Steve Kanellakos
Steve Kanellakos spoke 722 times across 1 day of testimony.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Good morning, Mr. Commissioner.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Religious document.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The Bible.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Steve Kanellakos, K-A-N-E- L-L-A-K-O-S.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Good morning.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'm the City Manager for the City of Ottawa.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, May of 2016.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do not.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I am not.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He is.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, it's the EOCG.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, Emergency Operations Control Group.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It's actually the same thing, but I think it's just wrong in the -- the acronym, it's two Cs, it's only one C.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do, but I don't have jurisdiction over the police chief, the medical officer of health, or the chief librarian, the CO of the libraries. Those officiants are under different legislation. I can't direct them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was Ottawa Police Service.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, Ottawa Police is responsible for maintaining public order in the City of Ottawa, and under our incident management structure, police would be the lead agency when it comes to public order issues. That's been our practice for as long as I've been at the City for the last 22 years.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, if there's a demonstration, the police are the lead.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, even a parade, we have a group called SEAT. It’s an interdepartmental group including the police that plans for parades and other special events. And police have a role, but they may not necessarily be the lead if it’s -- depending on the nature of the event. Sometimes its just managed with Incident Command. But often police are still seen as a lead for any gathering of people.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They’re very strategic decisions. They’re really around policy. They’re looking ahead in terms of what resources we might need into the future, the sustainability of our staff, turnover of our staff, because people in emergencies normally work, you know, basically every waking hour on the emergency and we have to make sure we rotate them out. We make sure that services in the departments are sustained and they can continue. So this business continuity for city services. And so it’s very much a strategic direction. It’s not at the tactical and operational level at the OCG.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Generally, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He’s the President of the Ottawa Hoteliers Association, I believe.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, it is.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right. He’s a special advisor to the Mayor.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe so, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t recall if it was discussed at that meeting. This information was shared with Ottawa Police. I know that for a fact because we have our email records that we sent it over. But I don’t remember if it was actually raised in that particular meeting.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He is.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well the numbers -- this speaks to the information that we had heading into the end of the first weekend. And the information the City was receiving, even though we did receive information from other parties, just as the hoteliers, was pieces of information that was fed into police. Police were responsible, and are responsible, and have the access to the intelligence and the information across the country at the federal and provincial level to make the risk assessment that we all need to participate in to be able to respond appropriately. So all of this information, it was moving around. I think early emails had two to 300, or 50 trucks, and then it kind of escalated as the week went on, I think from about January 24th, on. And the numbers were growing and they were varying and there was different pieces of information coming in. We rely on the police to gather that information, collate that with all of the information they have, and make a risk assessment to provide to the City in terms of the strategies they’re going to take to mitigate that risk. And so from my point of view, and I’ve been doing this a long time, in terms of dealing with emergencies, it wasn’t unusual to have a variance in the views of people who thought it was going to be bigger, longer, you know, smaller. There were all kinds of opinions on what that would be. The only information we could rely on was the Ottawa Police in terms of reliable information at that time.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The basis from Ottawa Police and our work, because we were an integrated team, was based on through the weekend, and maybe into the following week, Wednesday, was the initial assessment heading into that first weekend. There wasn’t an assessment that said it would have been longer than that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know. I don’t have a calendar in front of me. But that first Wednesday was when they thought the last of them might leave.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Ottawa Police. Chief Sloly was providing that information. I think we also had emails and documentation in our EOC shared from the National Capital Regional Command Centre participants heading into that weekend.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, because I think the one thing that, from my experience and I think from the people that worked with Ottawa Police for a long time, Ottawa Police has extensive experience dealing with demonstrations in national capital. They do that on a regular basis. Sometimes it's almost weekly. So there's a lot of confidence. And they've done it well over the years, over the last 20 years that I've been involved. They've handled those demonstrations very well. And people have confidence in their assessment of the situation to guide us in terms of what to expect and what posture we should be at to be able to deal with the risks that were being proposed.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It's just vague for me, but I believe people were talking about what if, the what if situations should they stay, and but I don't recall the specific discussion.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, based on my experience, that was pretty normal to have a variety -- almost every protest we've had, whether it was the G8, G20, the farmer's protest, the numbers vary widely leading into the actual protest event. That is a normal situation, in my experience.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was confident that we were prepared for that first weekend, with the assumption that they were leaving after the weekend.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, based on the assumption that they were going to leave after the weekend, we all thought it went quite well. There wasn't any violence. People were protesting. It was managed. There were no major incidents that weekend other than, you know, the honking -- there was -- you know, there was the disruption to the neighbourhoods and -- but from the perspective of if they would have left after that weekend, it probably would have been very much an insignificant event compared to what it turned out to be.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, we were concerned obviously with some of that -- those behaviours and what happened, but, you know, in my timeline, it was a -- it was -- if it would have ended after the weekend, they were unfortunate incidents and they were dealt with, and everybody would have moved on and we would have cleaned up the city heading into the following week. So from the perspective of, you know, could it -- was that first weekend managed perfectly? They never are. Were there incidents? There always are. Was there any extreme violence or anybody seriously injured? No. Was there incredible disruption to the people that lived in downtown, and other people were disrupted by the physical presence of the vehicles, the noise, the fumes? Absolutely. But in my window, three days of that, we could have got past that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I'm reflecting the discussions we had with police on the rationale for allowing those trucks in -- into the core that first weekend. And the assumption was that they were going to leave. They had previous experience with the farmer's convoy where tractors and other heavy trucks came into the core. They did leave after the event. It wasn't a significant event from a policing perspective. And the comment back here is that police made a decision in terms of how were they going to manage the influx of trucks coming in. And if the streets weren't going to be closed, and basically, a zone created -- a no-go zone for vehicles wasn't going to be created, the risk was they were going to leave their vehicles on the 417 and neighbourhoods all over the city and just walk away and leave the parks and disrupt the entire city. And so the strategy, from what I understand, it was to try and get them into a footprint to be able to contain them and be able to manage the protesters in a smaller area, so that's what I'm reflecting in that text message back.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We were in the discussions, but it's not our decision in terms of how the police -- what Ottawa Police chose to do in terms of their operational tactics to manage the event. But we were integrated with our Traffic Incident Management Group and others on the -- on our Emergency Operations Group with respect to facilitating that decision, because once they made the decision, we had to reroute buses. We had to reroute ambulances, fire trucks. We had to change all our protocols in terms of being able to sustain our services, the continuity of our services. Garbage pickup, snow removal, all those things had to be looked at from the perspective of how do we work around that area. And we had to create an emergency lane within that zone, protect that emergency lane for emergency vehicles. So, yes, we were engaged in facilitating the outcomes or the mitigating factors to support police in terms of their strategy.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'm not aware if that was specifically discussed in terms of a conversation. I don't know.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The role of the City when the police are the lead in an event like this is to support the police and their activities. That's the role we played throughout this entire three-week period.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, we manage our own city services, but the challenge of course is -- and the City of Ottawa can't direct me, the mayor, council can't direct the police chief in operational matters, the decisions that he or she are making. And so the City takes the -- they -- you know, if you look at the structure of Emergency Management setup, the City effectively is there in a support role for law enforcement, to ensure that they can get what they need to be able to fulfil their mandate.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, at the time, I believe Chief Sloly and others were talking about whether they had the legal authority to prevent the trucks from coming into the streets based on their Charter rights. And that was the rationale that I had heard at the time. There was also the operational aspect based on the assumption that they were going to leave, that keeping the footprint contained would be more beneficial to the police to be able to manage the crowds and not spread their resources too thin because it always is a challenge for resources. And they also felt that from an egress point of view, it would facilitate an egress when the protest was over because then they could guide them out of the city from one place rather than having to manage it in terms of multiple places all over the city if the trucks happened to be parked there.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Should be let in.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, I have that here, so. Typical typo with auto correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
My understanding from Ottawa Police was that once some truckers did leave -- there weren't many, but some did leave -- that the remaining organizers wished another truck to fill that space, because they didn't have enough places to park them. So they were being blocked from coming into that zone to try and limit the amount of trucks once we realized that they had basically clogged up the entire downtown. So we were trying to keep them out of that zone, particularly in front of -- in the downtown core, or on some of the side streets. And so -- and then that kind of turned into the notion, could be put somewhere else, on the Breton Flats or some other location, SJAM. They ended up on the Queen Elizabeth Driveway. police were trying to manage where they could park them and still manage them without spreading their footprint out too wide.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's contrary to the information that I have
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not often. They were more formal meetings, so I had a few calls with him. He would call me, or I would reach out to him, but most of our interaction was on scheduled calls that we would have, either as a -- at the staff level, or with our elected officials. Or with the discussions -- most of my calls with him were -- not most of my calls, but several of my calls were also with the intergovernmental calls with the federal and provincial officials that we were talking to.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We do have that authority
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, because police took a different strategy in terms of how were they going to manage the protest. So we wouldn't close roads without the support of the police partners, Ottawa Police in particular. Because if you're closing roads and you're putting hard barricades, we had -- and I had some counselors, you know, tell me that -- or ask me to put barricades in front of streets, trying to block streets from other trucks going in the neighborhoods. And the challenge most people don't understand is that life still goes on despite the fact you’re in this crisis, and that fire trucks, paramedics, snowplows, garbage pick up, maybe water service crews if a pipe bursts in the winter which we we’re having a lot of those, have to get into those streets. So if you’re blocking with a hard barricade any street in Ottawa, unless you're closing the street completely, and you're not allowing anyone in there -- but if residents are there, they are obviously allowed to go back in -- you need to staff that barricade with a physical person -- with a person who can allow people to enter and access that depending on the requirement legally. And so, the notion that you know, we would close streets on our own has been thrown out, why did the city of Ottawa close streets? Well, we would never close streets without the agreement, collaboration, and participation of Ottawa Police to ensure that it aligned with their operational plans, to ensure that they could stop them, and they had enough resources to put people at the actual access, and that it didn't impede with something else that they were planning with respect to managing the protest.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No. There were road closures after the fact, later on as the weeks progressed, but initially, no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I can't say it's a categoric no. I mean, I think they were trying to guide them and prevent them from entering certain areas, but there was still the notion that we can't prevent them from their rights to protest and come in, and that's the posture that was taken for that second week.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There were some streets blocked off later, in terms of trying to prevent them from getting into some of the streets. We were able to stop them, but that was later in the period. But the only time that the streets were actually closed off and barricaded, where the red zone was created, was going to the third week, and then when the Emergency Act was invoked, then it got locked down.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The City asked or police asked?
