also misrepresented it to his Command staff.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t understand the context of what you just said, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
About what, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I’m just trying to get clarity. You keep jumping around dates and I don’t know what dates you’re on and what meeting I’m supposed to have said that in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry. I need to have -- I need to understand the point you were making on Mr. White.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s an alarming assertion made by the -- by counsel for the City and absolutely incorrect.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know about “many”, sir. Again, I’ve heard that Ottawa Police Commanders heard from somebody and assumed things, but I haven’t heard a single Ottawa Police Service Commander say that they received a direction from me directly or received an email with a direction from me to any of that. That much is absolutely clear. Everything asserted about me has come through a rumour or something that went around the station. That’s the only thing that I’ve heard so far in the testimony.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had a full eight-hour day on February 15th, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I concluded an agreement with the Board for my separation from the organization. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not at all, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If you’d like to show me it, I’d be happy to give you an assessment of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If it’s in a Tweet, I wouldn’t know about it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall saying it, but that just sounds like a good old team kind of rah talk. Let’s stick together ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- let’s get through this together.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, you’re making a whole bunch of jumps around here. I gave -- sorry, would you like me to answer your question or your assertion?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you so much. So every day, in some way or the other, I made comments around team, and I used a variety of terms that are familiar to me. So yes, I would make that. I was asked a direct question by the Chair of the Police Services Board if we encountered any problems, and I gave her a good answer, a full answer, and that answer is consistent with my evidence and my statements that I’ve produced, and the interviews that I’ve had with Commission Counsel.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m not sure what was requested at disclosure.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, again?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Who is the person? Sorry, you’ve just got me confused.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The Ottawa Police Service provided an amount of information to allow me to prepare for the Commission. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that’s correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The phone had been wiped. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir, that’s actually not correct. I handed in my phone the day of my resignation to the IT services. I asked for it back after so I would have time to communicate with people until I could get a new phone.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The IT Department could have and should have secured whatever content was on that phone, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, they weren’t, sir. When I handed in my phone, it was a complete phone. They had all my passwords. They had it for, I think, several days before I asked for it to come back to me. That was the opportunity for the Ottawa Police Service to retrieve any information on that phone. And as far as I know, they should have had all of that in their archives anyway.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Two things -- thank you for your questions. Two things, and I may have been guilty of it myself in-Chief. The pejorative term, “The protesters, the convoy,” it’s not accurate. There were an amorphous group of individuals, collectives, convoys that, in totality, could be described as “The Protesters, the Occupiers,” but they were by no means unified in their mind or their intentions or their actions. Secondly, yes, I use the term, “Assaultive” in the broadest case possible, broadest way possible. It is my understanding that there was Criminal Code assaultive behavior by individuals in and around the protest areas of the city, but I can’t tell you that they were specifically a part of one convoy, or specifically a part of some group that had clearly established themselves as a major, if a dominant factor. But there was Criminal Code level assaultive, threatening behaviour that became the subject of criminal investigations. I don’t know the status of those investigations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, that would be my understanding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were, with the caveat again, that officers had maximum discretion to assess whether or not, A, there was a need to make an actual arrest; B, whether or not that arrest would cause an escalation in public safety issues for the public, for those participating in demonstration, including the officers and other members themselves. But there was an expectation that they would still capture the evidence necessary and, if possible, pursue charges bylaw, provincial, or criminal -- federal statute, at a later appropriate time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know the statistics, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, my understanding is there may have been cement barricades used to close or redirect traffic routes, even in advance of the convoys coming in. Certainly, I think, as a general statement, once the “red zones” were established, that those red zones were largely demarked by barriers, barricades. I believe in the first weekend there was a combination of different types of barricade usage, including the use of City-owned vehicles at some locations. And there were points along the red zone where there might have been a police vehicle and police officers, either alone or in combination with a variety of barriers and barricades.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t recall the specifics. I do know that there were, on two levels, it would have been difficult to navigate through what had been established after the first weekend, and that would require some level of communication and assistance. But that there were several occasions throughout my tenure as Chief of Police where I was made aware that people wanting to leave within those zones were able to leave, just with some facilitation by the officers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Nothing specifically, but I could understand that there would be challenges in doing just that, logistical challenges. But I do recall specifically being told of a number of trucks, small vehicles, or individuals that were able to -- indicated they wanted to leave and then were able, through logistics, to facilitate their departure. Small numbers is what my recollection is, but there were instances.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Can you just give me the date again, sir?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, my recollection is that we -- at the Ottawa Police Service started to consider a range of options, injunction being one of them, as mitigation options, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- post-incident response options. I don’t know when the first communication would have went from the Ottawa Police Service to the City, and that might have pre-dated that January 30th call with Steve -- City Manager Steve Kanellakos, but I do recall that phone call with Steve Kanellakos.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have an independent recollection, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, there were very loose ideas at that point. We were still just trying to figure out what had landed in our city at that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’d assign my general counsel to lead that, and through her office they would be the primary point of contact.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have a lot of experience with injunctions, sir, so -- and how they tie into the Criminal Code. I will take you at face value.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It would add another tool well beyond enforcement.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But that would be the potential benefit, that in the net, there would be a net benefit to addressing whatever the public safety issue was.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Actually, I don’t remember saying exactly that, so it -- for context Commissioner, I think Insp. Beaudin provided fantastic context in general around crowd dynamics in theory, to the Commissioner; I would encourage you to utilize that fully. The only place I might diverge somewhat from Insp. Beaudin, and I suspect if he had a chance to add clarity to my commenting, I think we would find congruence, there were multiple crowds and therefore multiple crowd dynamics.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So to describe the crowd within the red zone, and then try to ascribe those dynamics to those in the neighbourhoods, and then to describe those to the dynamics of those in the suburban parts of our city, you couldn’t do that. The dynamics literally sometimes changed block by block. The dynamics of the morning crowds were different from the dynamics of the evening and overnight crowds. Weekend dynamics were different from weekday. So, I just would put one small “c” cautionary note on the otherwise excellent testimony of Insp. Beaudin, that it wasn’t “A crowd” and that crowd wasn’t static over a 24-hour period.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not sure he said 80/20 rule, but I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- understand the breakdown of percentages, rough percentages that he was using.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think that's the general comment, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's what he was ascribing, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not an expert in crowd dynamics. I'll rely on Inspector Beaudin's testimony.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, can you just repeat that?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Unfortunately, no, sir, and it's only in this context. Pursuing a City injunction that led to that, I would first need to know that I had a reasonable reliability on the resources necessary to execute such an injunction. And quite frankly, I think until -- well, certainly past my last day in office, I didn't have those resources.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think it's fair to say that, yes, some would see that as a reason, if they needed one ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- to leave at that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, please. Mme. Clerk if you could -- or, Mr. Clerk, if you could scroll down to each one? Sorry, please ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
One last line. Okay. Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, again, I think you've said it, but just to be clear, it's not one or the other or the other, but ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- some combination of both.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'll assume so, yes, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They're accurate. I recall that the second bullet point around the injunction that the Commissioner at the time went into a lengthy explanation of her experience with and therefore position with injunctions and it was clear that she was not -- did not believe it was going to be a substantive part of the solution.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would -- yes, that's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He was not as emphatic but was not far off her overall theme.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I wouldn't use the language told. Neither Commissioners directed me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They provided their perspective.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Agreed. Again, just with the - - almost the inevitable caveat that no matter what you do, whether it was a discussion around a declaration of state of emergency, an injunction, if we don't have the resources, it could be even more problematic.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's general counsel Christiane Huneault.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, thank you. I want to be very careful because I think I've suffered somewhat from this, trying to interpret other people's language from somebody else, so I want to be very careful on this. If is the 2nd of February, so ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- this would have been the first time that City Manager Steve Kanellakos advised me that he'd been participating what I call tri-level calls.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Federal government, provincial ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- government, municipal government. And he gave me a very quick overview of the one or more calls that he had been on and that's my best recollection of his very brief overview. So I wouldn't want to ascribe anything particular to the federal government based on this line in this document.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, so it's myself, Christiane Huneault, John Steinbachs, who's the Executive Director of Strategy and Communications. The rest are from two external service providers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That would be me providing that briefing to the group.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And it's Steve Kanellakos, not Steve Bell.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That he was on meetings, tri-level meetings in which the topic of an injunction was raised, and that's my best recollection of his best recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Under the law if you're asking if that's the definitions under the law, I will cede to you. Under policing, we would talk about peaceful, peaceful/lawful, peaceful/unlawful, unlawful, and then ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- there'd be a range of other. But from a definition, legal definition perspective, I'll -- I will leave that to your analysis.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I am not as conversed with the Code. Again, I will ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- trust your interpretation.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not to my understanding.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I am, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. Sorry, I'm just -- so when it was written it was probably in an age where people might hear those words ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- everybody in the area would hear those words.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I will cede to the legal definition of it, but I couldn't agree that that would be the case given the mass amount of social media, mainstream media coverage of what was happening in our city here and across the country. I think it would be very hard to believe that any individual could not understand that there was a level of unlawfulness and public danger and risk, heightened risk, at any point from January 29th onwards.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
About everything that had to do with it, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They -- post -- the investigation was concluded after I left office.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My "yes, sir" is what I understood to be in the media, but not from the actual investigators themselves.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, not that I'm aware of. They may have made such attempts, but I wasn't aware of that.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It doesn't ring a bell, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, the names aren't ringing a bell.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry. I can’t really comment. There’s just not enough context to know how -- who these people are, how -- what they represent, what information or influence they have.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In my 30 years in policing I’ve never seen anything like that myself.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I think my evidence, Commissioner, is that her extreme editorial licence that she took was extremely problematic for me and reflects on her, not on me.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Except for the last part ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- my understanding is that notes are evidentiary. They are produced for purpose of judicial processes as well as for internal system and policy requirements, but ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They are supposed to be an honest representation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Clearly in some cases.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good morning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understood there were three RCMP Public Order troops, but they were all assigned to protection services that were under the RCMP’s mandate and not under the control of Ottawa Police Service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my understanding, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In regard specifically to the RCMP?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, I won’t challenge it. I do recall just lots of emails going out prior to the arrival, so I can’t 100 percent say one of them didn’t go to the RCMP, but I’ll take your ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. But again, just for clarity, though, I don’t have an independent recollection that there wasn’t some conversation with the Commissioner or one of her NCR level staff that we might need some resources. But this would be the first formal request that went out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry. I was about to interrupt you, so sorry about that. No, actually, my experience has mostly been you would usually -- well, maybe Toronto was lucky. We would -- we had GTA Police Services all around us and so we would normally go to one of our border agency partners and ask for those resources. I can’t recall other than for major planned events like the G8 where we would go first to provincial police and then escalate to RCMP. Normal transaction, we don’t have enough, we need more, we would go to those closest to us or those who we had worked with and knew that our Public Order Commanders had a good rapport with, so it’s more informal in that respect.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Normally, municipal, provincial and then RCMP.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. And again, I want to be clear. At this point, there’s no sort of hierarchy of where we should be going to. We were just going ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- to everybody.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. I would normally fall -- would probably have sent a text, but I didn't, that would be the normal just information reach out and then, heads up, there's something more formal coming.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
As best as I could receive it from my folks and as best as they had that laid out, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can't tell you what extent they achieved the request that I sent on February 2nd.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I -- well, I've seen this framework. I can't say I saw exactly this chart, but this was an effort towards the last week of my time in office to try to identify all of the resources that were available to us over the course of the days of the convoy-related events, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe so. There may have been some support from our integrated partners, OPP, RCMP to help to build this document out, and then, obviously, provide the content and verification of it.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
OPSB. The Ottawa Police Services ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- Board?
