Feuding politicians. Candid texts. A stunning inquiry. The behind-the-scenes story of how the ‘Freedom Convoy’ shook the foundations of Canadian politics

It was the height of what would soon be declared a national public order emergency.

Then-solicitor general Sylvia Jones’s icy retort to Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino was revealed at a public inquiry in one of hundreds of fascinating texts that showed how tensions mounted, police struggled and governments fought behind the scenes.

It also perfectly captures the prevailing attitude — not just between different levels of government, but also within and between different police forces, and among thousands of protesters who railed against pandemic restrictions and the federal government after its decision to make COVID-19 vaccinations mandatory for cross-border travellers wishing to avoid quarantine.

Led by Justice Paul Rouleau, the inquiry into the government’s response to the protests — and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act to quell them — has heard six weeks of testimony and seen more than 7,000 documents.

Together, they paint a stark picture of intelligence gaps, infighting, distrust and jockeying between all levels of government and police over who should stay in which lane.

Trudeau testified the economic harm caused by border blockades was a big factor, but his overriding concern was an escalating risk of political violence and the inability of police using existing laws to confront it. He said the “Freedom Convoy” protests represented a threat on a scale that amounted to a national public order emergency as defined in the Emergencies Act.

The Star has examined a trove of text and email messages, cabinet documents, transcripts and witness statements, and listened to 31 days of testimony from 77 witnesses. Here is the story of what the inquiry revealed about how and why the prime minister made that controversial decision.

There were signs all along the way that this would be a protest like no other. And yet, the failure of senior Ottawa police leaders to perceive the threat in advance was pivotal.

Ottawa Police Service Insp. Rob Bernier — who would later run the Ottawa operation to clear the protests — sounded an early alarm.

He said he told his boss of a “bizarre disconnect” between troubling OPP intelligence reports about the truckers’ looming arrival and a two-day traffic management plan by Ottawa police he felt simply wouldn’t be adequate.

On the morning that hundreds of big rigs arrived in Ottawa, Bernier saw a modified operational plan — and, seeing no role for himself, he went skiing.

What he saw when he got back was an occupation the Ottawa Police Service now admits it failed to adequately plan for, and should have seen coming.

It started with those OPP intelligence briefings.

The inquiry revealed that for more than two years, the OPP had tracked the burblings of anti-government sentiment within what it dubbed the “Patriot Movement.” It reported that people involved with the 2019 “United We Roll” truck convoy protesting Trudeau’s energy policies had mobilized in early January to stage a “mass convoy to Ottawa.”

On Jan. 13, the OPP warned other police services and the RCMP that the protesters’ goal was “to disrupt and further strain the ‘already fragile supply chain’; while a larger objective, that of staging a mass protest in Ottawa, is to ‘put the fear of God in the politicians’ and bring about an end to all COVID-19 public health measures.”

At the same time, the OPP said it had no evidence of planned extremist violence or a national security threat, despite inflammatory online rhetoric.

This would be the same conclusion reached later by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) — a key point in the eyes of civil liberties groups and convoy lawyers, who said invoking the Emergencies Act was unjustified because its use is tied exclusively to what CSIS defines as a security threat.

By Jan. 20, the OPP flagged to any police agency in Ontario that would listen that convoy organizers had no “exit strategy” for leaving Ottawa and seemed intent on staying until all COVID-19 mandates were lifted.

The OPP admitted it had limited information on what truckers’ actual plans were and why — for example, some flatbed trailers headed to Ottawa carried heavy equipment including an excavator.

Peter Sloly, who was then Ottawa’s chief of police, skimmed those reports and seized on the acknowledgement of intelligence gaps. At the inquiry, he would later contend “there was some doubt as to whether or not this was actually going to materialize.”

Sloly, who said he’d faced internal dissent, racism and challenges to his authority since becoming chief, shifted responsibility for the bungled planning and testified he relied on subordinates to brief him on evolving risks and operational plans throughout.

Complicating the Ottawa police response, the inquiry discovered, was an opinion by the force’s lawyers that led them to think that as long as the protesters did not “hinder or obstruct vehicular traffic for extended periods, they maintain the right to protest in so far (sic) that it does not engage or entail unlawful conduct.” Senior Ottawa officers took that to mean they could not halt the arrival of trucks for what they believed would only be a two-day event.