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There was --
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, the only recollection I have of that is those were elected officials who wanted a hardening of the downtown core, and to prevent more vehicles to come in, into the residential neighborhoods in particular.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There were two, there was Coventry Road, which happened on the initial first weekend; and the other one was 15 -- I think it's 1500 Bronson was another area where police directed some vehicles in the latter days of the protest.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Police didn't have enough room for all the trucks in the downtown core, and asked the City, our General Manager of Parks, Recreation, Culture, and Facilities, Mr. Chenier, Dan Chenier, if they could use that as an overflow for the weekend, and Mr. Chenier agreed to allow the trucks to go there for that weekend.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It is.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s a -- for most people know, that's the baseball stadium on Coventry.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Again, that was overflow when they started moving vehicles on that -- on the last weekend when police went into tactical operations, they were using 1500 Bronson two to the vehicles as a staging area to be able to compound the vehicles.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right. They expressed to us in writing that they wanted them out. They weren't happy, it was disrupting their business, they were trying to get ready for the baseball season.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, OPS didn't have the resources to be able to remove the people that were encamped on Coventry Road at the baseball stadium. At that point they couldn't get them out. There was no way to remove them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, that's exactly what it was supposed to be. It was supposed to shuttle people back and forth so they could go and join the protest, but it turned into an encampment, and I'd say, a logistical compound to support the protest.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t have any personal knowledge, no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well OPS are on record saying that they were worried about, you know, potential for weapons there or violence should they go in. They were quite entrenched, according to Ottawa Police, and there were concerns about their ability to go in and safely remove those people without significant violence.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Sir John A. MacDonald had some vehicles initially and then they added some more, but then they stopped. They felt that was becoming a risk too because it was getting -- it was being extended quite deep going west and they were worried about blocking -- potentially blocking the interprovincial bridge. That was a big concern of the police on both sides, in Quebec and Ontario. And so they were trying to protect that particular area at all costs. But I don’t know where the overflow was for this.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Definitely.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Nicole Ward is a staff member in the Emergency Management Group.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
She’s also a staff member.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He’s my Chief of Staff.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He’s the Associate General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services. He’s on a secondment there for professional development.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, she’s our Director of Corporate Communications, but she’s now -- at the time, she was kind of there, plus with Service Ottawa, overseeing Service Ottawa, Director.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct. Kelly Cochrane was embedded with that NCRCC and there was another -- there’s a few other people, but I don’t see them on this list, that were also part of the NRCC. We had City staff from our Public Safety Group embedded in that group.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Command Centre.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well towing is the -- you know, it’s the responsibility of police and bylaw services. It would be those two groups that have authority to tow trucks in the City of Ottawa.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right. That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well it became evident early on that we needed to access heavy tow trucks, and they aren’t a common vehicle. We explored what the City had in its own inventory. We had two heavy tow trucks with OC Transpo that could have been utilized. Even though our staff were very reluctant to participate and do that, because they felt for their safety. And we then started, at the NRCC, we ended up calling tow truck companies, other cities, the Province, the Federal Government, looking to see if we could access heavy duty tow trucks for the use -- for our use in the event the police needed them, or we needed them. And we were getting declined by everybody we called, and that they didn’t want to get involved. So we had no access to any tow trucks, other than the two that we had, and our staff were reluctant to go in.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, both were doing it. We were working with the police. The police were making calls and we were also making calls for our sources. We found out and tried to contact anybody we knew to see if we could get tow trucks into Ottawa.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, we didn’t get any.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well there were several reasons. The first was their own safety. I think they felt that trying to tow a vehicle without the site being secured, in amongst the protestors, you could imagine, you know, it could be quite conflictual when you’re trying to take someone’s truck and people are still around the truck. So they were concerned about that. They were concerned about the damage, potentially, to their own vehicle, should things get out of hand. And it’s a cost to their business. Some were concerned that they do business with truckers and trucking companies, and that would damage them reputationally and they would lose business. Some were sympathizers or supported the protests and didn’t feel that they were going to offer their services to do it. Those were generally the reasons.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, the City does have a towing standing offer, but we don’t do a lot of heavy equipment vehicle towing. We have heavy equipment, obviously. Most of our towing contracts are to tow parked vehicles in and around the city who are illegally parked, or for whatever reason, or for enforcement issues. But yes, we do have contracts with tow truck businesses in Ottawa who have, in their inventory, heavy tow trucks to be able to use in the event one of our dump trucks or heavy trucks needs to be towed, or any other situation.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, because we reached out to our standing offer contractors first and they refused.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, they were.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well it was a short time frame. You can’t enforce it in a matter of days or weeks. But certainly our procurement people and our lawyers were looking at the contracts to start taking action against those tow truck companies. But you couldn’t fulfill that in the time period that we had and actually take any significant action to make them do it. And even then, to make them do it probably would have been a difficult situation at that stage of the protests.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well they -- a lot of people, you know, have asked me, and at the time, were, you know, demanding that we start ticketing and towing the vehicles out of that area in the neighbourhoods, and particularly on Wellington Street, but the reality is, until -- and you saw it on the last weekend when police moved in and started clearing the red zone, you need to secure the area where the actual physical truck is, protect it before you can bring the tow truck in and be able to move it out. You can't safely tow a heavy vehicle like that that's end-to-end, bumper to bumper with a whole bunch of other trucks, and civilian people and protesters are all around that truck, and you're trying to bring in a heavy truck, and police haven't been able to secure the scene. So until you can actually hopscotch your way down the street, push them back, clear the spot, get the truck out and move it and then keep moving in a systematic way, it's a very volatile, unsafe situation to bring in a tow truck into a very crowded area, expect people to move, and expect the tow trucker to somehow get in there and do their work when people are potentially going to be resisting the ability of the tow truck operator to do that. So police weren't able to -- obviously, they weren't able to clear that area and protect each individual truck, so the tow truck could get in. So it wasn't -- it was a non starter to be able to tow truck. Even if we had tow truck companies, we wanted to retain them to have them available for when police ultimately went in operationally or tactically, but it was a non starter until that happened for us to think about towing any heavy truck that was in the compressed areas on Wellington Street, some of the downtown streets where they were all bunched up.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, once the authorities came in under the Act, the police were able to get tow trucks to actually come and compel them to come is my understanding. And some of them came with the decals off their vehicles and, you know, they came incognito so no one would know who they are, but they then -- it just seemed to be a -- all of a sudden, we had a lot of tow trucks available in those final few days before the last weekend.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Police. Police did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We do, but I don't have it off the top of my head.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, it's difficult. I mean, you can target vehicles based on the fact some may have a flag on it, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're part of the protest. So the market and other areas east of the zone where - - on Wellington Street towards Elgin, the War Memorial, there were all kinds of cars and people, people still live down there. So the challenge for By-law was not towing and catching the wrong fish in the net and towing vehicles that you think are part of the protest who happen to just live in the area and park there. So it was a very complicated situation for By-law. They were ticketing. They were towing vehicles that were blocking the emergency lane in the red zone. They were clearing that out. And in the neighbourhoods, they were ticketing. They started ticketing, but there were also a lot of protest vehicles and people congregated in those side streets, and they were working with police to ensure the safety of our By-law officers. So when real activity started happening is when police and By- law integrated into teams and went out together, which protected the By-law officers. By-law officers aren't trained or equipped to deal with those kinds of situations. That's not their role.