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I believe there was a point where this -- a version of this document was sent to the Ottawa Police Services Board.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's what her letter said, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I assume that it wouldn't be just that brutal, but they would also assess what the overarching threats are and make a decision not just based on fulfilling their own staffing, but that they could or should make another investment. Sorry, I'd like to think it was more than let's just look after ourselves before we look after anybody else ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- as an equation to make a decision around approving or not approving particularly Public Order Unit assets.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. The entire threat risk assessment, I would assume there would be some effort of assessing risk, as well as assessing responsibility.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
1790 and in change, but, yes, I understand that.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, and I said in my evidence on Friday, this was -- these were not normal times.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Pressure, incentive, whatever the right term, but I think it was to send a different signal under very unique and different circumstances.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They sent experts like Superintendent Lue ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- yes, to ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- be part of that integrated team.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe that's correct, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I don't think ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- it was. That's my recollection.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely it was. The only hesitation, there was a request that came from -- my recollection it came from Deputy Minister Rob Stewart for more details, and I actioned that request through Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. I believe I saw emails with her corresponding back. I just don't know what the timeline would have been between the 9th and that request from Deputy Minister Stewart.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I wouldn't argue ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Somewhere in that zone, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sorry, just I am going to back you up one day though. February 8th was the first time that the Ottawa Police Service met with the members of the Integrated Planning Team and that was at RCMP Headquarters ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- in the afternoon. There were discussions. I wasn't there for the whole meeting, but I understand there were discussions around what that 1,790 would look like. The meeting carried on over into February 9th, and then was a much deeper discussion with more information provided around the staffing levels on the 9th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There is a delay. Again, just sorry, as I’m recalling, somewhere around -- well, it was February 5th, I received correspondence from Commissioner Lucki that the RCMP were providing 250 officers. And I actually think I made that announcement at the public Board meeting on February 5th, that I’d just received this communication. So even before the official letter went out from the Mayor and the Chair to the two levels of government, there had been an offer of, promise of, 250 officers. That didn’t materialize until past the dates on this chart here. And I, to this day, don’t know what happened to that deployment of 250, but certainly there’s an indication that the 50 that was requested on February 2nd was achieved very quickly, and maintained. And then there was a significant increase in staffing after the -- on the 11th, I guess.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry; I’m not sure I understand what you’re...
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If a police service is sending me 50 officers, and they’ll be operating under our Incident Command system, then my expectation would be that we would not just deploy them on a dayshift, we’d deploy them on an as-needed basis, and some of that 50 would work daytime, afternoons, nighttime. But we would have 50 officers, 50 human beings who are capable of being deployed under the direction of the Ottawa Police Service Incident Command system. I think we’re saying the same thing but I’m not sure we’re saying the same thing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There certainly would be a delay around the swearing in piece and I’ve heard it described differently, in terms of the actual timing of that. There wouldn’t be an expectation that whoever arrives in Ottawa would work every day, although most of our officers had been, you know, in some cases, like Insp. Lucas, did work every day. Again, that was one of our challenges was just maintaining the health and wellness and safety of our members and partner agencies. My expectation would only be if you’re offering us something, make sure it arrives and that we can fully deploy it, including days off. There wouldn’t be an expectation that any agency would have to over-supply to manage days off. We just needed to know how many officers would be in our theatre, dedicated to our Incident Command system, deployable as fully as possible, at whatever time and whatever relevant duties are -- duties that are relevant to their capabilities.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I just needed to know I was going to have 50 officers from whatever jurisdiction had asked. So in this case, with the RCMP letter I sent on February 2nd, that was the date of the letter I sent, the first letter, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- the 50 uniform officers, my expectation, if it could be honoured, that they would arrive as quickly as possible, and be deployable as fully as possible for whatever period of time they could stay.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t, and they don’t align to what was on the chart either.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was a huge challenge for us. Again, this is no way meant to be a criticism of the RCMP, but different police services call things differently, they count things differently, they account for things differently. And there wasn’t a day that -- while I was in office that I had a report from anyone, including my own folks, that anybody could say was 100 percent accurate, nor was there a day, other than maybe my last day in office, where we had a number that anyone could reasonably believe, give or take 20 or 30, that we were no longer just hanging on protecting the red zone; we were now getting sufficient resources to contemplate substantial additional operations. But this was a problem right from the beginning when everyone was trying to figure out how many people Ottawa Police Service actually had in our theatre under our ability to direct through Incident Command system. This is probably very accurate for the RCMP purposes, but not particularly helpful for us to understand what we actually had in terms of Ottawa Police Services responses.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Certainly there were not 225 RCMP officers deployed to the Ottawa Police Service under our ICS on the date of February 12th. The numbers on the chart we just saw don’t bear that out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, but our numbers were plus or minus 10, 15, 20; these are very different numbers; 320 detachment to support -- again, I don’t know what the term means. These are substantially different numbers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Second only to getting extra police officers, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I stand to be corrected but I do recall having information that we did tow heavy trucks, not in the red zone but in other parts of the theatre around the red zone. But my understanding is there were some successful efforts; minor successful efforts to tow heavy trucks.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
We had a number of contract tows. I believe we had City-owned heavy trucks but -- so I don’t know exactly where they were towing. I think we had some three or five heavy tow trucks through logistics, pre-staged that first weekend, and I'm assuming it was some combination of those heavy tow trucks that did the towing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't recognise these particular notes, but if it was a Command briefing, unless I was tied up in something else, I would have been there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, there's usually a morning and afternoon briefing cycle.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This is what I, I think, would call the tri-level meetings, yeah.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I honestly don't know.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not necessarily from the February 9th Plan, but that was really just the state of affairs from the middle of the first week throughout.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Federal Ministry of Transport?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't specifically recall, but that was such a regular discussion. We -- at one point I think even Commissioner Lucki, I don't think she was flippant about it, but they were looking at Kijiji to find heavy tow trucks in Canada.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. And just -- and I think you mean it implicitly, but to make it explicitly, they were there. It's whether we could predictably count on their ability to support our Operations was the gap that needed to be closed. They physically existed.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Our ability to engage them reliably, predictably, on scale was the challenge.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were intimidated for a wide variety of reasons. The sum total effect was we could not access them predictably on scale.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not from me.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
From a resourcing standpoint, people, police officers with particular knowledge skills and capabilities; secondly, from a resourcing standpoint, tow trucks. There were other issues that were challenging, but those were the two main resource issues.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, technically, anything that could move us towards a safe successful end was designed to get us to a safe successful end, and PLT always has that role. I couldn't tell you that any one PLT negotiation, there was a huge expectation that that in and of itself would resolve the entire theatre of risks and issues that we were dealing with, I think that would be unrealistic ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- in any circumstance.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Working at smaller goals in support of the larger goal, yes, absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They were important contributions, but none of them on their own were sufficient enough to end successfully and safely the entire events taking place.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my understanding, yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know. I believe -- my understanding was there was some that departed the theatre, but again, I don't have any independent recollection. There was certainly a lot of movement, and my understanding was some of them left the theatre. Whether they went outside of the city limits or just left the downtown core, I can't tell you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That is my understanding.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Certainly that was part of the considerations. I go back to the February 1st meeting with the Public Order Unit Commanders where, during the sort of open discussion phase of what’s our understanding of what we’re dealing with here and what’s our best estimate at this point, I think barely four days into it, as to what it’s going to take to substantially remove the red zone and bring about, ultimately, a safe, successful -- and it was at that meeting where the scale of the resources really became apparent where Public Order Commanders from four or five different agencies within a relatively short confab unanimously came back and said it’s going to require every Public Order Unit Officer in Ontario and much more from across Canada. I did quick math in my head. We all looked at each other. That’s somewhere between, lowball, 700, highball, 1,000, maybe a little bit more than that. That scale, I think others have said, unprecedented. Add in patrol officers, add in investigators, covert officers, civilian dispatchers, crime analysts, your number goes towards 1,800, ultimately, I think, some 2,200. But the scale was clear.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t rule out -- so I ruled in the likelihood that a PLT alone negotiated effort or any negotiation -- negotiated effort, including the merest attempt, would not likely result in the penultimate safe, successful end. I can’t rule that possibility out, though. The likelihood was very, very tiny, but I can’t say that ---
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- it could not happen, that some combination of negotiation efforts by the Ottawa Police Service, by partner agencies, by some involvement of one or more levels of government, an unknown and incredibly talented interlocuter couldn’t have arrived on the scene and some combination of factors could have resulted in a fully negotiated end. The likelihood, though, was very small, in my estimation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s why I had to ask for those resources.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my view, yea.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, to be clear, I’m not a national security expert, but in the totality of my experience over 35 years, 30 of them in policing and almost five years in Security and Justice, which included national security work supporting agencies doing that, this was the closest thing that I could see to a true national security event.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely what was happening here in Ottawa, but how that was being coordinated to different sites across the country, Kootz and Ottawa happening at the same time. The first real signal to me was the -- and I think it’s captured in Commissioner Carrique’s -- either his statement or in his testimony, I forget -- but clearly, the move to Windsor as the southernmost point away from Ottawa where a significant policing operation was designed to split our resources across a significant piece of territory at two very high-profile, high-risk locations that would demand significant resourcing. I recall explicitly in conversations with Commissioner Carrique when the Windsor piece was clearly under way that, you know, we had some very capable -- I want to be careful to use this term, but capable adversaries who, through command, control and communication, could understand the limitations of our resources and our logistics and create two major events literally polar opposite north and south.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t recall, I stand to be corrected, if I used the term “national security event” while still in office. I certainly have used it consistently as I’ve appeared before various standing committees in my statement and in my interviews with Mr. Howe and others, so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. Whether I used the term “national security events” or not, again, I stand to be corrected, but there was no doubt that my communication was this was not just an Ottawa event. This was provincial and national in nature, and they had elements of international in it.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was till my last day in office, and it’s my understanding it was until the end of these events here.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Either with the Mayor’s office, his staff and whoever they invited to the meeting or at Council meetings where we were invited to make presentations and answer questions.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I believe at different points I invited comments and presentations from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson and Deputy Chief Bell, but I let off.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
-
Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's my understanding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, I do want to clarify something, and this may not be going to your point, so I apologize.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm taking your time. But certainly, Commissioner, it was something that I had to make adjustments about. Minor incidents in the vernacular of a police officer is okay. It's not a homicide. It's not a shooting. It's not a sexual assault. It's not an assault cause bodily harm. It's a mischief. It's a hate incident. It's a threatening behaviour, someone telling -- yelling at someone take off your mask. In the pantheon of incidents, it's minor in policing, but to a community member's facing that, that is a major incident. That is traumatic incident. That is assaultive in nature, and it can have long-standing trauma. And I believe that that is the case and I needed to make a shift in my language to be more clear about that. It's probably one of those regrets, and something that if I would have a chance to do over, I would have been much more clear in my language.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I'm not a hundred percent sure what he meant by that though.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, and thank you. Again, this I think goes to the clarification I tried to proffer. Peaceful meaning we had no deaths, no serious injuries, no rioting, no burning police cars, but we had a lot of other assaultive behaviour and a term I think we can use more broadly, violence impacting communities. The closing of schools, the inability of people to get medication, the constant -- at this point, constant noise and so many other things happening in the theatre at that time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I tried not to use the term peaceful after that and recognize there was a disconnect in the language, police language versus what community could -- was experiencing and therefore could consume.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's possible. I would have hoped that he would have asked for clarity on that because he expressed it in such a strong way that I would have assumed and hoped that he would have asked for clarification on that either before he wrote that email or subsequent to it. He never did, to my recollection.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The City was very responsive throughout the events.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not the document but the meeting itself.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The only thing I would take some issue is, is the two weeks amount. That would not have been -- we were not seeing it as a two-week event, so that just may be a misinterpretation by whoever compiled the notes, but otherwise, it's accurate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m guessing -- that looks low, so I’m guessing that’s Ottawa Police Service Members? Oh no, no okay, it says -- what date is this?