Hello,
Ottawa has a new police chief, named as an inquiry into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act is raising questions about how the city police force handled the truckers’ protest earlier this year.
The announcement that Eric Stubbs, an RCMP assistant commissioner from British Columbia, will take over as chief of the Ottawa Police Service also comes ahead of a municipal election in the nation’s capital – Ontario’s second most populous city after Toronto – on Monday.
Two key mayoral candidates – Bob Chiarelli and Catherine McKenney – raised concerns about the timing of the appointment ahead of a new council being sworn in. A third, Mark Sutcliffe, says hiring a new chief is an independent process that should be handled by the Police Services Board and not the mayor or council.
Mr. Stubbs becomes the first permanent police chief since Peter Sloly resigned in February during the protest that led to chaos. Steve Bell has been the force’s interim chief since Mr. Sloly left.
Mr. Stubbs’ first day in his new job will be n Nov. 17.
Asked during a news conference Friday about taking on the job during the inquiry, Mr. Stubbs said he has been monitoring the process and realizes Ottawa police are under scrutiny, but there always challenges when you start a new job.
“You know, whenever you start a job, there’s lots of work to do. You have to build relationships. There’s always something that might be challenging to overcome so we’ll do that here.”
He said he could not pretend to know everything about Ottawa, but would begin working hard, connecting with people, to learn what he needs to know.
He noted he has been a police chief in three different locations. From 2014 until 2017, he was director general of national criminal operations at RCMP headquarters in Ottawa.
Eli El-Chantiry, chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board, said the board did not rush the hiring process, and sought to assess as many candidates as possible.
He said he thought it unacceptable for the city to wait longer for the appointment of a new chief.
There’s a report here on Ottawa’s handling of the convoy protest earlier this year.
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TODAY'S HEADLINES
CEO PUZZLED BY ARRIVECAN CONTRACT – A Canadian tech CEO says he has no idea why his company is listed as having received a $1.2-million ArriveCan contract and is calling on the Canada Border Services Agency to issue a correction. Story here.
CANADA MAY NOT BE PREPARED FOR COVID-19 VARIANTS: EXPERTS – As cold and flu season approaches, Canada may be unprepared to cope with new COVID-19 variants that are adept at evading immunity from vaccines and prior infections, health experts say. Story here.
DITCH VACCINE REQUIREMENTS, SMITH TELLS BUSINESSES – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith is asking businesses in the province to ditch their vaccine requirements ahead of the government’s plan to make those who opt not to get immunized against COVID-19 a protected class of people. Story here.
SMITH UKRAINE COMMENTS FRIGHTENING: FREELAND – Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s comments on Russia’s war against Ukraine were “frightening,” according to federal Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Story here from Global News.
TORIES CALL FOR RESIGNATIONS OVER LUCKI RECORDING – Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says his government didn’t interfere with a police investigation into the Nova Scotia mass shooting, following a Conservative party call for the resignation of former public safety minister Bill Blair and the RCMP’s commissioner. Story here.
HANDGUN MEASURES IN EFFECT – The federal government says measures to freeze the number of handguns in Canada are now in effect. Story here.
FEDERAL/PROVINCIAL PLAYERS TAKE SIDES IN OTTAWA MAYORAL RACE – As voting day looms in Ottawa’s municipal election, an intriguing array of provincial and federal players have lined up between the two most prominent mayoral candidates, Catherine McKenney and Mark Sutcliffe. CBC analysis here.
LIBERALS SEEK PROBE INTO POILIEVRE YOUTUBE TAGS – The federal Liberals are demanding a formal investigation into the use of hidden tags embedded in Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre’s YouTube videos. Story here.
MP BENZEN RETIRING – Conservative Alberta MP Bob Benzen has announced he’s retiring. The representative for Calgary Heritage says in a statement that he plans to leave at the end of the year. Story here,
EBY SETS AGENDA – B.C.’s premier-in-waiting promises 100-day program. Story here.
NEW CABINET IN QUEBEC – Quebec Premier François Legault has introduced a new, expanded cabinet, a mix of veteran ministers from his party’s first mandate and several newly elected members, including the province’s first Indigenous cabinet minister. Story here.
THIS AND THAT
TODAY IN THE COMMONS – Projected Order of Business at the House of Commons, Oct. 21, accessible here.
DAYS SINCE CONSERVATIVE LEADER PIERRE POILIEVRE TOOK MEDIA QUESTIONS IN OTTAWA: 37
NEW OFFICIAL OPPOSITION COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR- Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, who has taken two questions in the one media availability he has done with Parliament Hill journalists since becoming federal Conservative leader in September, has a director of communications. Ben Woodfinden, described on his website as a doctoral student and political and constitutional theorist at McGill University, announced Friday he has taken a leave of absence from his academic work to accept the job. “It’s an exciting challenge and opportunity,” he said in a tweet here.