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe it was in the second week, but I don't remember the date.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think it was when they did the surge and -- I forget the term police use, surge and contain or -- I forget the term they use where they started sending teams into the neighbourhoods. That's when they first started integrating By-law with police, so that By-law had security to protect them as they went in because they felt very insecure about fulfilling their role in some of those more volatile areas.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Outside of the red zone. In the red zone, no. They were guided by and working collaboratively with police. Police were concerned about the volatility that it might create if they started going in and ticketing or trying to tow vehicles within the red zone. And, you know, I was advised of that early on by Kim Ayotte. And from my own experience, that seemed like a reasonable request. I know people said -- well, there's a difference of opinion whether police directed By-law, or it was done in collaboration. Police can't direct By-law. Quite frankly, By-law can do what they need to do under they by-laws of the city, but we were working under an integrated incident management system, which basically, police are the incident commander. They're leading the response. The City is supporting and working in collaboration, and it was a reasonable request. Whether it was a direction or not is irrelevant to me, but when I heard that and I was advised of that, I said, that's reasonable not to expect By-law to go in on their own volition and enforce without police knowing that they're enforcing and creating a potentially volatile situation in a crowded area, which police would have to eventually respond to. And as our By-law Chief Roger Chapman was concerned about the safety of our By-law officers by trying to do that on their own.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, what I'm saying is police and By-law agreed, whether they were directed or not. There's a dispute about whether -- dispute, there's a disagreement about whether police actually directed that By-law not go in there. I think that's irrelevant. They had agreed that they would not go in without police support.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They could, but there were also areas that were also volatile, because once the truckers displaced into the neighbourhoods, some of those streets, particularly downtown on Kent, on Slater, on Bank, they were jammed up with trucks and people, and it was the same situation as on Wellington. So it was still a potentially volatile situation. So By-law was using -- was still operating under the agreement with Ottawa Police. And in other areas, in the market and some of the other areas where it was less volatile, they were still issuing tickets as per their regular jobs, and in other parts of the city.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There was very limited towing. Most of the towing initially happened in the emergency lanes where some lighter vehicles, pickup trucks, et cetera, were blocking the emergency lane that gave access to the ambulances, fire trucks and other police vehicles in the event there was a 9-1-1 call or whatever in that area, businesses or whoever.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The second week is when the police and By-law created integrated teams, that's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't know the specifics. I believe it was certain arteries. I believe Mr. Ayotte is now testifying and I think that'd be a question better posed to him.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Just one moment. I just want to review this. (SHORT PAUSE)
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Most of it would have been answered by Chief Sloly or his staff.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Ultimately it’s me, and I usually receive that through Kim Ayotte, our General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That sounds like me, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, it was -- it’s always under consideration when we were in that situation. And it’s a question of timing, and declaring an emergency at the municipal level doesn’t give the Municipality much other than a sense of urgency, a sense of, “Hey, there’s some real issues here,” and gets everybody focused. There are limited authorities that come to the City by declaring an emergency at the municipal level.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not at that time, no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Because as I said, there was very little that it would give us. The biggest thing on a state of emergency is, either get the attention of other levels of government that we’re in trouble and we need help. Sometimes the Province can declare before we do, or the Federal Government, depending on the situation, obviously, but normally it's the Province. And the other thing that the emergency -- declaration of emergency gives us is benefits around procurement and decision-making, where the Mayor has more authority to make decisions without having to convene a full Council meeting and all the protocol, the process that goes behind that. So we can be more efficient around our decision-making, our procurement, the allocation of resources internally, but it doesn’t give the Mayor any other powers with respect to -- other than the bylaws we already have with respect to invoking any other authorities that he may not already have.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t recall having a specific conversation, but I know we did talk about it. He raised it. I know he raised the issue of invoking or enacting or declaring an emergency at the municipal level, but I don’t recall the specific conversations. But it was suggested.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Because it became evident that they weren’t leaving; police were reporting that they did not have enough resources to end it. There was a sense that this was going to be a prolonged activity by that point, and we felt that by declaring it, we would effectively notify the community and our organization that this was serious, and that the Mayor will have the authorities that I talked about, the limited authorities to move quicker. And, quite frankly, and it's in another email that -- from a meeting I was in -- in the minutes from a meeting I was in where I really felt and the Mayor felt that we wanted the Province to also step in, because they actually have authorities that they declare an emergency.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
In this meeting, I don’t know if anyone was here at the meeting from the Province.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’d have to look at the -- there were so many meetings, I don’t recall the attendees of each one.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, up on that point the Province was taking the posture that this was a law enforcement issue, and that Ottawa Police should be dealing with -- the Ottawa Police Chief should be dealing with the other Police Chiefs and the OPP Commissioner and -- to get the resources they needed, and that they weren’t going to get involved politically. We were hoping that they would exercise powers around -- you know, through the Ministry of Transportation and other legislations they had. I don’t know the extent of what they had at their disposal, but through the regulations to be able to put more pressure on the protesters to try and help us end it. And so the provincial legislation, the Premier has a lot more authority, in terms of powers, once he declares - - he or she declares an emergency. And at that point -- up on that point, they hadn’t declared. I think they declared after Windsor ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- on the 11th.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I wouldn’t characterize it as that. I would characterize it that the Province, clearly through the Solicitor-General, felt that this is a law enforcement matter that could be dealt with through existing authorities that law enforcement have ,and that the police should be working together to deal with the resources and what they need under their existing powers to resolve this. That’s the -- that was the initial feedback that we received from them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, the -- at the time, it was obvious to me that unless we received more resources or -- and got help from the federal government or provincial government with respect to accessing some of the regulations that they have under their authority, that it would be very difficult for the current resources -- the resources at the time that the Ottawa Police had and the City had at that stage in the protest, where they were very entrenched, to be able to move them out, and the feeling was that the federal government and the provincial government would need to get more involved in supporting our resources and giving us what other tools, particularly around existing -- at that time it was around existing regulations. The meetings we had with the Minister of Transport -- or the Deputy Minister of Transportation at the federal level and at the provincial level was about how do we get access to -- you know, are there things we can do for insurance around their CVOR are the things that they have at their -- under their authority that we can put pressure on the truckers to move them out without direct enforcement.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
As I said, the Solicitor General at the time was Sylvie Jones. She’s in a different portfolio now, Ministry now. But she made it clear, my recollection, that this was a law enforcement matter. It wasn’t for elected officials to be getting involved in that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I think the declaration of, at the provincial level, when things escalated and we started having issues at the -- at a significant border crossing.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well he reached out first to our City Solicitor, David White, who effectively referred him to me, because David White didn’t have the authority to proceed with that. It was under my delegated authority. And Chief Sloly asked me to -- he was looking for another tool in his toolbox, based on discussion with his executive command, and he asked me to look into the possibility of getting an injunction to give them another tool in the toolbox to be able to do enforcement to enforce some of the issues that were arising that first weekend. And I made a commitment to him that -- I spoke to our City Solicitor first after he had emailed me. Then I spoke to Chief Sloly and I made a commitment to Chief Sloly that we would pursue it and work with his team to see what that might look like.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No. It was very broad based in scope. It wasn’t defined at that time.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well actually, in fairness to Chief Sloly, I -- he’s writing what I asked him -- what I told him. I said, “We will make the final assessment.” So he’s confirming that in this email, of what I requested -- what I advised him in response.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I am.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, the -- in-between the conversation with Chief Sloly and this, discussions have been initiated between the legal counsel of Ottawa Police and our City Solicitor and his staff. And they were sorting out what would be required to get one, and our City Solicitor, I don’t have in front of me, but posed at least a half dozen questions, maybe more, to the police solicitor, asking answers to the questions to be able to successfully move forward with an injunction. And my understanding is they never replied. They were having discussions in-between, but they never replied in writing to the questions our City Solicitor felt he needed to be able to proceed. And one of the concerns which our Solicitor had and that I had, was that going and getting an injunction, if it was broad in scope, rather than something very specific, but at the time, the discussion was broader in scope, but it was never properly defined, was that once we had it, there’d be a public expectation that we would actually enforce it and go for contempt. And the concern was, at that point, that police didn’t have the resources to enforce a broad scope injunction, to be able to do -- to basically get the benefit of the injunction, and that erode public confidence, and I think our community confidence, and our elected officials’ confidence, because once we have that tool, they would rightly expect that we’d be able to utilize it and get results for the things that were happening on the streets of Ottawa.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
