Rouleau report reveals flaws in information sharing By: Editorial Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Feb. 21, 2023

Opinion

Ottawa police commanders did not know what had hit them when the so-called freedom convoy rolled into the capital on Jan. 28 last year. They figured the anti-vaccine demonstrators would park their transport trucks through the weekend, peacefully express their protest and then head back home.

They did not understand that the members of this group were going to choke midtown Ottawa with immobilized 18-wheelers, blast their air-horns day and night, poison the air with diesel exhaust, harass merchants and pedestrians, and stay put for three weeks.

By the time the police recognized what was going on, the angry truckers had occupied the city centre and there was no way of removing them.

In the event, the federal cabinet invoked the Emergencies Act in order to control the protesters’ movements, seize their vehicles, block their funding sources and mobilize a large deployment of municipal, provincial and federal officers to remove the protesters and their vehicles and bring the city back to life.

Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Paul Rouleau, in his inquiry report published on Friday, found the federal cabinet’s decision to invoke the act was appropriate.

He added that the case for claiming emergency powers was not overwhelming. Reasonable people, he wrote, could reach a different conclusion.

The event could have been conducted without disruption, Mr. Rouleau found, if the Ottawa police, provided with better intelligence, had directed the arriving trucks to locations where they could air their grievances without creating a living hell for Ottawa residents. The judge’s recommendations focus on improving intelligence gathering and information sharing among Canadian police forces to head off the next such crisis before it spins out of control.

The judge faulted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for a televised statement he made as the protesters approached Ottawa. Mr. Trudeau said the small fringe group on their way to Ottawa held unacceptable views. He seemed to lump the whole mass of protesters together with the extremists. He later said he wished he had chosen different words.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford refused to attend tripartite meetings with municipal leaders and federal ministers to organize a co-ordinated response to the occupation. Mr. Rouleau saw a need for better co-ordination among levels of government and described the whole sequence of events as a failure of federalism.

The Rouleau report shows Canadians depend heavily on their municipal police forces to keep people safe in the streets and in their homes, and to maintain the calm and orderly communal life of this peaceable kingdom. By failing to support municipal police with good intelligence, the federal and provincial governments leave their police forces powerless in the face of nationwide protest movements such as the one that paralyzed Ottawa a year ago.

Justice Rouleau proposed reforms of the Emergencies Act to repair weaknesses that came to light last year. He also proposed improvements in co-operation among police forces, and these measures seem more likely to benefit the public.

The judge asked the federal government and the nation’s police forces to create a system to assure that information on protest events of national significance is gathered, analyzed and distributed.

An improved Emergencies Act may eventually do Canada some good. Since the Emergencies Act lay dormant for 35 years after its adoption in 1987, however, tweaking it will not make a huge difference to most Canadians. Protest movements of national scope happen almost every year. Police departments should be well-informed about them.