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, we should have had a lot more than that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Because the 6th was the Sunday and that was a weekend, and so our numbers would have -- should have been a lot higher, just based on the chart that we saw earlier on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That just -- again, maybe just a transcribing challenge as opposed to ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- the accuracy of Deputy Bell. Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That would -- if it was, it would be per shift, and then you would double or triple that number. And that would be a more accurate number based on my recollection of ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- of weekend staffing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. We never reached those numbers until the final week.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, and the additional element in this, I believe it was around the end of the first week, going into the weekend, that I became aware of the presence of children or other vulnerable persons in the red zone in and around the critical areas. So it really was now two factors; the necessary resources to do it safely and lawfully, and then the additional risk factors of children and vulnerable persons in and around there that became even more challenging.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, absolutely. This was a very healthy discussion that was happening at the trilevel meetings. And I’d been asked a number of times to suggest names, and these were names that were top of mind to me. Just -- and I put the caveat I didn’t -- I mean, I knew some of them, but I couldn’t in any way presume that they would be willing and able, or that the government would even want to go in that route. But as I was asked for potential names, I provided it in that context.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s absolutely right, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, and again, I’m sure you’re aware but even the enforcement route, just to be clear, still requires communication, negotiation, engagement, de- escalation; you know, all of those things remain in even in an enforcement Public Order-focused option.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And was proven true.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t say that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t say that for sure.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There was clearly a lot of information on different open-source channels, but I can’t tell you for sure that -- first of all, I got to go back to -- there wasn’t “a” convoy or “a” demonstration or “a” anything. There were a lot of interested parties and a lot of them had cross purposes, or no converging purposes. But there certainly was a lot of noise around it -- you know, the Governor General, the Prime Minister, but I can’t tell you that was the domino that had to fall over for any substantive negotiated end to these circumstances.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Probably predominantly, in my mind, yes, the federal government but not exclusively.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I'm not sure where the number came from, but that would be the only logical explanation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
These were the most accurate numbers, although again, none of them were ever 100 percent accurate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He's the Executive Director of Strategy and Communications.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have that understanding. I don’t really recall the email, to be frank, but I read it the other way. We need to send, "we" meaning the mayor and the chair need to send a letter to their federal counterparts -- I'm assuming that would be the premier and prime minister -- prior to us sending a letter to the solicitor general and public safety minister. So I actually read that the other way around. But it's still a bit confusing for me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Nor did I send one to the solicitor general or the public safety minister.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I just -- I have no recollection of the email, and it's a bit ambiguous in the way it's written, so ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
She was supporting him directly, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. Yeah, she's sort of the central hub for all the spokes of information coming in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, she was the CAO, so she would have had a material role to play in all this. But my recollection, actually, on this email now is that Michelle really was sort of the quarterback of all the requests coming in. Blair would oversee our HR and finances area, so she would have an active role. I don't know if she was practically driving the numbers in the way that Michelle was.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think so, the back end of that process.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M'hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s right.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s right.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct. And a little indulgence, but I think I gave this in my evidence in-chief on Friday. The Board meeting on the 5th, the Chair’s commencement of that Board meeting was really around do we have the ability to adequately and effectively provide police services, dot dot dot, direction to Chief, send us the request for adequate and effective -- the resource request for adequate and effective. Not only was this out of the norm, but it was the Board, I believe, trying to exercise its -- one of its sole primary functions, which is getting us the resources that we need. The Chair and the Board were very aware of all of our efforts to get resources, including the February 5th announcement in the middle of the meeting that the RCMP was coming in with 250 resources. So it was unusual, but I think it -- my interpretation, and I recognize that comes with some difficulty, but my interpretation of what the Chair and the Board were trying to do, the Mayor and Council were trying to do was to handle resources through unusual but direct means.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. It would actually be the February 8th meeting out at RCMP headquarters and then the carry over to February 9th at our headquarters.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was my understanding. That’s probably more so a self-assessment than an expressed -- an explicit expression from -- from “their”, whoever “their” is. I’m assuming that’s OPP, but I just can’t put that on them as a statement. I won’t do that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And other locations across the province. There were multiple locations at that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. I think there was a general concern, not just from Commissioner Lucki, about the accuracy of the numbers and, you know, from our standpoint, we were being promised more than we saw on the ground. And from the standpoints of other agencies, and I don’t purport to speak for them, but that they felt that what they had said they were going to provide were there and available, but just numbers did not reconcile. By this point, the level of integration with the Chief Pardy-led team was substantially under way and I think everyone was starting to feel that with their planning and logistics capabilities what they were doing centrally for the province and even more for the country, that we would very quickly get to a greater level of certainty, if not 100 percent, but we weren’t there yet. And I mean, as much as I could feel the pressure on people saying exactly how many people do you have, I’m sure Commissioners Carrique and Lucki were -- and other police leaders were feeling similar pressure. I take it from all of that, that’s the expression that we got. Add on to that when there are statements made in the public about this or that, then the rollback towards the Chief of jurisdiction or Commissioner of jurisdiction would have been substantial.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s the way I took it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, ma'am, and with just a little indulgence if you don't mind. Again, I'm always mindful, I've said this before, about pejorative terms. The overarching sense was a tinderbox, but there were clearly elements and areas where it was less so and elements and areas where it was far more so. I want to be careful about that. That I think there were some genuine people trying to do some genuine things, and there was a lot of disingenuous people doing very dangerous things. So I just want to be careful about pejorative terms. But overall, the sense was a tinderbox ready to explode.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If I was a resident, yes, I would have that sense, resident or businessowner.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, ma'am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I understand that, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
More than that, I think it disrespects the residents and businesses who were actively calling for that directly, indirectly through their councillors and through many other channels.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And second caveat, that we would pursue those charges when they were more appropriate and safe to do so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not to that level of detail. That was the general briefings that I was getting, but exact incidents and that, not to that level of detail, no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Actually, I'm not aware. I was aware of something in relation to former Councillor McKenney, other public officials. I don't recall if I spoke directly to Councillor McKenney. I know I called another public official, a very high-profile public official, who was receiving some type of threatening behaviour. A lot of public officials received, including myself, received direct threats as a result of all this.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would expect and hope that there would've been some occurrence taken. Whether or not -- meaning, an occurrence taken of whatever the nature of the threat was from Councillor Fleury, even if it didn't meet the criminal threshold there would be a record of it, if not an active investigation into it. It's not meant for any solace to anybody, including Councillor Fleury, but I think when I left office there was some five or six or seven threats against me, and to this date, I haven't received a follow-up call yet myself.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's one of the reasons why, within our request, we requested additional investigators, crime analysts. We just couldn't keep up with the volume of intake. We needed extra dispatchers. So a lot of it was Public Order, and yes, Investigations, but the ability even to do intake of complaints, follow up on complaints were significantly restrained during my time in office, I suspect for weeks if not months after all the events concluded. So things like customer service and reliability of follow ups were challenged always, would have been extremely challenged during that time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not -- maybe I'm not sure of the question or the assertion. So just if you could try one more time for me?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Apologies.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, thank you. You probably said it clearly the first time, it -- just my ears were slow catching it. Yes, but no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So length of time isn't the issue as much as it is the quantity of the people that would be staying. So it was clear to me in the week leading up that I was getting regular briefings from the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment side of things that there will be a small group of people staying longer, but that we had experienced those things in the past, there were well-established contingency plans and removal plans that would go through stages of days, weeks, sometimes months, and that our partners in the NCR were well- versed in how to do that. So there was always a sense that there would be a longer portion to the weekend demonstration involving a smaller group of occupiers. What we did not have, and to this day I still have not been able to see, even in hindsight, is there will be a massive number of people who will remain behind for weeks if not months and they will be engaging in a wide range of social disorder and criminal assaultive type behaviours for that entire period.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, yes, but no. Entering the core meaning entering Wellington Street and the immediate streets east and west of that. I have heard this even before the convoy events arrived, like, closing down our core, closing down our interprovincial bridges for any reason are hugely problematic and they create a range of public safety and community wellness issues. For example, I believe it was in the late spring of 2021 where there was a provincial order that related to the pandemic, that interprovincial bridges and access points be closed. There was very little, if any, material consultation with the Ottawa Police Service that of all the police of jurisdiction in Ontario had the biggest impact by that order, and it caused a significant staffing challenge. We did close the bridges to the letter in the first 24 hours, but the push- back was massive and immediate from the health care sector, from the business sector. Closing things anywhere in the downtown core, anything in the downtown core is going to cause a range of public safety, wellness and economic impacts on the city. The concept of closing the entire downtown core, I think you've heard from other witnesses, would probably use as many resources as it took for the public order operation. Some 2,000 officers would have been required to come in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And it took the better part of a week and a half to get those officers here. So the assumption that if we had known, we could have locked down the downtown core, it would have still taken 7 to 10 days to get that many officers in here to execute that plan, and then the impact on the City of Ottawa and the greater Ottawa Gatineau area might have been greater than the public safety problem we were trying to prevent in the first instance.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't -- I recall the truck route comment. I believe my comment was in relation to the broader discussion can we block the downtown core, can we block them from coming in to the city. And that was the context in which I gave my response. And again, it was the 26th. I would have already had my legal advice from my general counsel. And by then, I think the 27th was when we requested external legal advice, which essentially supported the same position.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
OPS Legal Services sought external legal advice to bolster their own opinion that they provided internally. Not to bolster, but to validate one way or the other their own opinion internally.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not aware but that was a question I asked of my own general counsel.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't recall his testimony in that way.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So I apologize.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I've watched much of their testimony. I just can't recall those specific elements.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I wouldn't have gone to external counsel unless I'd started with my own counsel first.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's with Advanced Symbolics Incorporated.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It's a private company that uses open-source information. I'm going to not -- I'm not going to do a great job on the company's description, but to a degree, it's sentiment analysis, but it also tends to predict small "p" predict what opinion will be around different topics.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I'm probably doing a disservice to this company, but broadly speaking in the industry, a scrape of social media sentiment expressed on various platforms, and then rating it one way or the other, positive, neutral, negative.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, to see how people within our community, a million people across the largest municipal geography in Canada, the second largest in North America, were feeling around an incident that was happening, unfolding in a very, very small area.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Began to see we had policing responsibilities across the city, and we obviously had increasing policing responsibilities in this micro-percentage point in the heart of the city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So Coutts, Alberta was happening almost concurrently. I forget whether it started on the same day, the 29th, that our events happened -- or escalated. And I recall, whether it was the Sunday or the Monday, but early in the week there was an attempt by the Coutts -- by the operational -- well, there was an operation attempting to remove the blockade in Coutts. And I could see just from mainstream media, and I believe I got a briefing later on from Commissioner Lucki that it wasn't successful. That literally within minutes, what looked like a well planned and well staffed exercise was frustrated and failed within minutes by a wide variety of countermeasures, whether they were planned and exercised before or they were just done in the spur of the moment. And my concern was that if that was on a two-lane highway in a very rural part of Canada, with no other buildings on the sides of the road and no density and no school zones or anything else, a much smaller footprint of vehicles and protesters and a proportionally much larger amount of available resources, if it failed so quickly, then any effort that we would do here would be extremely dangerous. So it was in that context that I asked that question.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, I don't know if I'd put the emphasis on the fail but just on the operation as a whole.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It really didn’t matter to me at this point, to be honest. I'd already had my meeting on February 1st in Kanata with the public order commanders. The level of effort that we would have to have, the scale would be, as I said, somewhere between the 700 range to the thousand-plus range to even begin to contemplate an operation that happened in Coutts. So I mean, I don’t want to say it was too little, too late. Whatever modelling was taking place here, it really was immaterial. The situation in here just required a scale that we couldn't contemplate a similar operation.