At that time, correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They were not.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We did. We had to assess at that point, you know, did they have the resources? More resources were coming into Ottawa at that point. The police presence was increasing. And we restricted it to basically what’s in the City jurisdiction, which are City bylaws. We didn’t broaden the scope of the injunction. So it was fires, you know, parking and all those other things that were happening on the streets, within our own mandate of council-passed bylaws.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right. Kim Ayotte swore to it.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
In hindsight, I wish things would have lined up where we could have got an injunction earlier, because it probably would have helped. But getting an injunction where police weren’t in the position, from a resource perspective, to deal with it, and not being able to define what they needed, and that back and forth, it delayed it absolutely. And you know, looking back, is that something that, you know, could have been done sooner? Possibly. But we weren’t prepared to go forward. I didn’t think it was reasonable to go forward until we all understood how the injunction fit into the police operational plans.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, absolutely. I think Ms. Li did a remarkable thing and put herself out there, a lot of courage, and got that injunction. And it had an effect. It did bring down the horns. They kind of came back later, but it had a significant effect. And of course there was pressure. There was pressure from the public from our council not understanding why the City wouldn't move to get an injunction also. We felt that pressure, but we couldn't get to a place where we understood what the scope of that injunction was in terms of what police needed.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We did, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't recall talking to Mr. Wilson about the injunction, but I stand to be corrected, but I don't recall that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
If I can see the documents I might be able to comment.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
His office emailed our office, my office, and asked if a meeting could be set up later in the day, and I think we had a telephone conversation, I forget the date, but it was, I remember, late afternoon.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He had reached out to connect because obviously they were -- the Deputy Minister community there and the relevant ministries and the Prime Minister's Office were -- was getting briefed on what was happening, and he wanted to have a better understanding and the situational awareness of what was happening on the ground from our perspective so that he could relay that information back to his Minister, and to the -- and to Cabinet.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Initially, no. It was "Can we get together and have a conversation about situational awareness? What do you know? What's happening?" They wanted to know our perspective on what was happening.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. When we talked he suggested that we bring together some of his colleagues, Chief Sloly, myself, and initiate some calls to start getting updates on a more frequent basis so they're in the loop.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, that's generally the list, but it grew. It didn't start off with all those people, it kind of evolved over the meetings with more -- you know, pretty typical. We started off with three, four people, and it expanded as the meetings went on.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Initially, it was to get everyone understanding what was happening on the ground, and for them to tell us what was happening from their perspective. So it was really and update in terms of what's the situation, what's evolving, what's coming, and then it gets turned. After a few meetings it turned into the whole issue of resources, and police from other police services, particularly the RCMP and OPP on those calls, being allocated or redeployed to Ottawa to assist with the event. And then it kind of evolved into when the request was -- it sort of started generally about resources, and after it evolved into the specific request that Chief Sloly made through the Police Board, where the letter was sent by Mayor Watson and Councillor Deans, who was the Chair of the Police Board at that time, asking for 1,800 officers, and part of those 1,800 were civilians, with specialists, to be redeployed to Ottawa. And then the discussions became a lot about what was happening, but when are we getting the resources and how many resources we actually had received.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They dominated the discussion.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, the central theme was a disagreement on -- between Ottawa Police and the other parties at the federal and provincial level on how many officers were actually here and under the command of Ottawa Police. That was the most relevant part of the discussion.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, it was -- Ottawa Police had numbers that they believed they had under their command, and RCMP, and OPP less so, but mostly RCMP felt that they had more officers there under the command. So there was a disagreement about how many officers were actually under the authority to be deployed in Operations by Ottawa Police commanders. And it was a frustrating period because we couldn't get to an agreement on how many police officers were actually here in Ottawa from outside from other enforcement agencies.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I would say no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't know why they stopped after the 8th of February. I don't know why we stopped talking at that point.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I just don't recall.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I may have, I just don't recall.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I recall the Minister saying that this was something the Chief should be dealing with the OPP Commissioner on, and elected officials should not be getting involved in this.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think it was discussed in a general way about what other things the province could do to help police and the protest, or put pressure on the protesters. But again, I believe the Minister said that this was a law enforcement issue, and it should be dealt with by law enforcement.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not with respect to insurance and CVOR. They declined to look at that. The Deputy Minister Laurie -- I forgot her last name, you had mentioned her in one of the meetings.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
And I know Laurie, my apologies to her, but she was the Deputy Minister.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
LeBlanc, Laurie LeBlanc, I believe she's retired now, but she was the Deputy Minister of Ministry of Transportation, and she was on a call where that was specifically -- with the other Deputy Ministers, not this call, where that's question was specifically proposed to her, and she basically said that she'd have to go away and get back to us, but never did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
From the provincial level there were no elected officials, I seem to recall, they didn't attend. I think Mario Di Tommaso might have been on one or two of those calls. He was the Deputy Minister of the Solicitor General I believe.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, that’s what I’m -- I thought he was in the tripartite, but I'm not sure. He may have been. But I don't think anyone else from the province was there. It was all federal and us.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I know he declined, but I don't know why.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, and other possible regulations that governs heavy truckers or trucking companies. And I don't know if it was the meeting before, I don't have it in front of me, but it was at one of the meetings with the Deputy Ministers that we had federally and provincially, but it was just very close to that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was exactly that. It was what you have that can help us in your toolbox under existing legislation and regulations? That was the specific request.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, there were two answers. From the Deputy Minister it was, I'll get back to you. I think she felt kind of blindsided at that meeting because no one told her in advance as she was going to be asked, and I think it was asked by one of her federal colleagues, actually. Because I think the Deputy Minister of Transport for -- at the federal level, looked and they didn't have anything that could help us that was relevant, because it's all mostly provincially regulated. And the question was posed to Laurie LeBlanc and I think she was -- she seemed to be a little miffed that she got put on the spot and basically said, I’ll get back to you, I'll look into it, and never did. With Minister Jones, it came up in a general way, but that position she took as Solicitor General is this is Police Chief, to Commissioner, to Police Chief, and that's where this should be dealt with, not through us.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I didn’t. There was no further response in terms of specifics, no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s what I’m aware of, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m trying to find that on the page, counsel, I’m sorry, where is it?