Instead, they co-ordinated parking for up to 3,000 trucks in and near Ottawa’s downtown core, and planned shuttle buses to transport protesters to Parliament Hill.

On Jan. 28, the first semi and pickup trucks claimed spots on Wellington Street in front of Parliament — the “prize pig,” as Mayor Jim Watson called it, with Centre Block and the Peace Tower as backdrop making it seem, he said, “like they’d taken over the country.”

That night, OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique told Ontario’s deputy solicitor general that the convoy stretched for 40 kilometres along a highway northwest of Ottawa.

The next morning, big rigs quickly clogged downtown streets, and any plan to have them park along the Ottawa River or at other sites fell by the wayside.

When they didn’t depart as the weekend ended, Sloly and his senior officers admitted the Ottawa police were outnumbered and overwhelmed.

Trudeau admitted that, in the back of his mind, he knew from the early days of the protest that the Emergencies Act could end up being used as a tool of last resort, even though his government had studied and rejected using it to manage the COVID-19 pandemic. He would later tell his ministers and officials to “take good notes.”

Copycat protests soon sprung up in Windsor, Edmonton and Coutts, Alta., which became a border blockade flashpoint.

Police negotiators in Ottawa and Coutts tried in vain to shrink the size of the protests. And politicians, alarmed by their failure to do so, moved to shift blame.

In Alberta, premier Jason Kenney’s government pressed for Canadian Armed Forces heavy tow equipment, a request the defence minister told the inquiry could not be met because military gear would tear up the roads and risked provoking a counterreaction if soldiers were called in, inflaming matters more.

Weekend protests were organized at another 35 locations around Ontario, including at Queen’s Park, where the Toronto police kept tight control after having seen the mistakes made in Ottawa.

Solidarity protests popped up at provincial legislatures in Manitoba, Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Quebec.

On Feb. 2, Sloly told reporters in Ottawa “there may not be a policing solution to this demonstration” at all. He denied at the inquiry he was looking for military aid, but said he was seeking political support from the provincial and federal governments and a massive influx of outside police officers to help.

That evening, federal Justice Minister David Lametti sent a text message to Public Safety Minister Mendicino. “You need to get the police to move,” he wrote. “And the (Canadian Armed Forces) if necessary. Too many people are being seriously adversely impacted by what is an occupation.”

By Feb. 4, the two federal cabinet ministers were back on their phones as Ottawa residents reported intimidation and harassment by protesters, and struggled with incessant horn honking, diesel fumes, and open campfires on snowy streets that city snowplows and emergency vehicles had all but abandoned.

“Police have all the legal authority they need to enforce the law,” Mendicino texted Lametti. “They just need to exercise it, and do their job.”

“I was stunned by the lack of a multi-layered plan,” Lametti replied. “Sloly is incompetent.”

Eleven more days would pass before the OPP and RCMP felt Ottawa police had an operational plan that justified the 1,800 reinforcements Sloly had requested.

The line between politicians supporting police and directing their actions is one Rouleau has been challenged to delineate, and one some senior RCMP officers worried was getting blurred.

On Feb. 5, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki told the OPP’s Carrique in a text message that “between you and I only,” the federal government was “losing/lost confidence” in the Ottawa Police Service.

In the second week of the protests, the lines hardened after a key Canada-U.S. artery was blocked.

As the winter day darkened on Feb. 7, protesters blocked the Ambassador Bridge linking Windsor and Detroit, closing the border to traffic that carries 30 per cent of Canada-U.S. trade, valued at nearly $400 million a day.

The inquiry revealed the depth of alarm at the top of the U.S. government. “They are very, very, very worried,” Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wrote in an email to her chief of staff after a Feb. 10 call with President Joe Biden’s chief economic adviser.

“If this is not sorted out in the next 12 hours, all of their north eastern car plants will shut down,” she wrote.

In Ottawa, meanwhile, a city resident named Zexi Li won a court injunction to accomplish what the police seemed incapable of: barring the truckers from blasting their airhorns in the downtown core.

And the OPP and RCMP officers who arrived to help the Ottawa force were dismayed by what they found: a deployment plan that was “reactive, tactical, aggressive and carried risk.”

Their Feb. 10 assessment said the Ottawa plan was “not intelligence led,” marked by “poor communications, unclear and vague command and control, unqualified trained leadership” and was focused on maintenance, “not resolution.”