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, and importantly to the point I think you were making -- and if I get it wrong, I'm sure you'll correct me -- but understanding, we brought in ASI to understand the budget implications. That’s the original contract of ASI was around the almost year-long budget debate that happened throughout 2021, in which case, the budget expectations and needs of a farmer out in the outskirts of Ottawa was as important as a condominium dweller or a business owner in downtown Ottawa. But in terms of to your point, the people that were most directly impacted, traumatized, victimized, were the people living immediately within the red zone or around the red zone. And so while it was somewhat interesting to know how people felt, more broadly, the victimization was happening in a micro location, and the risk was happening in a microdonation. Ninety-eight (98) percent, 99 percent of what we were dealing with was within 1 percent of the geography of the city. And so it was an interesting exercise. It didn’t prove fruitful, and the scale of the operation that ultimately was required made this a rather less than productive exercise.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, I can see why. And as I've said, Commissioner, to you and others, public trust is a direct equation to public safety, and what might look like a PR exercise to some is as rudimentary attempt as we could in the crisis that we were having to get a sense of where public trust lay. I could look at crime stats up and down, but I can tell you, you can actually have crime going the wrong way, and public trust going the right way. For instance, underreported sexual assault and domestic assault, when you can win public trust, what happens is that you get an immediate spike in reporting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And so sometimes a crime trend up is an indication of public trust up. And I've learned that over the decades in policing. It's important to keep an eye on trust indicators as much as it is important to keep an eye on crime or victimization indicators. They are necessarily coupled. This was our best effort in the middle of a crisis to try to do some of that, but it was by no means a perfect effort. It was quite imperfect, this was.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. It wasn’t that black or white. It never is, in my world anyway. No. I mean, I think legitimately, there would be within communities that were directly impacted and those that were literally within line of sight questioned a lot of things, again, without having background information or other context would question those things. I know that there were complaints coming in, and every one of those complaints that came to my attention were assigned to our Professional Standards Bureau for review, and any one of those reviews that showed misconduct were then assigned for proper investigation. During my time, I suspended one officer. I don't know what the status of that case is right now. So to any extent where there was a reasonableness to a complaint around not sympathy but actions that in any way undermine our ability to keep the city and the communities safe and bring about a successful, safe outcome, we took documented, formal, measured actions.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I appreciate the chance to clarify that with some subtlety. The majority of it, I believe, were genuine officer efforts to keep people calm and situations calm, but I can't rule out that some element of that at some point could have been more nefarious.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I've seen some media reports, but that information wasn’t available to me during my time as chief.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I haven't.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was going to answer, but then you threw a little curve at the end. So I just want to make sure I don’t answer the wrong question, but there is a point I would like to make to the Commissioner and yourself, so if you can just repeat the last part, just so I get the question right?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So I was not aware of any complaint or internal matter in regards to that member. Just, I'll put that aside. But I think your question is important. Commissioner, I would just sort of engage you more directly, with your indulgence. But this has been something that I saw during my tenure as Chief of Police. It was something that I saw during my time in the private sector, and it is something with less clarity but in general, a trend, in regards to intelligence gathering, threat assessments at local, provincial, national, international levels. There is a bias, and I've spoken very publicly about systemic bias in policing, and not limited to systemic racism, in every aspect of humanity. I saw this during my time in Kosovo in peace keeping after 9/11 happened. There was a significant shift operationally, politically, socio-economically, geo-politically to the threat that was posed by the various terms around radical Islam and Islamic-based terrorism. When I was in private sector, I was invited by Public Safety Canada to be the Co-Chair of a committee of citizens from across the country looking at online radicalisation to violence and terrorism. And we received a briefing from CSIS, including senior RCMP officials, on the current state of the national threat assessment, and this would be the summer of 2019, 18 months before the arrival of the convoy. But this is also the time that we had the Incel van attack in Toronto. This is also the time that we had seen a rise of right-wing extremism, white supremacy, and violent events south of the border, and increasing levels of violence and recruitment north of the border. Presentation that we got on the national threat assessment had no mention whatsoever, zero, of right-wing extremism and white supremacy. So the question that was asked of me, is this a concern of mine, it was a concern of mine in my days with the Toronto Police Service, in peacekeeping missions, in private sector, on a Public Safety Canada committee, and as the Chief of Police here in Ottawa. I would validate that concern.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
First of all, I'm probably out of order here, but your line of questioning has been excellent, and how you're probing is helpful for me, I hope it'll be for the Commissioner. It's almost entirely the reason I was brought here, ma'am. That's why they recruited me. Because I have an outspoken track record over decades, not just when it was popular to do so, to confront racism and discrimination in any form in policing, a profession that I dearly love and devoted my life to. But one that I know, not because so much of individual factors, because we're just human beings, and we are incredibly imperfect, but incredibly imperfect human beings will build really imperfect systems, and those systems can have very bad impacts on communities, usually the most marginalised and racialized communities. And I have been outspoken on those matters, and I've dedicated the bulk of my leadership to addressing them. When I came to Ottawa, Commissioner, that's exactly why I was recruited to come here. That's the mandate I was given. And that I did that every day I held my office until the last day. And it is singularly the number one reason for the resistance to me, the undermining of me. And so yes, that was a priority for me on day one, and it was still a priority for me on day last one.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah. Sorry, just one small -- the 27th is the Thursday; 28th, the Friday; 29th. Technically, the convoy started arriving on the 27th, technically, in trickles ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- a little bit more on the 28th, the Friday, and then the big wave, tsunami, on the 29th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had an established relationship with him throughout my entire tenure as Chief of Police. He was incredibly assisting on a number of issues.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I very rarely use the term "happy", but I am very satisfied.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, although in fairness, I now understand the POU were not underneath our Incident Command but they were certainly within the theatre.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
their dress and deportment. They -- the way they presented themselves, which was, quite frankly, the most positive level and the earliest level of officer enforcement, just a professional image of an officer, and they were really top shelf just across the board.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
You could've done blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, "their turn out was universally 'top shelf'." I was telling the Commissioner of the largest police service outside of the RCMP that whoever they selected, however they arrived here, they showed up looking good and gave me confidence that they would do good in the circumstances that they're here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I do. The gap in the three hours is probably some other conversation that we had. But this is the understanding that we had discussed an integration, a greater level of integration. He was going to send some of his best not just planners but operational leaders. Chief Superintendent Pardy’s name was one of those and I welcomed it, welcomed the support of expertise and experienced leaders and welcomed the greater level of integration. And this is just me advising -- Yeah, I've got point people on our side to make this thing happen as quickly as possible.”
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And that’s what we’d agreed to in our conversations that you're not coming in to run our shop. You're coming in to help our shop run at a higher level.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not only did he respect them, he understood that what we needed was help. We did not need -- and I think he was -- I won’t put words in his mouth. But I think his testimony ultimately said that there wasn’t a need to come in.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, it can’t and it shouldn’t. There should always be a reason.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s my understanding, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct. I don’t want to speak for the Commissioner but I believe that’s what he shared with me throughout our daily calls, and nothing changed to my last day in office.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, that was a phone call that Commissioner Carrique and I had, I think it was the first weekend. A suggestion that I had made that we have some sort of a convened group of leaders. I think I was focused mostly in Ontario. And as Mr. Carrique would often do, he said, “You know what? Let’s get on that. We’ll run that for you, Peter. You're busy.” And then what he established was more than I had requested and grew in a relatively short period of time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. I was very much aware of it, without even seeing the documentation. I had that sense he was lifting that to the highest level possible.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
For the most part, yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I do. I feel his pain.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had the same experience in Toronto where we had to move hundreds of officers on a regular basis to other jurisdictions and they were not available for their primary duties in Toronto.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Right.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. Well, it is mostly correct but just -- I asked Deputy Chief Bell to oversee -- to oversee, not to conduct himself -- the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment that would then inform Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson who was assigned the role of developing the operational plan, an intelligence-led operational plan that was reliant on the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment. The Hendon Report is simply one of many things that would go into the Intelligence Threat Risk Assessment.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe so, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct. The transition had happened at the command level, I think, the last week or the second last week of December, 2021. And then functionally it flowed down into the first week for superintendents, inspectors and civilian equivalents.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t know to what extent Deputy Bell had. I don’t think he had as deep experience in that area as Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, but yes, they would have both been around and seen and been involved in, to some degree, events. I think Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson’s actual experience as a Critical Incident Commander and training was a little bit more than Deputy Chief Bell’s.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’ve read reports in detail but not every one. I skimmed other reports and sometimes I would not have had time to open my email. But again, at that point I would have known that these reports were being sent to individual members within the Ottawa Police Service, but particularly within the Intelligence section.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
As necessary. Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. That’s why my recollection to this day is that I forwarded it on. But I stand correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir. I did not.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Someone would have had that delegated responsibility, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, with a small group remaining behind.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s the sum total of the balance of information and the threat risk assessment that came from it that was briefed to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I just want to be careful. The briefings I was getting from Deputy Chief Bell are what -- the briefings that were passed up to him.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The briefings the Deputy Bell provided were the substance of briefings that he received. So I just want to be careful. He’s not the intelligence commander. He’s not the OPS’s version of Superintendent Morris.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just to be clear.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't have explicit recollection of explicit lines from the Hendon Report and nor would I expect. I would expect and receive briefings that said, “On total, the balance of what we’re getting. Here’s what I'm being told in totality,” as opposed to, “There’s a line in the Hendon Report that says x; there’s a tweet that says y. And there’s an Instagram video that shows z.” What I was getting was a roll-up briefing not attributed to the exact data source where it came from. Did we at some point discuss explicitly the Hendon Report or reports? Probably, but at a macro level, at an aggregate level as opposed to a line-by-line detailed analysis and whether or not all of that added up to X. I was getting briefings of the sum total of balance of intelligence information available.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Weekend event with a small group that would be remaining behind with some level of occupying, but nothing that we had not seen in previous events.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So we looked at the range of what -- I was getting a briefing on the range of what this could be, and yes, there were certainly, in some of those briefings, this could be longer term, but the sum total of it came back to the consistent briefing of the threat risk assessment, multi-day event, primarily over the Saturday/Sunday, smaller group remaining behind, something that we've dealt with in the past. That’s what we're planning for.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, and I apologize; I am interrupting you, but ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- there was the other end. This is all a overblown, social media thing. This group may never even make it here. If they do, it could be a relatively small thing. We never cancel anything out, but the aggregate of the assessment landed where we were.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. And in fairness, I don't think there was an algorithm attached to that. That level of sophistication, I'm not sure exists anywhere, but it certainly wasn’t a level of detail and mathematical equation that may be of indicating. But I was given a reasonable overview of the reasonable spectrum around which we did an assessment on the balance of probabilities, what it was planned to be.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe I saw that at some point in a Hendon Report, but again, I just want to be clear. I can't tell you how many protests and demonstrations pop up or were planned where the presence or absence of the exit strategy were weighted in any significant way. I'm just telling you what my experience is, okay?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I just want to be careful about pejorative language. It was clear in a variety of forms and reports, including the Hendon Report, that they could not speak for every person that was planning to or talking about coming. So that much was clear to me, that Hendon Reports or other reports, social media monitoring that was happening, canvassing of various people, PLT actions, it was clear, over and over again, there is no one entity called "the convoy". There is no one person who represents "the protestors". And so everything that I got briefed on had explicitly or implicitly, "This is what we're getting from some, this is what others are saying. They got a line here that says this, but we can't extrapolate that to mean this." That’s the context in which the majority of the briefings were coming to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No. Actually, many demonstrations, 76 days straight in front of the U.S. Embassy when NATO was bombing in Yugoslavia. "We're not leaving until the war's over." I mean, you can stand on a corner here and watch somebody draped in a Ukraine flag, "I'm not leaving until the war's over." So that’s a relatively common -- the Tamil events in Toronto and I believe here in Ottawa all had that sense, "We are here to support what's going on over there, and we're not leaving here until over there is better or completed." That’s a pretty regular item.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I want to be careful. Not all of them had that stated goal, and not all of them came from across Canada. A lot of them came from right here in this good old city as well too. So again, I just want to be really careful. I don’t operation in pejorative terms. That is a universal application of anything, good or bad, to any group, is never fair to any one individual in that group. And I ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- can't take that position.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, I'm certainly going to be agreeing with you that it was a little bit of both. It was a lot of both. I can't tell you if it was 49 versus 51 percent on any particular topic. But I think there was some good evidence presented, and it's certainly been my experience that you go based on imperfect intelligence and you go based on imperfect experience and try to project forward what is the most likely outcome that’s going to happen, and then you build a plan that will not only address the threat that you've now gone through the process on, but not cause additional problems beyond that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely not, sir. First of all, the issue isn't the Hendon Report, and I don't know when it became the issue, maybe for the OPP. You see it as the issue. For me, I don’t see it as the issue, and I don't know any member of my police service, former police service that said, "You know what? This is all on the Hendon Report. If OPP had done a better job." I actually never heard that, never said that, I've never heard that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I always said they were. I would say, though -- I'm not sure I referenced this to you on Friday -- I think the OPP did an outstanding job. I'm not sure it was their job to provide national threat intelligence assessments. I'm grateful they did, because otherwise it wouldn't have gotten done from any other forum that I know of. But I don't think it's fair to the OPP to do that. Thank heavens they did it. I just don’t think it's fair to them. It's a structural deficit that the OPP did their best to fill, but it's actually not the job of a provincial police service to provide national threat risk assessments on what was a national event from beginning to end.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