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't recall specifically what it was, but he was obviously reacting to something that was put out by the province.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
But I don't know what it is.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Did I share that? Not entirely. I mean, I think I was disappointed that they didn't participate, but they stated that their position was. But certainly OPP and Commissioner Carrique were very participatory and collaborative in terms of bringing resources. So there was never any issue from the policing sources, OPP it was probably the least amount of discussion about the resources they had committed early on. They were true to their word in terms of what they committed, from what I understand. So from my perspective, you know, OPP was doing what they were asked and we're being very helpful, but the other ministries were not participating, and I think that was you know, obviously a direction from their political masters.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I mean I think that Deputy Ministers won't engage unless it's clear from the Premier and others that they are able to engage, to participate, in terms of seeking out other alternatives and other tools for the toolbox.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s a speculation.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I just know that Deputy Ministers will not speak out of turn without being in alignment with their bosses.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well what that references is that the various commanders from OPP and RCMP, but he was speaking specifically to RCMP, didn’t feel the operational plan that was eventually enacted was ready for them to deploy the resources to participate in the plan. So there was an ongoing discussion, from what I understand from these meetings, about the readiness of the plan and the assessment of the plan by the commanders in the RCMP and the OPP reporting back through their chain of command.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
You want to just hear that call? Or the ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, I was on my way into work early that morning and I received a call from then Deputy Chief Bell, who said that he was sending over his Police Liaison Team, they want to meet with me, and they want to come over first thing in the morning to discuss opening up some line of communications with the protest leaders. I said, “Okay. What time are they coming?” And he said, “They’ll be there, you know, somewhere after 9:00.” I said, “Fine.” And that’s all he told me.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He didn’t give me any details. He just asked if I would meet them if they came to my office.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No. I just said I’ll wait until they get here.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, the acronym is PLT, Police Liaison Team, and four officers came to my reception area in my office. The lead was Sgt. Lee (Phonetic). I don’t recall his first name. They came and basically advised me that communications had broken down with the protest leaders and that they weren’t communicating anymore with the PLTs. This was a significant issue in their ability to continue to try to negotiate on the ground in terms of the things they needed to do, and that they had asked to meet with someone from the City as a show of good faith, you know, I’m paraphrasing what he told me, my recollection of it, from someone from the City and they want to meet with me to be able to discuss the situation and what’s happening. And I had -- I was reluctant when he first told me. I was -- I would say reluctant to say why would I meet with him was -- we never had any intention, the Mayor, myself, the Mayor’s Office, anybody on my team had any intention of meeting with the protestors. That wasn’t on our radar or anything we were planning to do. But they were imploring me to meet with them because they needed to show that they could actually get me to the table to have a conversation with them. As a sign of good faith, ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, they didn’t tell me, no.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He basically -- he didn’t tell me not to meet them, he didn’t tell me to meet them. He accepted that at the end, I said, “I’m going to meet them.” I basically made a statement that I’m going to meet them. So he didn’t say “don’t” and he didn’t say “do it”. But he was reluctant at the beginning. The first part of the conversation was he just thought it was a bad idea. And so I went back out and told him that I would meet with them, the protest organizers. I didn’t know who they were bringing. I didn’t know who the parties were. Well Lee said “Great.” They left and they ran over to one of the hotels where the participants were and they came back a couple of hours later, probably around noon, with three people: Tom Marazzo, Keith Wilson, and Eva Chipiuk, I believe is how we pronounce her last name.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know if I got that right. And they arrived with the four PLT members.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was probably around noon, if I recall. It was several hours later, over to now 1:00 o’clock. Around that area, that time. And so they came in and we had another boardroom down the hallway in City Hall at the Heritage Building. And Tom Marazzo asked if he could speak to me alone, and we went into the boardroom alone and everyone else waited outside, the four police officers and the two lawyers, Keith and Eva. And Tom and I began having conversation about why they’re here, his background, what happened to him, his story. Just getting to know each other, basically. And so he explained why he was here, what the issues were, what happened to him in terms of the vaccine mandate, et cetera. And then we talked about -- we talked about, from my recollection, that, look, you know, if you’re -- they wanted a meeting with the Mayor. And I basically advised them that if they were going to have a meeting with the Mayor, they have to show something in good faith back. And that was the discussion when the PLTs first came to see me, when I came back out from seeing the Mayor, I forgot to mention that, is I said, “Well if I want to meet with them, I need to get something back in return. I’m not going to meet with them just for the sake of meeting with them.” And the police officer suggested, “Well, maybe we can start getting them -- ask them to move the trucks out of some of the neighbourhoods.” I said, “Well that would be a good thing, to try to relieve the pressure on those people in those neighbourhoods if they would agree to do that.”
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
So when we were talking to Tom, and I don’t remember if it was exactly with Tom or when everyone else came in, when Keith and Eva came in after, ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They came in also.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah. So they all joined the meeting at that time.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well they didn’t tell me specifically, but I assume that it was a symbolic significant gesture that somebody -- nobody was meeting with them of any official capacity at the political level. And I would think that, you know, you’d have to ask them when they testify, but I assumed the Mayor was a first step in trying to open the door to meet with the Prime Minister or someone senior at the Federal Government.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We -- I think we exchanged the numbers, and then we said that we'd get back. I don't recall exactly, that we'd reconnect with each other, and start talking about that. Then, you know, a number of things happened after that in terms of updating the mayor and Serge later in the day, and updating Chief Sloly. Those are all other aspects ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- I'm sure you'll get to.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did. I told the outcome of the meeting with the PLTs and with the protestors ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- protest leaders.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, there were a couple of points. I mean, it depends where we are in the story here. We hadn't at that point figured out the logistics of -- or the terms of what the agreement would be. That happened later in the week and didn't get finalised until Sunday, the 13th, I believe. So at that point, it was more an indication of what the -- I gave an overview of -- to Chief Sloly and his team on what the discussion was, what they had asked for, and what we were going to pursue in terms of -- or what we were going to start pursuing in terms of trying to get an agreement to move trucks out of the neighbourhood.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was the concept, that's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
None.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, about two days later, and I think it was on the 10th, we -- the Mayor received a call or a text, I'm not sure, I never clarified that, but he was put in contact or he was contacted by Dean French, and Dean French told the Mayor that, you know, the Mayor can speak for himself, but my understanding was that he was trying to help and that he was trying to help to get a resolution to this agreement that we had. And the Mayor passed on Dean French to Serge Arpin, and I believe they had a conversation, I don't know exactly what they talked about, and then Serge Arpin gave Dean French my number, and he contacted me and basically announced himself as a helpful third party that was going to try to mediate between the two to try and come up with an agreement.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I became -- I became the point person to get to the place where the logistics were agreed to, but the actual negotiation of the terms of the letter that was eventually sent to Ms. Lich and that she replied back agreeing to was done mostly through Serge Arpin and the Mayor's Office.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was engaged in that, but the negotiations were happening between them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, the -- it really didn't start moving until -- the 10th was -- I'm trying to think of the date. What date was that? The 8th was Monday, the 10th was a ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, so the 10th was what, Wednesday?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thursday.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
You know, that's something for Mr. Arpin to answer in terms of what discussions were taking place at that point, but things didn't really start taking shape until later in the week, early weekend, and it wasn't until probably Sunday morning, the 13th, that I saw a draft in terms of the terms that's in that letter that was made public.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was involved in providing some advice on the drafting of the letters based on my discussions with police. So Serge checked with me in terms of, you know, where the trucks would go and some of the other information on the -- in the letter, but ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- I wasn't ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was generally, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, it was -- there were a couple of calls. The one call, the final call was before the letters went out on -- at -- it was over noon hour on the Sunday, the 13th. It was right to wire in terms of when the letters finally were approved.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's what I believe, but I could be corrected.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah. Serge had various drafts, he was going back and forth, I don't remember the drafts, but, you know, different language, and we were -- I was providing some edits and some advice on the final language in the letter.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, that came up as part of the discussion, initially I believe with the protestors, where -- the protestors leaders, my apologies, the leadership, where there was no other place to put the trucks. There were very few options in terms of where to put the trucks. And the discussion was that we wanted to reduce the footprint in the area to get them out of the neighbourhoods and have them more condensed in one more manageable enforcement area. And so Wellington Street was an option, but it was understood that Wellington couldn't accommodate all the trucks from the neighbourhood as there just wasn't enough room. So part of the discussion was with some of them agreed to move to a site, I believe it was in the West End, Amprior or some other site they had, if they could go there. They wanted to get them on to SJAM, we didn't want them on SJAM, so there was discussion internally about the parameters of where they might go. And that's what translated into the logistical meeting that we finally had on Sunday night, the 13th, when Superintendent Drummond and myself and Kim Ayotte met with a group of representatives.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He received a -- I'm trying to think if he received a draft or not because he sent me an email asking for a -- asking me for a -- an edit, but it was too late because the letter was finalised.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, we ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, we sent him the -- a version of the letter they obviously had, and he wanted to make an edit, but at that point it was too late.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Who was she?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, she's the general counsel to the Police Service and reports to Chief Sloly.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think she was on the call, the noon hour call. It wasn't a phone call specifically with her. I think she participated in the noon call with Chief Sloly, Deputy Chief Bell at the time, Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson, myself. I think Kim Ayotte was on the call also. So we had a call at noon hour, and she's -- my understanding from this is Christiane Huneault is following up on that phone call.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