PIERRE POILIEVRE INTERVIEW – The Conservative leader did a rare interview on Friday on CITYNews Ottawa, available here, in which he said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau could have ended the trucker protest in the nation’s capital by holding a brief meeting with protesters, asking, “Would it have been so hard for him to sit down for 15 minutes and hear them out?”
NEW ALBERTA CABINET – New Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has named a cabinet that includes leadership rival Travis Toews returning to his previous cabinet post as finance minister. Details here.
NEWS CONFERENCE EXASPERATION – “I think I’m done here. Thanks very much everybody. I’ll see you around” – John Horgan called a curt end to a news conference here in Victoria as his successor was acclaimed.
GOVERNOR-GENERAL SPEECH – Gov.-General Mary Simon is delivering a keynote address at Trent University on Saturday in honour of Arctic historian Dr. Shelagh Grant at a conference entitled Northern Nationalisms, Arctic Mythologies, and the Weight of History.
ONTARIO PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE CONVENTION – Members of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party will be gathering in Toronto for their 2022 general meeting on Friday and Saturday. The meeting comes after the June, 2022 provincial election that saw party leader Doug Ford lead the PCs to a second majority government. Items on the agenda include discussing party policy, electing a new executive, and regional representatives to the PC Ontario Fund Board, voting on constitutional amendments and participating in various policy sessions. Premier Ford will be speaking to the gathering on Saturday evening. Details here,
PRIME MINISTER’S DAY
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in Metro Vancouver, made an announcement on handguns and held a media availability, with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
LEADERS
No schedules released for party leaders.
THE DECIBEL
On Friday’s episode of The Globe and Mail podcast, columnist Marcus Gee, as municipal voting day looms on Monday, discusses the politics of addressing homelessness. The Decibel is here.
OPINION
The Globe and Mail Editorial Board on how the fall of Liz Truss is a lesson in the careless fictions of populism: “But behind the laughter there ought to be real anger about Ms. Truss’s actions in office, and their consequences. Her decision, made along with her disgraced former chancellor of the exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng, to drop massive unfunded tax cuts into a mini-budget last month nearly caused the collapse of the British economy and its currency. The market and media backlash to the ill-conceived plan, and the government’s move to abandon it this week, directly led to her downfall – and to the search for the country’s fifth prime minister in six years. Britain, once seen as a pillar of stability and rectitude, now rivals Italy’s status as the home of Europe’s most capricious polity. This is not good. But it does serve as a useful warning against handing your government to people on the populist end of the political spectrum who lack the seriousness required for the job.”
Campbell Clark (The Globe and Mail) on how there’s no doubt now about the Ottawa police failure with convoy protests: “It’s only a week into the testimony at the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act, but already we know with certainty that there was a police failure in handling the convoy protests in the capital – an Ottawa Police Service failure. You can bet there will be other kinds of failures highlighted in coming weeks of testimony – already the hearings have heard disheartening takes of squabbling officials at several levels. But the inquiry has established that Ottawa Police misjudged and mishandled the convoy protests from the beginning, and almost till the end.”
Andrew Coyne (The Globe and Mail) on how, with the ‘Freeland Doctrine,’ the Liberals say what has long been apparent to everyone but them: “It is an axiom of Canadian politics that a thing is not known until the Liberals know it. Free trade was terra incognita before the Liberals discovered it, a creature of Tory myth that Brian Mulroney somehow convinced the public to support in 1988. As late as 1993 the Liberals were still campaigning against it. But then they won power, after which it was suddenly transformed into conventional wisdom – one of those things everybody knows, and what is more has always known. By a similarly mysterious process the GST, balanced budgets and price stability, ideas once so barbaric no civilized person could repeat them, became familiar parts of the Liberal lexicon. Something of the same seems now to be happening in the realm of foreign policy.”
Robyn Urback (The Globe and Mail) on how the Emergencies Act inquiry has revealed infighting and inertia – and it’s only just begun: “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.”
Konrad Yakabuski (The Globe and Mail) on how McKinsey & Co. still can’t shake Dominic Barton’s reign of error: “In June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government named Mr. Barton to its Indo-Pacific Advisory Committee. That body is charged with making recommendations to Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as she crafts Ottawa’s long-awaited Indo-Pacific strategy amid an emerging cold war between the West and China. It remains to be seen how much influence Mr. Barton, who once described himself as a “bull on China,” will end up having on the strategy. After all, the benevolent worldview embodied by McKinsey during Mr. Barton’s years at the helm, the one that saw opening Western markets to China and Russia as a stepping-stone to a freer and more prosperous world, has come back to bite the West.”
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