A lot of them were incorrect.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And a lot of them were incorrect, sir. Again, it's not an indictment of the Hendon Report, and I don’t want my answers to you to seem that I'm somehow blaming a deficiency. But they are like most intelligence reports. They get some of it right and some of it wrong, and you never know until after the event what was right and what was wrong.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would agree with Supt. Bernier that the Hendon Reports were one of the better intelligence documents that I have seen. I've seen some outstanding examples and I've seen at least one that was even better, but it was one of the better ones. But I want to be cautious. Supt. Bernier, Acting Supt. Bernier, then Inspector Bernier -- because he was an inspector -- was not involved in the incident command system. He was not involved in getting daily briefings. He was not involved in the threat risk assessment. He, like many members of the Ottawa Police Service, were picking up a little bit of data and he had an opinion. But I think even he cautioned that his opinion was less informed and not fully appropriate, given that he was not involved.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That was her evidence, but I have to tell you, that’s alarming that if she felt that was the case, then she really needed to have worked harder on it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never heard her say at any point in any of the briefings that we had that there was a misalignment, an underdeveloped plan, and one that she wanted to change substantially. The plan I received from her on February 28th was one that I received with no reservations from her. I sent back some minor feedback. I heard nothing else from her until she gave testimony before the Commissioner and said some things that were very concerning.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Up until the last comment around the seat of anything, my comments were exactly that. At that time, I was trying to get resources from any source and I didn’t have a priority in my mind as to what sequence I should go through. I was simply actioning a series of requests to agencies that were large enough and near enough to provide immediate resource relief to what we were facing at that time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I believe the number was 1,790 and change as -- 1,800 has become the rounded number. And some 100 of those resources were civilian. But yes. Substantially, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never put those restrictions on there. I’ve never heard those numbers -- those divisions of responsibility ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- until you just put it to me now.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In the letter?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I have no idea what that conversation was, sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I never put a percentage or a number against it, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I haven’t.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I thought I was being asked to read something.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Now you’re scrolling away from it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Do you want to explain everything to me and then me read everything?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m in your hands. I can start reading now or just wait till you’ve finished summarizing and then read everything.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. Thank you. (SHORT PAUSE)
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. I’ve read as much as what’s on the page here, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sure.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What’s the question? Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It’s a bit confusing because I’ve -- in all my times in the Toronto Police Service when he was the Chief, that was never the case.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I was at, I think, four or five of those meetings.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s fine ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- but I was at far more of those meetings.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What’s on the page here doesn’t ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I’ve never seen this before.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
What’s the date on this, sir? Sorry.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
February 7th?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The only recollection I have of a direct conversation with Minister Blair was on the last weekend, but I may be wrong, so sorry. Continue on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sure.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I -- no, I don’t recall that exchange. I recall a different exchange on a different date.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I haven’t been able to find it in any of the notes here, but it was either the Saturday or the Sunday, so the -- of the last weekend in office, so what that would be, the 12th and 13th, maybe the 14th. Maybe. But I think it was more the 12th and 13th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct. And what's transcribed here and certainly my recollection of the other conversation, neither of those times were those concerns raised to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Or anything about a plan or not having a plan or not having a good enough plan raised.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's right. I'm looking at a date ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- Wednesday, February 23rd, so, that definitely wouldn't have been me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I wouldn't say five to seven days, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, not at that point.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, that was ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- that was part of the challenge in terms of getting RCMP getting sworn.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir, but I just -- just a note for the Commissioner. This is the first time I'm seeing these documents. They are -- they're -- I'm not debating the content, but I just haven't had a chance to read through them to see the context, to ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- situate myself in it, so I'm answering your questions as best as my recollection can be stimulated from these documents, but they're the first time I'm seeing them, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, so, again, my recollection is that this other conversation takes place on the last weekend that I'm in office. This was Saturday, Sunday, potentially Monday the 14th of February. I was late coming onto the call. Minister's Mendocino and Blair were on the call. There were others. And sort of kind of waited in until things turned around towards me and then I recall there was an exchange between the two Ministers. Minister Mendocino indicated that he would leave the commentary to Minister Blair and then he proceeded to ask me two questions. The first question was whether or not we had considered using by-law enforcement to address some of the challenges that we were facing here. I thought it was an odd question, and so I said, "Yes, we've actually issued hundreds if not thousands of by-law enforcement tickets, but that any level of enforcement was difficult, both in terms of the potential volatility of public safety impacts and the resource restrictions." He then asked a second question as to whether or not we considered towing trucks or vehicles. And I said, "Yes, we towed hundreds of vehicles and we'd actually towed some heavy trucks. But again, there's an extreme volatility around that type of enforcement action and that we had resource challenges with the tow trucks, particularly heavy trucks." And that was the sum total of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Neither the procedural objections or the concerns around the plan or lack thereof a plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think just over 30 years in total in 2 different police services.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not that I'm aware of, but I stand to be corrected by lawyers who understand the Act better than I ever will. But I said, my practical experience has been, over the course of those 30 years in 2 police services, and for a substantial amount of time where I actually perform that function for Chief Blair, that if we needed help, we went to the best agency available where were likely to get the best help from. We didn't -- I wasn't directed to, nor did I have a system where I had to reference Section 9 and call the Commissioner of the day from the OPP and then through that process find my way to the right resource. I would call north of Steeles and say, "Hey, York Region, can you send us a Public Order Unit?" I'd call west of the 427, "Hey, Peel, can you send us a Public Order Unit?" I'd call over past the zoo and say, "Hey, Durham, can you send us a Public Order Unit?" And they would do the same thing, and we would do that in reciprocity. I'd never before seen any reference to Section 9 of the Police Services Act.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's my understanding.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'll trust you on the section.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not aware of that, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'll trust you on that, sir. I have no understanding of the RCMP Act.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not aware of any of those things, sir. I just used the practice that was long established and never previously challenged by any level of government or any other police service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That would have been the fair thing to do, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon. I can see you, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I remember it was a phone call. I forget who contacted who.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Monday, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, ma'am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. I mean, I think he was both a situation update and "what can we do to help you, Peter?"
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Other than my communications with Commissioner Lucki, I think this was the first time I had spoken with anybody else.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He did respond, and he asked if I would like to have a call with then Solicitor General Jones, and ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- I said yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It did. I think it was scheduled for later on on the same day somewhere ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- in the evening hours, I believe.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The Wednesday.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There's probably notes around that, but I think the sum total of the call was that she had received the information from Deputy Solicitor General Di Tommaso, that is noted here. She had understood that I was interested in a phone call with her. I provided for her a very brief update on what had transpired locally. She quietly listened to it and said thank you, and there was sort of a bit of a pause. I asked if she wanted to get a deeper briefing if she felt there might be any need to engage other ministers or even the Office of the Premier. I can't remember what her exact response was, but essentially, you know, she would consider that on her own undertaking ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- and that was the substance of the call.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, I -- just -- I apologise for interrupting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
In my update to Minister Jones, I did reference that I felt at this point, February 2nd, that this was going to have a significant impact across the province. While I didn't have specific locations, I don't even think at this point the planned protest to Queen's Park had been announced or I wasn't aware of it at this point, certainly, the Windsor and Sarnia events were not known at all at this point, but it was clear to me that this was going to have a larger provincial impact, and so it was actually more of a suggestion than a passive voice that the Premier be briefed to some degree and that other ministers be prepared to engage beyond the Solicitor General.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
To my knowledge, I don't know.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Very much so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
This was the first of the tri-level meetings that I had attended. I had been advised about their existence I think the day before from City Manager Kanellakos. He suggested that I participate in them, and I welcomed that invitation because it would allow me to be able to speak to all three levels at the same time, and ideally, to secure resources that we so desperately needed at that time. So I attended the meeting with great expectation and hope, quite frankly, that this would be a very productive and constructive environment and one that would accelerate the delivery of resources, not just police officers, but across the board support to something that we desperately needed here in Ottawa, and I think increasingly, the province and the country were dealing with. Coutts, Alberta was active, other locations across the country were active. I think by this time we knew there was something going to be happening in Queen's Park on the weekend. So I was looking forward to this. The section on the page above that you rolled -- you scrolled through was largely, I'll describe it as a monologue that Deputy Minister Stewart was providing to the group on the call. I wasn't familiar with most of the people on the call, so I was just quietly listening and sort of waiting for it to become more of a discussion. But there was a comment near the end of that that isn't captured by my general counsel, but it's what I reference on this page here. And this is not an exact quote because I don't have -- so I'm going off of memory and it's not captured in these notes. But essentially the comment was "The Ottawa Police Service seems to be wanting to help a group of extremists and white supremacists to take over Ottawa, Wellington Street." It is that comment that I took great offense to.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, so I took it as a comment from Deputy Minister Stewart. I don't recall him clarifying as that note in the corner says that this is something he heard a Minister say, but it seems to be captured by general counsel Huneault.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, I go well past pleasure. That seems to be a condemnation statement, an allegation, and that is why I said I found that suggestion that I, police, or the Ottawa Police Service who I represent differently based on colour, on race.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, not a public statement, but in the room that had representatives, City Manager, Ministers from across a variety of platforms at the federal level. I don't believe the province was represented on this call, but I don't know ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- I don't know everybody else that was in the room, but these are policing partners, like, Commissioner Lucki, National Security partners like David Vigneault.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I found it very problematic and very embarrassing.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. We got into a very constructive dialogue at this point and that is the gist of it.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
CIOPS, psychological operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, this is my understanding, and my recollection is that M. Vigneault was giving from a CSIS perspective his assessment of unprecedented. He's -- in point number one he's talking about the command structure of the convoy's demonstrators at large. Again, I won't speak for Mr. Vigneault, but I'm not suggesting there was a unified command, but he's talking about elements of a command structure there. He then goes into in point two to talk about how nimble they are, including the fact that it involves ex police officers. I forget if he talked about ex military or national security, but he certainly referenced officers. CIOPS is a term that I knew from my time in peacekeeping in Kosovo. And in point three, engaging and educating, my word educating, his word engaging Prime Minister and Ministers to better understand the dynamics of what's actually taking place here. And he used the example of the press conference, I believe that day, to give an example of the level of ability and capacity to use social media, use mainstream media for leadership that seems if not unified, cohesive, as examples of capability around his original term this is unprecedented. We haven't seen this before.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And I would suggest of all the moments in this meeting and one of the most significant moments for me in my entire time in these events was hearing the head of CSIS describe what I had at that point begun to realize. This was a national security level event that nobody had seen coming, nobody fully understood, and was rapidly still evolving, not just here in Ottawa, but across the country. And I hoped that was a really big alarm bell for the people on this call, more so than the one that I had been trying to ring loud and clear here in Ottawa as a Police Chief of the Ottawa Police Service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't believe there was. I do remember either on this call or a subsequent call, he touched on the level of foreign involvement, and it was, I believe, minimal, if anything.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can't recall if it was on this call or not.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't have an independent recollection, but it seems to be well noted here.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, with great reluctance, I don't want to presume intention on anybody. It's been used against me too much. I can only give my observations. It was several days into it before there was any outreach from the provincial government to me directly. The first two meetings that I was on, on the trilevel meetings, I don't believe there was any provincial representation. The next two I believe there were. Those are my -- those are the only facts I can tell you. I won't try to put intention into anybody's comments.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I can. Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I’m sorry; did or didn’t? I didn’t hear you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, they were part of our Intersect Planning Team, and have been for years, so in that sense, yes, they would have been able to support information gathering, intelligence, potentially logistics. So I have no information to suggest that they weren’t involved; maybe not as involved as other entities like the RCMP, but I have no indication to say that they were not involved.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, actually I wouldn’t say that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