On the Sunday, that's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, when the letters were sent, we agreed that we would meet that evening because we wanted to get this going as fast as possible, and that they would send a representative group to City Hall to meet with myself, Kim Ayotte and a senior police official to deal with the logistics, because Kim and I were in no position, as I said earlier in my testimony, to arbitrarily dictate where trucks would move or to be able to manage the relocation logistically. We needed police to be able to do that, to facilitate that and negotiate that and ensure that the relocation plan was consistent with any future plans they had or any safety issues, officer safety issues, et cetera. And so what I was asking Chief Sloly, and I believe it was the subject also on the call, that we needed someone senior to be part of the discussions on the logistics for the actual relocation of the trucks.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Acting Superintendent Rob Drummond.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, he wasn't negotiate -- there wasn't going to be -- well, I suppose it could be characterized somewhere as a negotiation, but Acting Superintendent Drummond's role was to work out the operational details right down to where, when, who, logistics. Like, he was leading that on our behalf when the group came to see us in the mayor's boardroom on Sunday night. And so he had the map out and they were mapping out how it would work, who the contact people would be on the police side, who the contact people would be on the protester's side. So he was basically laying out how that operation would unfold the next morning.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, Chief Sloly raised concerns about the resource requirements to be able to enact this kind of operation, depending on the scope. He was concerned about his ability to do that, and he was concerned about, you know, the -- what happens if we go through all this effort, it's not successful, we're back to square one, and we put a lot of resources into it. So he expressed that concern. The two deputy chiefs, the acting and the -- Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief -- Deputy Chief Bell and Acting Deputy Chief Ferguson both expressed that they supported this because it would reduce the footprint and make it more manageable for their resources because they were spread too thin covering that large a geography. And so they expressed support for the movement of the trucks.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't recall that he actually said he agreed, but he didn't object to the point where -- because he could have, obviously, stopped it but he didn't. But he didn't -- I never heard him say we're a go. He was basically silent on that point.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't remember but his name -- it was on the list. Superintendent Drummond was there. I think -- trying to remember, Keith -- Keith Wilson was there - - no, Eva was there, Keith Wilson was there I believe but maybe not. I'd have to go back -- you'd have to go back to show me the document. I don't remember the other people's names. Tom Barber was there, I know that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Chris Barber, sorry, was there.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't remember him.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think there was six of them all together.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't know if Keith Wilson was there. I just -- if I saw it in front of me, I saw the document in terms of the notes that Acting Superintendent Drummond took, but I don't remember.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Effectively, we, you know, we discussed how it could unfold, the -- what the expectations were, what we all wanted. The people that represented the protesters were clear that they don't represent all the protesters, so they're going to have some trouble getting everybody convinced based on who was on the streets to all participate and move. And that they would be going out that night and working truck by truck, talking to everybody to get them in line -- or on line to support the movement because it was a good thing for them. And they also made it clear that not everybody will want -- some people may not want to go to that other alternate site, the farmer's area they rented. I think it was in Arnprior, but I don't remember. And that they wanted to extend the footprint of it more down to Deschamps, but we said no. And Rob Drummond was effectively leading those discussions in terms of where the trucks would go, how they'd be placed, and as I said, how that process would work in the morning, who'd be assigned out there from Ottawa Police. And so when we left the meeting, it was understood, we had a map of where the trucks would be moved, what areas we wanted to clear out, and Rob went back then to talk to his command and the NRCC and incident commanders to bring the resources required to be able to do that. And we left that night after a couple hours and the operation started the next morning.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, mid morning it stopped because -- and there was some exchanges I think I had. I don't know if it was a phone call or text with -- I was mostly communicating with Keith Wilson at the time, where he was expressing that what he was being told on the ground is that there was miscommunication between some of the police officers and what the orders were and -- or they -- the operation was and weren't allowing some trucks to move onto Wellington. Eventually, that got sorted out and they did move a number of heavy trucks. I think the count was around 40, but that's still in dispute. And a number of light trucks also left, and we ended up clearing a number of streets. But, yeah, there was some communications issues, some logistical issues where some of them, my understanding was some of the light vehicles didn't want to move and were blocking other vehicles from moving, so there was -- there wasn't an alignment of purpose by everybody that was in -- on all those streets. They had different reasons for wanting to stay.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He's the -- I believe his position is he's the director of the parliamentary precinct security, but I've known Larry -- I know Larry personally.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well I’m not going to speculate on that, but I do know that the PPS was embedded in the National Capital Regional Command Centre. They are a member of Intersect. I know that Mr. Brookson had spoke to Chief Sloly the late afternoon the day before when the trucks were being moved. So, you know, I think it’s a fair assumption for me to make that Mr. Brookson was well informed in terms of what was happening on the ground from a situational awareness perspective and, you know, the bomb blast assessment, quite frankly, I’m not disregarding it, but it was a little late then. We already had hundreds of trucks up on Wellington Street to be concerned about moving another 40 trucks up there. So I -- you know, he -- that’s his role, to take care of the security of the Hill. And it’s an important role and I respect that. But at the time, I felt that Mr. Brookson, when he reached out to me, had the information, especially after he spoke to Chief Sloly. And I spoke to Chief Sloly after he had spoken to Mr. Brookson, and Chief Sloly advise me what the conversation was about, where he informed him what was happening. So I know there was some reporting, but I didn’t call him back. The events kind of overtook things on the 15th. Chief Sloly was in the late stages of his tenure and the deal had fallen apart in terms of moving the trucks anyways, up onto Wellington Street by Tuesday.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I told -- I’m not sure when, but I know I told Rob Stewart, the Minister of Public Safety, and I also sent Rob Stewart the letters that were agreed to -- the agreement letters.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They never fulfilled their end of the bargain, so he never met with them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I seem -- without having the document in front of me, I seem to recall that, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It would, thank you.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe so, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know that personally. That’d be better posed to Mr. White.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Mr. Commissioner. It was working fine before. I’ll just put it a little…
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I said I wasn’t -- I’m not aware of that personally. That would be better posed to Mr. White.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Could you elaborate better in terms of what aspects?
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not at the time.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, in preparation for this hearing.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I did.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Many.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I don’t have knowledge of that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Initially, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do know that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did not share that view.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I shared that view; sorry.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We did, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, and internal bylaws. We have delegated authority bylaw; we have traffic and parking control bylaw that we can use to close streets.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The City does, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Always.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, in collaboration with police.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, that’s -- well, at that stage, based on what was happening in the City, we wouldn’t be closing roads, without the support of OPS, unilaterally.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, would you like me to expand, or just say “Yes” or “No”?
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
You know, ticketing, it’s like everything else; you can give someone a ticket and if they don’t care they got the ticket and they’re willing to pay, no action necessarily results from the ticket. It’s like your car parked on the market and you get a ticket, your car still stays parked there with a ticket on the windshield. So without some kind of enforcement action to move it, the truck basically stays there. People might feel better that we ticketed the car or the truck, but the truck’s not moving unless we actually tow it.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, that was a concern for sure.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was the police assessment, which we shared.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Potentially, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I have no personal knowledge of that, but I wouldn't -- I have no reason to disagree.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I said that earlier in my testimony.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We did, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, that's incorrect. They -- the meeting started with me and Tom Marazzo, and then we were joined by everybody else. The PLTs were actually in the room, and even at one point they asked me to leave so that they could continue the discussions with the people that were in the room, and I refused to leave.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
In total.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I didn't take any notes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No. Not that I have. Other parties may have.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That evening, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That morning, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah. That number varies, but that's our estimate, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I wanted to do everything I could to relieve those neighbourhoods of the pain they were going through.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’ve never seen anything like it in my 37 years.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’ve lost track. That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Significant. Canada Day is not normally associated with protest? It’s an event and celebration?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It’s not characterized that way. Absolutely.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s fair.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
As I said earlier, the information leading up to the actual event was -- it was a typical situation where it was changing on a regular basis every day.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, that comment was made in reference to the initial weekend, but yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I met him after he was announced, but before he actually was sworn in.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well I certainly knew his resume, but he never discussed that directly with me.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Correct. And feel free to do so.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s my opinion, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think we have 132 Bylaw officers for the entire city. I don’t think they could have ended this protest.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They get trained in conflict resolution and other skills, but they’re not -- they don’t have the training a police officer does ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- or the equipment.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was my assessment and my team’s assessment.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was less OPP, it was more RCMP.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was inaccurate.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It seemed to be accumulative running total of a whole bunch of days. We couldn’t figure out where the number came from.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was not accurate.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Exactly.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not to my knowledge, no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, the concept there is -- that's correct. The concept there is that protests, strategies and tactics evolve over time, and police tactics sometimes are a step behind, and they have to evolve to catch up with the tactics that protesters are using, and that's what this event was. The tactics and strategies of police had to evolve immediately after we experienced these ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- the trucker convoy.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, it varied. I mean, the one count when I think it was the second week Ottawa Police went and did a physical count and it was somewhere close to 500 trucks.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, at the time, I didn't understand what the statement meant. We assumed it meant that there'd have to be negotiations with some other level of government, but that was a supposition on our part.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
But even now, I'm not sure. I never discussed that with Chief Sloly.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, there was a meeting with himself, myself, Kim Ayotte, Trish Ferguson and Steve Bell. My recollection is we were talking about Wellington, but it wasn't -- I don't think we got into the specifics of Wellington from the perspective of we had all the logistics worked out. That happen until the 13th where we worked out the logistics. So I could understand if someone left that call, not being clear on where the trucks want to go, but it was discussed.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I didn't know specifically people were recording, but obviously, someone thought that was quite important that they took the time to bold it.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Exactly.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Good afternoon.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There was.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'm not aware of any.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The number, as I said, evolved from the start of the week to the actual weekend, so the number was changing on a regular basis as more information was coming in across the country. And Ottawa Police was collating that information and sharing with us. The City of Ottawa has no intelligence capacity to gather that information.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We have to. We don't have the complete intelligence picture available to us from all the other agencies at the federal and provincial level that they do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, it went longer obviously, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I wouldn't say we're at the mercy. It's their decision. It's our job to support that decision, and it's, quite frankly, our job to assess when they make that decision if we can fulfil the request that they make of us.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
When you say the word protecting, can you be more clear what that means?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It's mostly the Ottawa Police, but City of Ottawa obviously has a role in the health and safety of our residents, but it's a much more restricted role compared to police.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I never referred to a legal opinion. I've never seen a legal opinion or reference to legal opinion. We were advised that Chief Sloly and others in the police made that statement publicly in terms of infringing on people's rights, preventing them from coming in.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's what we heard publicly. That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
And in internal meetings.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, first of all, at the time, I didn't realize they had a legal opinion, but the second part of it is that, again, police are responsible to keep public order, and as I said in my previous testimony, they're very experienced at doing it. The first weekend we had no reason to question the intelligence and the strategy and tactics that they were employing to deal with what they believed was going to be an event similar to another event they had in the past with the farmer convoy.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We didn't have meetings with them until well after the first weekend. Leading up into that weekend, I didn't have any conversations, sir. I don't know any of my team that had conversations on that topic with the federal government.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, we tried to look at -- we tried -- the permit -- one of the benefits of the permit or the purpose of the permit is to understand, even if it's a protest, what the plans are of the protestors so we can mitigate some of those effects in advance with respect to traffic, city services, et cetera, barricades, whatever it happens to be, garbage pickup. And so -- but we can't force a protest group to buy a permit from the city, and if they don't get one there's nothing we do about it.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