It was a devastating assessment that the exhausted force had “no clear direction.” Sloly complained the outside planners were only there to serve their political masters, and said he felt some in the provincial government wanted him to fail. He was unwilling to relinquish control to the OPP, and fought off demands at the police services board where, the inquiry heard, councillors were unaware they could have asked the province to step in.

At the same time, the presence of former RCMP and military officers among convoy supportersraised concerns about leaks from sympathizers within law enforcement. Ottawa police and the CAF continue to investigate active duty individuals who are suspected of providing inappropriate support for the convoy.

It all led to a full-court press of federal cabinet ministers urging their Ontario counterparts to act, arguing the roads leading to the Windsor bridge and Ottawa’s Wellington Street were municipal and provincial responsibilities.

There was pushback from the province. Premier Doug Ford and his solicitor general, Sylvia Jones, refused to attend trilateral meetings with federal and city officials, calling them a political exercise and a distraction from a job best left to police.

Ford and Jones would later refuse to testify at the inquiry, but it was clear Ford viewed the protesters in Windsor — not Ottawa — as the priority. “This is critical, I hear you. I’ll be up their ass with a wire brush,” he reassured Trudeau in a Feb. 9 phone call.

Ford said Sloly, on the other hand, had no plan and had “lost command” even as he was seeking 1,800 additional officers to help in Ottawa. That was a request Trudeau, his top cabinet ministers and the RCMP insisted had to first be made to the province, although they said the federal government would help provide whatever resources were required.

The federal government was now contemplating drastic measures, and rejected suggestions of engaging with protesters after Ontario’s attempt to do so in Windsor failed.

At the prime minister’s instruction on Feb. 10, federal public servants drafted a two-track strategy for cabinet: Plan A used existing legal options, such as stiffer legal penalties like banning convoy truck operators from federal contracts; Plan B looked at new powers that might be created using the Emergencies Act.

The Privy Council Office’s emergency preparedness secretariat advised on Feb. 11: “There is currently no clear path and an escalation of sympathetic protests across Canada risks further jeopardizing the national interest.”

CSIS director David Vigneault told the inquiry he advised the government that at no point did CSIS assess that the convoy constituted a threat to the security of Canada as defined by the CSIS Act. That is the legal provision that allows CSIS to open an investigation into an individual or group that would permit it to use intrusive surveillance techniques.

CSIS was tracking individuals whom the spy agency had already targeted for investigation and who were present at the Ottawa convoy, but Vigneault said it did not identify credible evidence a new threat existed, and underscored that CSIS cannot legally investigate activities that are lawful protest.

When it became clear after Feb. 10 that the Emergencies Act was under active consideration by cabinet, Vigneault asked CSIS to produce a threat assessment. CSIS cautioned that invoking the act could risk further inflaming extremist rhetoric and individuals who held anti-government views.

But Vigneault told Rouleau that in his view, the prime minister was legally entitled to look at broader considerations when deciding if a public order emergency existed under the law, and he advised it was necessary.

That view was shared by other top public service advisers, and by at least two former CSIS directors who made expert presentations at the inquiry.

The infighting, backstabbing and jurisdictional bickering culminated on the weekend of Feb. 12-13, as cabinet weighed whether to invoke the Emergencies Act.

On the morning of Feb. 12, the Ford government issued regulations under an emergency declaration made a day earlier. It designated critical infrastructure and roadways as protected spaces, and jacked up fines for those arrested, and for towing operators who would not fulfil their contract obligations to cities, but it did not compel tow trucks into service.

A joint operation by Windsor police and OPP that started that Saturday morning unfolded more rapidly than police expected. By the following afternoon, the Ambassador Bridge was cleared; just after midnight, it was reopened to traffic.

In Coutts, however, tensions were high after undercover RCMP officers identified an alleged conspiracy to kill police officers if the blockade was disrupted. The Mounties began making arrests in the early hours of Feb. 14; later that day, they would display a cache of high-powered long guns, ammunition and protective vests sporting the crest of Diagolon, a group CSIS says holds anti-government views. Charges were laid against 13 people.

But as cabinet met late on Feb. 13, the prime minister said the potential for violence in Coutts and elsewhere loomed large in his mind. There were reports that protesters had threatened to return in Windsor, and in downtown Ottawa there was no end in sight.