While they certainly are not imbued with full police powers, they have some force protection capability. They would be able to provide, at a minimum, situational awareness updates from the ground as to what’s taking place. All of that would ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
At Parliament Hill. Their line of sight would have taken them well beyond Parliament Hill.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They would have had interactions with protesters and other people, and those could have produced information that could have been valuable; it could have been shared in real time or in briefing notes at the end of the day, in briefing cycles. So, again, I’m not saying that in any -- these aren’t items that I know took place, but to suggest that they would have had no physical benefit to the entire theatre of operations, I don’t think is correct.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, all I can say is that I never made a specific request; I wasn’t asked to make a request and I never made a specific request for PPS members to be participating in it. I can’t rule out whether or not any PPS members would have had the skillsets, the knowledge, skills, and abilities that we listed in our 1,790-odd requirements. There potentially could have been a member of the PPS that had a background in investigations and crime analysis who could have - - who had a background in some form of skill that could have helped with mass arrests and processing of prisoners. So I just can’t rule it out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have an explicit note that we made an explicit request to them.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That would have been a risk area that we would have had to assess, but, again, I would suggest that that -- by the virtue of the PPS and their capabilities, that would be -- there was some capability there for us to lean on, as opposed to a condominium building next to the red zone that didn’t have any security, that probably would have required more direct and urgent help should something go wrong there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. As police of jurisdiction, we would have primary responsibility. I just, again, note there were, I believe, three RCMP Public Order Unit troops and two OPP Public Order Unit in its -- assigned into that theater, not to the Ottawa Police Service, and any one of those units could have also responded, not as police of jurisdiction but could have responded in exigent circumstances to support whatever was happening there.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Fair point, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
From a resource standpoint that’s what I was needing; I was needing a lot more beyond resources to have a safe, successful outcome that was envisioned.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
So my understanding was we had somewhere between three to five two trucks available to us on the first weekend. And those numbers did not increase, to my knowledge, until my last day in office.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
City-owned vehicles and/or tow contracts. But, again, I’m not certain about the tow contract part of things, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- just the number of vehicles.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't know who handled it, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, what I was talking about to Canada counsel was the need for reliable predictability around the resources necessary for any operational plan of the scale that was being considered. If your question is did I know whether this contract was going to prove reliable and predictable, I had no involvement in that contract.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had no involvement in it whatsoever, so I can't comment on it whatsoever.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I had no involvement in it, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I am unfamiliar with section 2 of the CSIS Act, and I've heard some testimony. From where I stood, this was a national crisis.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
From where I sat in Ottawa and the information available to me, there were significant elements of foreign funding. There were briefings that people might be coming north of the border to join in some of the protest activities. I can't rule out, as police chief here, that there were not some elements of other nation involvement in one way or the other. Whether it rose to the level as you're describing under section 2, I don’t have the ability to say that, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had information available to me that suggested there were activities taking place beyond our borders.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I didn’t test it with any great measure. Again, the level that you're describing in section 2 - --
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- was just the vast funnel of information that was coming to me, and there was different calls where questions were being asked or information was being provided about whether or not convoys were joining from United States into Canada, whether or not the convoys here were impacting other countries, whether or not money was flowing into any of the different funding projects from foreign sources. So I'm just telling you the sum total of all the information that I was aware of, some of it related to activities outside of our borders.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That’s the balance of the information ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- that I had, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don’t have a complete memory of the Hendon Report, so I wouldn't be able to say for certain.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There were some 20-odd, 24, 30 Hendon Reports. I can't tell you whether or not it was ever mentioned within the Hendon Reports. It's a question probably better placed to the OPP.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There was a discussion at one point on the tri-party level where I believe CSIS Director Vigneault referenced his discussions with CBSA and other entities around whether or not convoys were coming north, people were crossing the border. He made some reference to international funding, as an example.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I couldn't tell you how he broke down the funding comment, but that’s my recollection, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
There was a wide array of social media posting. I don't know to what extent they were all identified, validated, and in one way or the other, cancelled as a threat, but I was aware of a wide variety of open source social media that made a wide range of threatening type behaviour that might touch on one or more of the points that you raise, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On its own, no. It has to be validated and corroborated by other information.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not to my awareness, sir, no.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you so much.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, thank you. This is usually clarified, and that’s why I was hoping to be able to read the whole document the first time, but -- so this would be the one and only time I did speak to the two -- well, I was on a call with the two ministers, and it does relate to the conversation that I had with Minister Blair. Could I just read the document now though, because it is refreshing my memory?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay, thank you. Could someone just scroll back up to the top of this and I'll just read through it then? Sorry, can you just go up a little bit further, please? Okay. Thank you. Just -- yeah, even further then, please? And these were all notes from within the same minute -- meeting?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. Please go further. Up to the very top, please, sorry. I just need to know when I come into this meeting, because I recall coming in partway. Okay, keep going now, please. Stop there. Okay, thank you. Okay, next. Okay, thank you. Keep going. Thank you. Keep going. Sorry, just down a little bit. Up a little bit more now, thank you. Just stop there. Okay, up to the top there, please, and keep going. And stop there. And down again. Okay, I believe that's the end of it? Yes. Thank you very much, Commissioner, for your indulgence.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, it is in fact.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was fair, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, I do, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Oh, the range of meetings that we had on a daily basis, I mean, I think we've -- there have been some in my examination in-Chief where I started my date at, you know, four o'clock in the morning and didn't end until sometime after 10, 11 o'clock, and for me, I think I was 21 days in and there were officers that worked longer than that, and members that worked longer than that. It's just beyond the human condition to be at your best and turn up as a leader in every single moment and every single conversation, phone call, text message, email, operating at the highest levels. And I've been in three different professions and every one of them required me to be a high-performance athlete, high-performance police executive, and high-performance business executive. And despite your best efforts, you just can't perform optimally in every single occasion. That's what I was trying to say here, not just on my behalf, but on behalf of the people that worked for me at every level and every part of the organisation. And in fairness, that holds across all institutions and organisations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. Chair Deans, again, I think it's been well-documented, that the Board of the day was seeking an outside Chief of Police, one that would tackle a major change agenda. Almost all of the questions put to me and all of the components of the negotiation for me to sign a contract were around a change mandate. The introduction of me by Chair Deans to the public in late August was all around an outsider coming into change an organisation that was in significant need of change and a change that was well- established for years and was going to be a very large effort. Almost every conversation, board meeting that I was involved in during my entire tenure of Chief of Police had some element of major change, culture change, administrative change, HR change, operational change, change of the relationship with our communities, particularly racialized and marginalized communities. So it couldn't have been emphasised more before I took the job. It was continually emphasised literally every time I had any interaction with the Board, and certainly was the focus of the vast majority of my efforts as Chief of Police internally with our members.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's a fact.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Only the Ottawa Police Service.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. I mean it’s an outflow of resistance to change on a variety of levels, some indication of the depth of the change needed, and any personal attack on the office holder of Chief of Police will be a challenge to manage. But attack of that nature on the office of the Chief of Police, I would suggest, is a very significant indication of the depth of the challenges that were facing me and the Board and the organization and the city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No sir, I did not.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The Major Incident Commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Like all things, I'm responsible for all operations and all administration of the police service. It all rolls up to me. I delegate authority down through several levels around functional responsibility. Usually that is in the function of an organizational chart but in this case it’s the function of an Incident Command operation in which case I delegate operational authority down through the Major Incident Commanders, the Event Commander, Incident Commander, and so on.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes sir, I do.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, and math was never my strong suit. So someone will correct me but January 31st is actually the Monday. So I would look at the Monday, not February 1st. And if I'm looking at the total, the first two columns that say “Parliament Wellington” are those protesters or vehicles that I'm looking at?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Protestor numbers are down to 250 which if I just use the 5,000 to 6,000 number, that would be five percent of 5,000. And I stand to be corrected by the math teachers in the room.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yeah, and sorry, not to interrupt you, sir, but again, there’s been a lot of questions about, “Well, what did you know? There’s a large group coming and some will stay behind.” Five percent stayed behind as of Monday. I don't have the number of trucks because it says thousands. But I think the estimate of trucks was somewhere between 3,000 to 5,000 and 676 would indicate around 10 percent of the vehicles stayed behind. I think that falls more closely to the bucket of “some” than “all”..
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I do, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Clearly it was by how much space it took up in the mission statement.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
M’hm.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you very much, sir. As I was reaching our resources I had to ensure, Commissioner, that we had utilized everything that we had available in good faith. I couldn’t ask for other police services to go down in capacity when we hadn’t exhausted everything that we had. To that effect, I think by he end of the first weekend we had extended shift schedules, increased our overtime pay. We then cancelled a COVID reserve platoon tht we kept in case a new wave of COVID wiped out a platoon, that we would be able to bring another in and not have any gaps. So we cancelled that and deployed those resources. That would be the Monday Tuesday after the first weekend. Shortly around that time we got into negotiations with the Ottawa Police Association. I don’t want to exclude the Ottawa Police Senior Officer Association because we probably needed to extend our senior officers and senior managers as well. That was assigned to CAO Blair Dunker to lead that. I believe towards the end of the first weekend to the second week, we achieved a successful negotiation with the OPA and that allowed us to change the shift schedule timing significantly and that brought additional hundreds of more officers into bare. We had already notified that we'd be cancelling elective leave, and I think at that point, we just cancelled everything. Around that point of the -- I'd say the end of the second weekend, I don't think we had anything in reserve, and at that point, we were only giving officers time off literally for health and safety reasons, and we've heard some examples around that. We already had officers working in excess of 2 weeks straight, 10, 12 hours a day, and it's been given in evidence, I've given it, most of this is during the coldest snap that Ottawa's had in over a decade, with average temperatures daytime minus 25 to 30 and nighttime minus 35. There was a frostbite warning for the majority of that. So these were all the efforts, and there's probably more that I can't recall off the top of my head, that we put in place leading up to the request for that additional 1,790 odd officers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, he did not.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm sorry, I don't ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Very. Very much so.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He and I were colleagues together in the Ottawa Police Service, worked together for probably the better part of two decades.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Sorry, yeah, sorry, Toronto Police Service. Thank you. We worked together for the better part of two decades. Probably the closest time working together was when he was promoted to Staff Superintendent. I was already a Deputy Chief. So his promotion would probably have been around 2012, 2013 and he reported directly to me. He was one of two Staff Superintendents that reported directly to me. Ran an area of responsibility of some seven, eight, nine business units, mostly frontline operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I also became very involved in a significant incident in Mario's life, and I won't go into it for public record, but it was a significant incident and one that I was able to provide as much support as I could, beyond my role as his supervisor, to him and his family during that period, this extended period of time.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I didn't, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, and when I take GOC, I take that to mean Government of Canada, that the entire Government of Canada, the entire Government of Canada had lost support or was losing, lost support, confidence in the OPS. It's quite a statement.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, he did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Not as explicitly and certainly not as emphatically or regularly. There were, you know, clear statements that she would consider resource requests and there were efforts to fulfil those, but I found that I was getting a lot of questions from Commissioner Lucki on things that I thought we had cleared and kept coming back to them. Things like did you sign off on the plan? Has the plan been signed off on, going into the last -- my last weekend in office. Overall, it was constructive, but there were elements that I found we seemed to be just going around in circles on a little bit.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, with the wonderful benefit of hindsight and all of what's been presented, sir, and disclosed, if I had arrived at an earlier understanding of the level of the occupation, fortification that took place here and the resulting impacts and events that took place across the country, at any point that that became crystal clear, I think the effort would have been around convening a very specific meeting, probably with the big 12 agencies. I would have no doubt either hosted or asked OPP Commissioner Carrique to host it or asked OPP Commissioner Carrique to host it or Commissioner of the RCMP if she felt other agencies from across the country should have been involved. But essentially, I think we needed to have the discussion around greater integration leading to a unified command structure, as was where we ended up on the 13th of February. There would have been a joint assessment, as there was on February 1st in Kanata, where we had multiple POU commanders, experienced, credible commanders whiteboarding an understanding of the scale of resources and very quickly coming to an understanding that it was going to be of a scale that we had never seen outside of a planned event in the range of 1,000 POU officers, and that within that same 72-hour period that I asked for, a three option plan to come back, we would have had an integrated, if not a unified effort across 12 agencies nationally, 3 levels of policing putting the logistics and planning in place to lift those officers into this jurisdiction or any other jurisdiction that was facing a similar level of threat. That’s probably the number one thing that I would have initiated, and I suspect if I had this information, Commissioner Carrique would have had this information, Commissioner Lucki would have had this information, Interim Chief (audio skip) would have had this information, and we would have been blowing up each other's phones saying, "We need a call and we need a plan and we need to pull this thing together on behalf of Canadians."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. I was a deputy chief.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I recall five, but ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. I was asked by Chief Blair to attend the initial briefing up in Muskoka. That was a briefing done jointly, I believe, by OPP and RCMP on the status of the G8-G20. At that briefing, it feels like about an hour into a two-hour briefing, the announcement was made, "We're severing the G20 from Muskoka. It will go down to the City of Toronto." That’s a memory that won't leave me very quickly, because at that point, even without fully understanding the implications of that statement, I knew that our colleagues there had some four or five years of planning lead time and we were going to be really behind where they were to take on the G20 aspect in the City of Toronto, and driving straight back down to provide that information to the command team.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Hugely, hugely.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