If they're protesting ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
On an event, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Safety is one of the key considerations, but not the only one.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Protests?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I don't agree with you on that. In the context it was a protest where people were doing things that were illegal. That's not an event in my mind.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Elements of it, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's actually not true.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No. One firetruck couldn't get it, but there were firetrucks that got there from other routes. We have contingency built in for all our emergency operations. So the fire response actually did arrive. That particular truck that was witnessed couldn't get through. But we don't send firetrucks from just one location, we send it from multiple places.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I can't make -- I don't agree with that assessment.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It was ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
You described it as a serious threat. The truck was removed. I don't characterise it in that kind of urgency.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I can't speak for the ---
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- Rideau Centre.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, in some of those areas, that's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, when you -- could you describe what you mean by homecare services? Because there were other social services that were still being provided. There was an effort made to do that. So could you please clarify?
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, there were ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There were issues getting services into the neighbourhood, that's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They were.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, in some areas.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's true.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct, yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, Mayor -- no, the conversation that I had with the people that were in that room was that based on an agreement I would try to get a meeting with Mayor Watson. I couldn't commit Mayor Watson until we had an agreement.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I couldn't -- until we worked out the final details ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- at that meeting, it was way too early to be able to commit Mayor Watson to a meeting.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
First time I met him.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, just one other. The night that he was -- I was incorrect. I checked. He was at the meeting on February 13th, the Sunday, when we were discussing the operation to move the trucks, that's the only other time I met him.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't recall.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It's not my role to talk to the Police Services Board Chair about what's happening in policing.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They were concerned about the readiness of the plan, is the way it was characterised.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's what they said, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The Ottawa Police Services Board doesn't have a role in that operational aspect, so I -- to tell you the truth, I didn't see a need to share that with Councillor Deans or Chair Deans at the time.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Ottawa Police was aware of that. The actual police officers were aware of that, the senior command.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I wouldn’t say it’s indifference. I think they were trying to be clear that this was a police matter, and as a Solicitor General, I think she believed it wasn’t her role to go further than that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was aware of that, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I can’t judge whether he was sympathetic, but he certainly was taking a position that he was a facilitator between the protestors and us.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I never spoke to Premier Ford.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Perhaps, but that’s speculation.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. According to my solicitors.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
To proceed with discussions with Ottawa Police to seek an injunction, to prepare one.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was not aware of that, no. At the time, no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was not aware of that information.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
At that time, I was not aware of that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’ve been advised just recently, this weekend, in preparation for this hearing, but I was not aware at the time when it was happening.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I wasn’t aware that that advice was sought, or cooperation was sought.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It sounds right, yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m not aware of any damage, but I believe they were light vehicles that were being towed.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m not aware of any, no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I think there was one incident where they were -- they were -- what’s the word -- surrounded, but I’m not aware of any other incidents. That’s better put to the police. I wasn’t there.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know the details.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s a possibility, but you wouldn’t move everybody.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s speculation. I’m not speculating on that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was a consideration, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well we don’t normally tow illegally parked vehicles on city streets. I mean, it’s -- there’s a certain set of circumstances when a vehicle will be towed. So no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well it depends where the vehicles were. If we’re talking the ByWard Market, there was still a mix of vehicles, protest vehicles and resident vehicles in the ByWard Market, based on the nature of how many people live in that area. So you can’t differentiate easily whose is whose.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We have the authority to ticket and tow, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t know the extent of the discussion. I just know that I had asked that they all be called and asked. So those phone calls were made. What transpired on -- I don’t operate at that level. But what transpired in individual discussions with tow truck operators, I don’t know.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That they be made available.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I didn’t instruct that specifically, no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I didn’t give specific directions to that level. That’s not the level I operate in.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, based on the reasons I outlined why they didn’t want to do it, that they were telling us, I don’t know. Again, that’s speculation.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well there were four areas. Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Even if you -- well, maybe so, but I would argue that -- and I shouldn’t say that -- I would submit in my own opinion that maybe damage to a truck, even though they’re compensated, still isn’t worth the damage to your truck. They’re very expensive trucks. And then you start getting into whole other situations about the compensation for that. So they had their own reasons, and I don’t know if our people offered them anything else outside of the standing offer contract. I didn’t instruct that. I just instructed to try and get tow trucks retained and make them available for us.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
May I ask what you're reading from because I missed that part at the beginning if you said ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- and my apologies.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Oh, his statement.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't recall the specific 75 percent of the trucks, but -- so I can't confirm that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s what we were told.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m not sure that Superintendent Drummond was on that call because he didn’t get assigned until after 3:30 that day when I emailed Chief Sloly asking for a representative from police. I believe who was on the call was Acting Deputy Chief Trish Ferguson, Deputy Chief, then Deputy Chief Bell, Chief Sloly, myself, and Kim Ayotte.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Chief Slowly did share some concerns about the plan from an operational capacity to be able to effect the plan, ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- as I stated earlier.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Oh, he knew about the agreement.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He would have been briefed up, I would assume, after he was assigned or before he was assigned, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They did; that Monday morning they started, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, not exactly. There were two aspects to it. There were also people parked in the street who were refusing to move their vehicles. So they didn’t -- they weren’t accepting the deal as part of the deal and Ottawa Police eventually stopped it, and that’s a question for them. But there were people who refused to participate in the deal on the street.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, as I said earlier, that number is in dispute. I had heard 40 trucks and possibly up to 100 total vehicles, but I don’t think that represents 25 percent of all the vehicles because the heavy trucks might have been about 500. The numbers were not nailed down, and even that day on how many were moved, we couldn’t get an accurate count.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m in -- oh yeah, I’m in grey, that’s right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s fine.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
According to this, yes. I don’t recall it but yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don’t recall saying that specifically because I don’t have a record of it, but I remember we did have a conversation of that I was disappointed we couldn’t move more trucks out of the neighbourhood.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I don’t know if it was the OPS or PPS, I’m not sure how that worked ultimately but events had overtaken that day. As you know, by that time Chief Sloly had resigned, and I was made aware that Ottawa Police and the other police service were getting ready to move into tactical operations. So at that point, I think that was probably the greater reason why they stopped moving trucks up on Wellington Street.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Like generally ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
--- what the programs are about?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I would say, in a succinct manner, that the Public Administration Program is about understanding good governance and what the role of a public servant is in working within the government structure.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, it seems to be common. Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Which years?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I was at Gloucester Police, which was pre-amalgamation policing. There were three police services in the area.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. When I left, yes. Well, when we amalgamated, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It went into affect January 1st, 1995.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Ottawa Carleton Regional Police Service. Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well as Director General, I was on the executive command. It’s basically a civilian deputy chief. And I was responsible for the administration of the police service, everything from finance, HR, evidence room, facilities, fleet, IT, 9-1-1, for a while I had the Court Liaison function. So it was all the support functions. Training, HR. So I had all the support functions that supported the operations of the police service.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, it’s clear in the Police Services Act, that the police is an independent authority reporting to the Ottawa Police Services Board or a Police Board. The Board has defined responsibilities over the police, but not to direct the Police Chief operationally. And certainly the Mayor, City Councillors, as a body or as individuals, or city administration officials, cannot direct the Chief of Police on any matter.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Supposed to be, yes, but it is.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
At the time, no. As I stated earlier in my testimony.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Only -- never individually, or Commissioner Kerik. It was always in the group discussions with the Deputy Ministers, themselves and us, with the situational awareness and the resource requirements.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Can you please clarify what you mean by Executive Branch?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Never with the Prime Minister, but several Ministers.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
He informed me that he spoke to the Prime Minister and generally what they talked about, but not in any great detail.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I heard about it, but I was not on the call.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s correct. That’s correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. And I didn’t participate in that call.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
When you say “you”, are you referring to me specifically or the City at large?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I wasn’t present at that call, even though -- I don’t know what you’re referring to, but I did not participate in the calls with GoFundMe reps. I was advised of it after. And it was a City Solicitor and the Mayor’s Office that had that discussion with them.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
What was the ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
As I said earlier, the request was very broad. It wasn’t specific. We never discussed the specifics with Chief Sloly. I didn’t. And we left it to the two legal teams on the police side and our City Solicitor to work out what an injunction might look like in terms of scope, what evidence that we’re going to bring, and how it would be enforced. Those were the key issues that we were referring to. So we didn’t have that information up until -- well, we never did get it completely. But we were never in a position to satisfy that request until later on when we stuck to the municipal scope of operations and enforcement.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well in advance I didn’t have a good understanding, but I certainly have a pretty good one now, because we got -- we were -- I was working with our City Solicitor and I had lots of questions about injunctions. So it was explained to me and I think I understand how it works.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
In relation to the injunction or in relation to other things?
