The Emergencies Act inquiry has revealed infighting and inertia – and it’s only just begun

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The public inquiry into the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act has barely scratched the surface as to whether the legal threshold for invoking the Act had been met. But what the days of testimony have revealed so far is a sort of chaos behind the scenes: a swamp of institutional disarray, of political buck-passing and of warnings left unheeded, which together help to explain just how a gaggle of flag-toting, truck-driving insurgents managed to occupy downtown Ottawa for nearly a month earlier this year.

First, the internal dysfunction. On Wednesday, former Ottawa police board chair Diane Deans testified that the city’s first line of defence, the Ottawa Police Service (OPS), was so plagued by infighting that it affected its capacity for mobilization. She said there were plans to dispatch about 400 officers to take down a blockade in Ottawa’s downtown core, but that the operation was called off because of fighting within the ranks, including rebellion against Peter Sloly, who was then the police chief. “There seemed to be an intent to use this crisis to undermine the chief further. That was my assessment of what I saw in that situation,” she told the inquiry.

Police inaction meant that residents and businesses were left largely on their own to deal with the disruption caused by the convoy. Last week, an e-mail from the Fairmont Château Laurier was presented to the inquiry in which the hotel’s staff explained that a fire truck was unable to reach the building after a sprinkler malfunction triggered the fire alarm. Ottawa city councillor Mathieu Fleury testified that he shared the e-mail with Mr. Sloly, but that he did not receive a “substantive” response.

Then, there was the political buck-passing. According to a readout of a Feb. 8 call between Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Mr. Watson had to press Mr. Trudeau multiple times to get a vague commitment for RCMP reinforcements. According to the readout, which is not an exact transcript, Mr. Watson told Mr. Trudeau that he felt like the city was “fighting a losing battle,” noting that the bureaucracy often lacks a sense of urgency. “Wondering what you can do to help us?” Mr. Trudeau replied that the “first step is to go to the OPP.”

Mr. Watson then tried again, asking “if the federal government will live up to its commitment,” to which Mr. Trudeau again punted responsibility to the province. “[Ontario Premier] Doug Ford has been hiding from his responsibility on it for political reasons,” he said. The Prime Minister eventually conceded he would “pass along all the concerns.” His government invoked the Emergencies Act less than a week later.

The crisis might have never gotten to that point if municipal and police authorities had heeded warnings that convoy participants intended to stick it out for more than a weekend. An e-mail presented to the inquiry this week from Ottawa’s hoteliers’ association, sent to police and city staff ahead of the convoy’s arrival, warned that participants had booked hotel stays of 30 days or more and that they intended to block streets in Ottawa’s downtown. The inquiry also heard that by Jan. 20, OPP intelligence reports were indicating that the protest could be a “long-term event,” according to Supt. Pat Morris, who heads the provincial force’s intelligence bureau and who testified Wednesday. But for whatever reason, the message didn’t resonate.

Ms. Deans, the former police board chair, testified that Mr. Sloly indicated he didn’t believe the protest would last much beyond the weekend. “He said to me, ‘What are you so worried about?’ ” Ms. Deans said. “And he said that he would be surprised if they were still here on Monday.” Ms. Deans’ Wednesday testimony was bolstered Thursday by OPS Acting Deputy Chief Patricia Ferguson, who said that local police didn’t have an action plan beyond that first weekend. “Our contingency plan really was for the weekend into Monday morning,” she said. City staff members have testified that they took the word of the local police, even though convoy participants themselves were posting on social media that they intended to stay until COVID-19 restrictions were repealed.

This early testimony, then, has exposed the great and powerful Oz: governments and institutions that, it turns out, were too busy picking fingernails and disregarding emails as a convoy of angry disruptors descended on the nation’s capital. Infighting, incompetence, and a failure to heed warnings certainly does not alone justify the federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, but it does justify a sense of melancholic distress among civilians that good governance does not exist, and that the state is incapable of responding coherently to major social disruption.

In the end, the inquiry may reveal that the use of the Emergencies Act was not, in fact, warranted – but what it has unveiled in the interim is arguably much worse.