All too many, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can't remember if I provided it in statement or in evidence in-chief, but throughout my tenure as chief, my performance evaluations by the HR committee of the Board were always outstanding. The one area that they wanted me to continue to try to push on was the Service's capability for corporate communications broadly, crisis communications specifically. While I explained that was a function of a lack of staffing and a lack of budget to fill staffing, our inability to recruit that type of quality communications into the organization, it was going to take far too long for us to build that capability organically through HR processes, and if they felt that we needed to make a leap, then we would have to procure those services. The Board was very much supportive of that, particularly going into the long budget battle that was 2021, and so I made a recommendation, I believe at a public Board meeting that the Board consider a procurement for a firm of Navigator's quality, and I was granted approval by the Board to pursue that with the condition that they would support both the Board and the Ottawa Police Service. Through the procurement process, Navigator was signed on. That was to help us with very high-risk, high- profile, controversial joint-Board service initiative to address workplace sexual harassment, workplace sexual violence and harassment in the Ottawa Police Service, systemic misogyny, to be clear. And Navigator was contracted to come in to support the Board and the Service around internal and external communications. When the convoy events arrived here, they recommended to the Board that we continue the contract with Navigator to support both the Board and the service around communications and crisis communications.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, until I had -- probably had the conversation I would have had, Commissioner, was with -- through that unified command structure, to what extent would Navigator support that unified command structure, and particularly the communications component of it. If there was no need for any further supports from Navigator to the incident command, unified command, then I would have ended Navigator's participation in that because they did support communications efforts up until that point. The next conversation I would have had was commissioner to commissioner, Carrique and Lucki, to what extent do the three of us believe that Navigator supports benefit us going forward in that unified organization chart that you showed, and if I had received significant negative feedback or a significant decision position from both of them that we discontinue, I would have taken that into serious consideration and likely ended the contract totally at that point. If I didn’t and my two colleagues felt that it was useful, I would have continued on the contract, but only to support the strategic level, the command level of that unified command.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir. Both Navigator and ASI were referenced in my tri-level meetings where all three levels of government were present, and in both occasions, I offered their services to any of those levels or any of those parties if they thought it would be helpful. I was completely above board about the fact that we procured these services and I was willing to share those resources should there be any value in it by any of those partners.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Significantly augmenting vacancies that existed and capabilities that we simply did not have.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, it would not be, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
"Negotiation strategy."
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, not just in this meeting, but many, many others.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think so, explicitly and repeatedly.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Actually, the "to" line is to Sergeant Louis Carvalho, who is an outstanding frontline supervisor, and was one of the two supervisors for the Ottawa Police Service, PLT.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
On the same line, I've put Mark Patterson, who then was the Event Commander.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely. And beyond this email I went down to the PLT room at Headquarters, at sorry, at City Hall, and spent the better part of an hour with them, listening to their concerns, hearing their ideas, expressing directly unfiltered from me to them my full support and appreciation to them. I brought Louis Carvalho and his colleague, and I shouldn't forget his name, another excellent road sergeant, who led the PLT to the November 1st meeting with the Public Order Unit, to make sure that they had direct input and involvement in that most critical moment. I just can't think of anymore that I could do and could say to demonstrate my full commitment to the PLT function in these events, and this reflects my commitment to them well before these events arrived in my city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That's correct, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can't remember the sequence, but shortly after, when I didn't have any communications and people were trying to get a hold of me, I asked if I could get it back. And I was given it back. And then I asked, "When are you going to" -- once I got my own device, personal device now set up, I asked when they were going to pick it up, and I literally got no response sometimes for weeks on end. Somewhere around May, I'll take Counsel Migicovsky's advice that it was late May when they finally sent somebody around, A, to deliver disclosure that I had been waiting on; and B, pick up my device. I had stopped using it months before, and so I simply cleared it to make sure that it wasn't going to be used by anybody else.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
They could've taken everything out of the device if they chose to.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Absolutely, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I had a conversation with her, but it was not a wellness check, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I have to tell you, sir, I think by that point the wanting your head comment just piled onto the hundreds if not thousands of other comments that I was receiving through literally every form of human communication possible.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir, she did.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My answer was actually recently accurate, as reported by Chair Deans, "I've put my heart and soul into this." And by "this", Commissioner, I meant this entire Ottawa Police Service for my entire tenure as the Chief of Police, and it included the last three very difficult weeks of the convoy events. I told her that it was my intention to see it through right to the end, a successful and safe end for the events happening here in Ottawa, and through that, a contribution to the events happening across the country. I told her that it was very inappropriate for her to have this call with me, I think at 9:30 at night, on Valentine's Day, and I just happened to be in my bedroom with my wife trying to get some sleep before another busy day the next day. And to be asking me to resign from my office at this stage, at that time, and in that manner, I thought was very inappropriate.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
"Think about it." Which to me meant she'd already made up her mind. She wasn't interested in hearing anything about my commitment to the organisation or my commitment to see it through, she was pushing for me to resign.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
It was critically important on both ends. Most importantly, Commissioner, I did everything I could, literally, with the last act of my time in office, to remove myself out of a trust equation that was heading in the wrong direction for the Ottawa Police Service, which I led. Anything that could have contributed to faster and more resources arriving in this city, to address the still metastasising, local crisis and national crisis was my obligation, was my responsibility, and so I took that last act. But I will tell you, it mixed very heavily with the concept of me quitting something. And to this day, it still rubs me -- I won't do justice. It still hurts me, and it hurts my family.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Good afternoon, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes. A challenge that I found when I came into the organization. When I built the Incident Command Team at the Toronto Police Service, I identified that as a major risk. So as we're going back, Commissioner, this will be somewhere in the range of 2000 and -- late 2007, 2008. We would have multiple cycles on regular occasion in Toronto for major events, major incidents that would require an Incident Commander and potentially an Event or Major Incident level Commander on top of that. So when I started to build that as a Staff Superintendent for the Toronto Police Service, I built in three levels of redundancy, so that we could handle any three major events in the city at any time with full Incident Command Teams, full teams meaning an Incident Commander, an Operations Lead, a Planning Lead, a Logistics Lead at a minimum and then it could be built out from there, but we could have 3 stood up Incident Command Teams fully trained and capable, deployable within a 24-hour basis. It also meant that if we had one event, but it was protracted, it went longer than 12 hours or 24 hours, we would have a Plan B and a Plan C to come in place. Now I did not inherit that level of staffing or that level of funding when I came here as Chief of Police, but that is an optimal level. And the Ottawa Police Service at no point during my tenure was anywhere near that optimal level. Even with that, I encouraged our thinking around Incident Command and Critical Incident Command to go beyond the 12-hour cycle, because every now and then, something takes us past that point of human resilience where we see a significant decline of decision making and capability. We didn't have that ability going into these events. We were very stretched. We were already overwhelmed by the events of the explosion that we've talked about in Maryville, and so we were overstretched and overtired before we even got to the point of these convoy events unfolding on the weekend of January 29th.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I didn't ask him that afternoon. I asked him both times when the meetings happened. I think the first meeting is around 10:30. I stand to be corrected. I asked during the meeting, "Why is Superintendent Dunlop providing this briefing? I want to hear from Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll. I want to hear from Inspector Marand. Jamie, why are you providing this briefing?" And he tried to give me some explanation. "We've moved off of the Public Order Plan. We're going to talk about a neighbourhood policing strategy." Again, I politely interrupted. "That's not what this briefing is about. The briefing is about the Public Order options, the plan that I asked for on February 1st." Literally after doing that two times, and not wanting to go to a third time, I said, "Look, I think we're not in a constructive place here. Let's end this meeting. I would like another meeting before noon hour where I get Inspector Marand and Staff Sergeant Stoll giving me a briefing on the Public Order Plan with the three options." I waited patiently for another hour and a half, and I think somewhere around 12 or 12:30, another briefing happened. Again, Superintendent Dunlop appeared on my Teams screen and started to present a discussion around neighbourhood policing in the neighbourhoods outside of the red zone. And I politely interrupted, "That's not the briefing I'm looking for. Where is Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll?" I was told he was in another room. I said, "Well, let's wait. Somebody go get him. Bring him onto the screen or have him sign onto the Teams meeting. I need to hear from Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll." Eventually, Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll was brought into the room and given a chair next to Superintendent Dunlop. I then asked Mike, "What is the plan? What are the options?" And he started to tell me that they hadn't got the resources they had requested on February 1st. He wasn't in a position to provide the briefing to me. I was extremely frustrated and disappointed, and I was confused because I still did not understand why Superintendent Dunlop was involved in this meeting, nor did Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. I can't remember if Deputy Chief Bell was on either one of those calls, in fairness, but Deputy Chief Ferguson didn't explain to me at any point as to what the role of Superintendent Dunlop was and why we were not getting a presentation on the Public Order Plan and the three options. I only found out about Superintendent Dunlop on Saturday morning, February 5th, towards the end of that morning Incident Command briefing, where finally I said, "Where's the Incident Commander?" And I was told then by Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson that that was Superintendent Dunlop. I closed the meeting. I raised concern that I was not aware of it. I closed the meeting and then I asked for Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson and Deputy Chief Bell to see me in my office. It was at that point I finally had the disclosure from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson that she had switched Superintendent Dunlop into the Incident Command. I felt -- I understood it was an Incident Command level, not an Event Commander level, and I understand there's some confusion around that. But the essential disclosure on February 5th was that Rheaume was no longer part of this. Lucas was at a lower level, and Superintendent Dunlop had been inserted into the significant decision-making operational level. That was the first time I heard of it. I counselled both for their respective roles, and I made sure that from there on in, in repeated meetings, that we would not have a repeat of that level of miscommunication. I never removed the decision-making authority from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson. I always allow her to confer with whoever she needed to around these decisions, but I was very clear going forward, no more surprises like that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I believe so, yes, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't think I got any answer, except that Jamie was -- Superintendent Dunlop was really experienced with neighbourhood policing issues. I said, "That's not what we're dealing with here. It's a POU Plan." Jamie's not in charge of the ESU, which is our version of POU. Staff Sergeant Mike Stoll was in charge of it. Again, there was no, sir, you need to understand, we made this switch, this is what's going on, and in that switch, Superintendent Dunlop feels that we don't need a POU Plan, we need a neighbourhood policing plan. That wasn't provided to me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
He was in charge of the Public Order Unit.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, it's my understanding, and I still haven't received any formal explanation, that he removed himself from that role at some point in the next week. I still don't know to this day a specific reason why. I’ve heard through my own staff that he was frustrated with the overall Incident Command, but I haven’t heard it was in relation to any one individual or any one particular incident, to this day. And I don’t know if in the after action review that was completed that that’s become more clear for anyone.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
My Ceremonial Sergeant Major, Steve Boucher, was the one that gave me the information that he was frustrated with what was happening. Something to do with the turnover within the Incident Command Team, and that his position was no longer valid or valued enough. But I never got anymore details than that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, Christiane Huneault is many things; I don’t know if she was ever trained on being a scribe, but she’s certainly capable to taking a lot of notes, and has proven so, not just in these events. But just what particularly are you looking for here?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, they’re a more accurate reflections, sir, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just, sorry; the portion of the notes you just showed me are what I’m referring to. If you’d like me to adopt the entire thing more fully, then I’m not sure if that’s sufficient, but...