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Tow trucks was a tool that would be required in an integrated operational enforcement plan. On its own, tow trucks weren’t of a big value with that many trucks that were there. It had to be integrated into an operational plan, and to effect the operational plan, you needed to have those tools available to you to finish it off.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I do.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Not that I’m aware.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
You’d have to ask the police that. I don’t know.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
It wasn't my -- in my purview to, or my scope of operations to consider something like that. As you said earlier, that's a police scope issue in terms of how they choose to arrest or detain somebody.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, it was.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. Chief Sloly fully briefed us on that.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. Generally, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I am.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'd have to see it again, but ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. Okay, yeah, I know what you're referring to.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That was my point earlier, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, it was -- it's hard to determine that because we just got it, but ---
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Exactly.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, it was clear in the discussions we actually had with the leadership that this wasn't going to end the protest, they planned to stay. This was a relief for us, for me when I first initiated this. It was about relieving those neighbourhoods of those trucks and the noise and all the other issues that came with it.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I don't believe it would've, no.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The ones that were there already, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's correct.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
We were concerned whether everybody that was out there would align with the objectives that the group we met with had, and whether they participate.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
There was not.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'm sorry, sir, what's CCLA? I don't know what CCLA is.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Okay, thank you. Sorry, sir.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, I can. Thank you.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Oh.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, he's the Deputy Minister of Public Safety Canada.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I did.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe it was on the 13th, either just before it went public or when it went public so that he had a copy of it.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, my main contact was Rob Stewart, who was the Deputy Minister. He was the liaison in -- it sort of formalised but it started informally. But him and I were organising the meetings that we were having with the other parties.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's accurate.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, it enabled the police to basically establish a control zone and limit, not add to the number of people and grow the number of people that were in that zone, which would have made the final operation much more difficult if more people started pouring into that area.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe so, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you. Thank you.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Good afternoon.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I saw that number, yes.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe that's correct, yeah.
-
Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, I don't have the specifics of that. I think that's better posed to Mr. Ayotte when he appears this week.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, initially, that was the objective, correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I'm sorry, I don't have that available. I don't know that.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, that's correct.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I don't, sorry.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Hi.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, well, they -- to answer that, you have to put it in the context of the way our incident management is structured in the city and is best practiced through the Solicitor General's guidebook on dealing with emergencies of Ontario. And effectively, you have an incident commander who deals with an incident. If the incident grows larger and that commander needs more support, you'll start scaling up your emergency operations. And what ended up happening in this situation is that you have an incident commander. The National Capital Regional Command Centre then was formed because we had multiple jurisdictions and multiple law enforcement entities that were engaged in the event. And so the incident commander had the National Capital Regional Command Centre as a support function to help the lead, which was Ottawa Police, be able to enact all the things they needed to enact on the ground. And flowing down from that would be command centres at Ottawa Police, command centres at the City of Ottawa, which we called our Emergency Operations Centre, the EOC, and other organizations would have the same, which when requests came from the incident commander through the National Capital Regional Command Centre, it'd go down into the -- for instance, the City of Ottawa, the EOC, and the EOC would make sure that what they needed was actually actioned in the departments or the service areas. And each one of those service areas stood up its own departmental command centre, so they can coordinate all the efforts, because these aren't things that we do on the corner of our desk. It's a full line of accountability structure from the top, the incident commander, right to the front line.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Ottawa Police.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well, I probably don't have an exhaustive list off the top of my head, but it would have been all the police services, OPP, RCMP, the PPS would have been there, OC Transpo was there, our Public Works are there, corporate communications are there. The Public Works certainly was there. Traffic Management Incident Group was there. Some of the federal agencies were also represented, some of the ministries were there. Some of the intelligence functions were also linked to the NRCC. So they had all the representatives of anybody that was actually involved or had a role in managing the event who are all embedded in a coordinated fashion in that NRCC.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Kelly Cochrane was the liaison back to the EOC, our EOC, so that structure is set up so that there's a person embedded in the NRCC, who links back to our command centre, which was Emergency Operations Centre, so there's a clear line of communication about what the requests are, what information we need to know, what they're planning, et cetera.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
To the EOC. So they -- so there's a -- it's a -- once we get to that level of event, the EOCG, which is made up of the City department heads and the outside police, library and public health, their role is to set the policy direction and the strategic direction for a command centre to be able to implement for City Services effectively.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yeah, the EOC is made up of representatives of every service area of the city, including police, and sometimes we'll bring in external partners, and their job is to action the requests that come from NRCC, whatever those actions are.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
She’s a program manager, I believe, in our Traffic Operations Group.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That’s the baseball stadium parking lot. Coventry.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I believe he’s part of the ownership group of the Ottawa Titans.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The professional baseball team in Ottawa.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
They lease the stadium from us, and the parking lot.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
I’m not certain exactly, but it was probably after the first weekend, as it extended and as the presence on that lot grew and it became a logistics centre, basically, to support the protestors. I think that’s when they became very worried.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well the Rolling Thunder was -- obviously had the benefit of learning from the protests we had in February. And at that time, we’d started discussing, as we were planning for that, what authorities we had to be able to close the roads. And Interim Chief Bell and myself had a conversation about exercising that authority to close the roads. We got legal opinion at that time in terms of what our authorities were, what were the actual statutes and bylaws that allowed us to do it, and Kim Ayotte was brought into the discussion, and based on the information that was shared with us by Ottawa Police with respect to what they were expecting for Rolling Thunder, we made the decision that we would create a no-go zone, basically a red zone, for the inner core to prevent vehicles from permanently taking route. So we changed, as I said, sort of the snake march example. We changed our tactics based on the learnings that we had from that event in February, and it was quite an effective strategy.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well that was -- that’s the Ottawa Police in collaboration with the City.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Well they’re actually the same, but we treat them differently in terms of how we prepare for them.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes. We ask them to do that, yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
The general manager in this case, I believe, is the General Manager of Public Works who oversees our Transportation and Parking By-law.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
That's right.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes, but it's not -- it's very rarely, especially on a special event that's considered a demonstration, that one party, whether it's police or the City, would do it arbitrarily and unilaterally without consulting with the other, because you can't close a road without both being -- with both participating.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Yes.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
No, it wasn't used as a measure.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Mr. Commissioner.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thank you, sir.
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Steve Kanellakos, City Manager (Ott)
Thanks. Thank you.