The inquiry heard that Trudeau’s government grappled with what information it was and wasn’t getting from the RCMP commissioner.

In a Feb. 12 text message, the clerk of the Privy Council told Mendicino, who was responsible for the RCMP, “We need to be a bit careful with Brenda — a wounded leader (even more than she was before) isn’t going to help us get this fixed.”

Trudeau and other senior officials testified Lucki did not advise them directly during two cabinet meetings on Feb. 13 about any reservations she had about using the Emergencies Act, nor did she advise them of any effective police operational plan that the Ottawa police, OPP and RCMP integrated planning team had put together on Feb. 13.

The inquiry saw that 73-page operational plan was still not complete, with internal and external communications strategies still to be developed, and other plans from specialized units still not finalized.

“It was not even, in the most generous of characterizations, a plan for how they were going to end the occupation in Ottawa,” Trudeau told the inquiry.

By the end of a full cabinet meeting that day, Trudeau said, there was a clear consensus from ministers and senior officials to invoke the Emergencies Act.

The final decision, Trudeau insisted, was not made until after he had a phone call the following morning with all of the premiers and territorial leaders — during which Ford voiced “strong” support for the decision.

After consulting the leaders of the opposition parties, Trudeau received a decision note drafted by clerk of the Privy Council Janice Charette, who wrote “the situation across the country remains concerning, volatile and unpredictable” and advised invoking the Emergencies Act.

The government still refuses to disclose a key part of that memorandum — redacted legal advice Justice Minister Lametti delivered verbally, the inquiry heard. It was that legal opinion that Trudeau, Vigneault and others said led them to believe the legal test for invoking the act was met.

That remained a central point of contention. Was the government entitled to take a broader view of what constitutes a security threat than the narrow definition contained in the CSIS Act, which is directly imported into the Emergencies Act? The Privy Council clerk, Canada’s top public servant, told Trudeau he had that right, and the grounds to invoke the 1988 law that replaced the War Measures Act.

Even though there was “no current evidence” extremist groups or international actors were involved, Charette advised Trudeau that the “disturbance and public unrest” across the country and beyond its borders stood to fuel the protest movement and lead to irreparable harm, “including to social cohesion, national unity and Canada’s international reputation.”

In the view of the Privy Council Office, she said, “this fits within the statutory parameters defining threats to the security of Canada, though this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.”

Trudeau signed the decision note at 3:41 p.m. on Feb. 14 — after what he admitted at the inquiry was a moment of hesitation — approving the first use of the law in its 34-year history.

As the inquiry’s witness testimony drew to an end, Rob Bernier, now an Ottawa police superintendent, quietly swore another affidavit into evidence nearly a month after he’d taken the stand.

In it, he rebutted testimony from convoy co-organizer Tamara Lich and other protesters that nobody ever told them explicitly that their actions were unlawful and that they had to leave Ottawa. He also contradicted their claims that the clearance operation and arrests of those who refused to leave were violent.

However, as at its beginning, Ottawa police were surprised once again by the convoy’s staying power.

When the operation to clear the streets began at 7:41 a.m. on Feb. 18, Bernier said he expected the massive police presence — nearly 2,000 officers— and the threat of arrest would lead the vast majority to leave voluntarily. “However, this did not occur as expected,” he said.

Protesters also showed “more aggression” than police had anticipated. Officers donned heavier protective gear and decided at 8 p.m. to pause the operation until the next morning.

On Feb. 19, police moved at 9 a.m. to clear Parliament Hill. The next day, they shifted to clear a depot where trucks, fuel and food were stored about four kilometres from the downtown core.

Over three days in Ottawa, police made 273 arrests, and laid 422 charges.

Was the Emergencies Act needed to clear the Ottawa blockade? Bernier conceded it helped communicate the message to protesters that they had to leave, but in the end he demurred, saying he didn’t really know because he “never got to do” the operation without it.

The Rouleau inquiry — an after-the-fact review required by law — will not determine fault or liability for what happened last winter when the “Freedom Convoy” protests exploded as Canada struggled through a fifth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic dominated by the Omicron variant.

But it will determine whether Trudeau was right, in law, to do what he did. That matters not just for Trudeau’s political legacy, but also for whether and how the law gets used the next time — if there is a next time.