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you, sir.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The Integrated Planning Team that had arrived, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, ma’am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think we’ve heard in previous testimony; it might have been C/Supt. Abrams or -- sorry; C/Supt. Pardy or Supt. Abrams that there was a pretty healthy and long discussion at the point where Supt. Patterson started to present our 24- to 72-hour priorities, operational priorities. Again, just for context, sir, that was never a presentation to be a tactical briefing for Commanders to pull apart a plan and assess it; that actually took place later on in the evening. But Supt. Patterson wanted to present a sense to the Integrated Planning Team that we, having just heard the overall plan from Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, comments from me, that this was a demonstration that as the operational lead, he had a sense of what the priorities were for the next 24 to 72 hours, and what the resources would be necessary for those types of priorities. It wasn’t intended to invite a detailed debate about the adequacy and effectiveness of those priorities and those plans. A debate did ensue, and probably in hindsight a healthy debate to have at that point of forming, storming, norming around a very new escalation and integration. But the feedback that I was giving was they might not like our plan but there is a plan. They might think our plan is too aggressive but there is a plan. And if you hear from other sources that there isn’t a plan, well, there is a plan. That’s the context around which I’m giving that information.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I think it was the concept of a nighttime Public Order operation at one of the sites. There were other -- you know, you don’t have enough POU resources; have you used PLT all the way? There was a range of issues that were raised, and I think are documented in-Chief, one or both of those OPP officers, and there was an intervention, I believe, by an RCMP officer that suggested we would need some seven or 900 POU to carry that out, and then a commitment that they would get us some 500 or 516 Public Order officers to effect that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I can’t remember it was hundreds of vehicles, but I know that the document was on there I had given some accurate numbers of vehicles that we towed.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Okay. There was a document that I viewed earlier on but, ---
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
--- yes, I did try give him the most accurate assessment of the bylaw offences that we had issued and the number of vehicles and the nature of vehicles that we took.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, I would need to see a document where I said that. I just recall seeing a document earlier on today about hundreds. I felt I gave an accurate answer to Minister Blair that have you considered towing any vehicles, and I said, "We had been towing vehicles since the beginning." I think that aligns with what you've just said. If I got the tone wrong, that's a challenge of communicating numbers and me wouldn't be able to remember numbers.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But we were towing vehicles heavily at the beginning and consistently throughout where it was safe to do so using the equipment that we have, and that was my substantive answer to Minister Blair when he said, "Have you thought about towing vehicles?"
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would prefer to rely on the Incident Commander and the stats that we kept overall because there may have been other towing operations that Mr. Ayotte was not aware of. Again, I'm not challenging Mr. Ayotte's numbers. I just don't know if that is the single source of truth for all towing activities in the theatre.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Just to be clear, clearly, we did do enforcement and clearly, we did make arrests. But to be absolutely clear, I forget who asked the questions, Commissioner, but was this more like a family event or a powder keg? It was more like a powder keg. And no point ever more powder keg than that very first weekend. I had experienced it myself when I went on foot patrol at Wellington and Rideau and Sussex. I had experienced it myself. I had seen it and felt it firsthand. And those efforts of swarming officers, not just an individual officer writing a by-law offence, but sometimes officers in twos or threes or more were swarmed, senior experienced officers. We had brand-new recruits on the streets. This is a regular occurrence. Sometimes that serious injury or death is not the death or the injury to the officer. It's that an officer being swarmed and overwhelmed physically may need to resort to serious injury or death to prevent themselves from being overwhelmed. So it's a two-way issue. Not fear that the officer's going to get hurt, but the officer may hurt or take the life of someone who's trying to overwhelm them. And in every one of the incidences that I saw, or I even attempted as a uniform officer to gain compliance, even the most small compliance, was aggressively surrounded and intimidated. And if I had carried through on that or other officers carried it through on the most basic level of engagement, never mind enforcement, there was a risk of escalation to violence. And the crowd dynamics that existed that weekend, it is only but the grace of God that something worse did not happen.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
That is not correct. I believe that we -- I have given an example on the situational report from the night of February 4th into February 5th, Inspector D'Aoust talked about one of our sergeants who was swarmed and assaulted. City workers in the same situational report who were swarmed. Now I don't know whether or not a Criminal Code charge was ever laid, whether or not the officer could identify who did it, but as was led earlier on, not every incident of assault or threat led to an actual charge, but those incidents occurred on a regular basis, on a 24/7 basis across that micro-theatre that caused us so much harm and trauma in the city.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I could see it firsthand, and, yes, I got regular reports, literally at every single briefing cycle, about the level of volatility across the theatre.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I didn't determine when enforcement action should be. I set a strategic level direction, use discretion. We don't want to cause a bigger problem than we're trying to solve. Make sure officer safety and wellness is there. Make sure we understand that trying to do enforcement in one area may be more risky than not. So I never directed any particular enforcement action if that's what you're asking me.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Through the Incident Command process, yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I think I put some nuance into it, but the advice that I had got around full closures of the downtown area were not in alignment with that course of action.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I won't say there was no consideration around that, but the conveyance, whether it's a skateboard or a truck, is what brings the person to the location.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
And it's my understanding that PLT tried to negotiate around those truck routes and to keep as many trucks out of the downtown core as possible.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
During a major event or just the primary functions of a Board in general?
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I'm not aware of the Board's ability to set priorities during a major event. They can set priorities for the organization, overarching priorities, strategic priorities, but I’m not aware of, I stand to be corrected, that the Board can set priorities for any specific event.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I wouldn't. And even with this information in front of me. I mean, if what Morden is considering -- first of all, Morden is a report. It is not a statutory authority with the Police Services Act, so it's informative but it's not instructive. Secondly, if what he refers to is a policing operation as a gun and gang operation, if that is, for instance, "What is", I go back to my Toronto Police days, but Toronto Police experienced, you know, sometimes years in a row of escalating guns and gang violence, "What is, Chief, your approach to addressing gun and gang violence in the city? We'd like to have some policy positions on that. For instance, we are not going to use street checks and carding to disproportionately stigmatise or victimise Black and Brown populations in the city." Check, Morden's right. If what Morden is considering is that, "Chief, when you go to take down the Bloods and Crips, operating between 31 and 23 Division, you need to make sure that you have overwatch capability to make sure that none of our officers get hurt." "Sorry, you've crossed the line, you shouldn't be there." I can't imagine in a thousand years that Morden would consider that the Board would sit down with the Chief of Police in the middle of the first weekend and start to debate policy instructions around a still unfolding national security event.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
A planned event for a visit of world leaders usually has a four to five year cycle of planning, and in which case, yes, they would have plenty opportunity. I gave information earlier on, Commissioner, about the planning that went into the G20 that severed from Muskoka down to Toronto. In five months we had regular meetings, regular scheduled board meetings, specially scheduled board meetings, where Chief Blair and the Command Team, which I was a part of, provided a lot of information to the Board around what we were planning for. The Board had time to take tour of facilities were giving. We were able to give very detailed updates, even though we were on an incredibly tense timeline. And the Board could therefore on those occasions express policy matters. But not in the middle of the weekend where the G20 burnt cars down in our city were we sitting down having policy discussions with the Board.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I don't believe they did, and even if they did, the ability for us to slow the world down in order to have a policy discussion, I don't think would've been practical.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
If I understand everything that's in this paragraph and where it fits into the larger structure of the Morden Report, if I understand it, Morden is suggesting the Board should set the mission statement for the Incident Command Operational Plan, I would have to reject that.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Again, based on my limited ability to interpret this section in regards to the larger report.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, ma'am.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
The short answer would be yes. There was a lot of discussion back and forth as to who would sign the letter, when the letter would be presented, how it would be presented. Quite frankly, I left that largely to the Chair and the Mayor to sort out.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Well, the substantive discussion was around the Board's ability to secure adequate and effective resources for what we were dealing with. It was going to be a public document. I don't think there was a discussion about it, it probably wasn't a very long discussion. The intent was for one or both of those individuals to sign a public letter and to send it to the highest offices of the land provincially and federally.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
No, I didn't.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, Commissioner. It wasn’t so much the Commissioners wouldn't like my plan, but the representatives that they had sent to the integrated planning team might, not having had that briefing, suggest that it was a sufficient plan or the right type or tone of plan, but there is a plan. We spent 24 hours discussing our plan, presenting our plan, and there was an agreement to move forward around integrating around that the details still to be resolved, should you hear from other services -- other sources, sorry, that there is no plan; there is a plan.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
I would add to that, sir. So that is a significant portion of it. Two things that are important. That plan was based on on February 8th when it was first presented, refined again on February 9th, still based on the level of resources that we currently had and could reasonably predict. And based on that current level of resources, February 8th, 9th, 10th, until we started to really see the numbers go up over the 12th, 13th, 14th, the best that we could envision operationally is taking chunks or bites out of the red zone, holding that, moving on to the next part, removing what was in there and holding that ground. If we were able to get the concept of predictable resources in the thousand, thousand-plus, the majority of which would be Public Order, we could conceive of an entire theatre of operations similar to the one that ultimately was deployed at the back end of the fourth week, the 17th, 18th, and 19th. But given the resource amounts that we currently had and could reasonably predict for 72 hours out, the best we could do was prioritize a list of locations and attempt each day to take one or more of those out, secure that area so people couldn't come back in, and move to the next highest priority, based on intelligence, based on the context of that 24-hour period, and based on the resources available in that 24-hours.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Thank you. I think it's caused a lot of confusion for a lot of people, and I'll try to do a better job. There was only ever one plan, in my humble opinion, only ever one plan, the January 28th pre-arrival plan that pivoted after the first weekend into January 31st, that became the February 5th document that my counsel shared with you, sir, earlier on. That was the 2.0 version of it, it going into the second weekend. And then going into the meeting with the integrated planning unit, February 8th and 9, that became the 3.0 document. The concept of operations was -- I remember it being an eight-point concept -- I believe it was finally captured as a seven-point concept -- talked about things like a Public Order sub-plan that would take and hold the area. It talked about negotiations, it talked about officer -- member wellness and health and safety, a range of frameworks around which the overall operating plan was focused on. The take and hold component, the Public Order component that I was previously answering, I would say that would be a sub-plan that fed into the larger plan. It wasn’t the plan on its own that was -- that wasn’t, on its own, the take and hold, the overarching plan that we were inviting the integrated planning team to come in and assist with. It was our current attempt with the current resources we had to make a meaningful impact, safe and successful, but meaningful impact in the small way that our resources would allow us at this current time. I hope that clarifies things. But there is one overarching plan and several sub-plans. That sub-plan of take and hold was specifically explained to the integrated team at the February 9th meeting, and they challenged that sub-plan, I think constructively challenged that sub-plan, but they weren’t challenging the overarching plan, the framework of operations.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
But -- no, and sorry, it is hard to understand. That wouldn't be sustainable. We could -- with the resources stretched as we were, we were trying to take what we could in terms of Public Order plans. But if we didn’t get a significant, greater amount of resources, we would run out of steam very quickly. It's not a sustainable thing. And bite- sized across even the theatre that we had, that would take weeks if not months, and we just couldn't sustain our operations at that point without that massive extra amount of resources that the larger concept was requiring, the 1,800 or 1,790 change. So the concept of operations plan, the 3.0 plan was for a massive amount of resources to come in to do a significant amount of activities. While that was happening, we presented this sub-plan of existing resources to take and hold areas of the red zone. But that was not sustainable, and that would not have ultimately led to a safe, successful outcome. It's the best we could do at that time, and that’s what we were presenting.
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Peter Sloly, former Chief (Ott-OPS)
Yes, sir.