The federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in February is now the subject of a public inquiry.
The act was brought into force when a massive truckers’ protest brought parts of Ottawa to a standstill.
The inquiry in itself is not news. By law, this retrospective is required any time the act is invoked.
What is news is that fundamental questions are being raised about how police agencies themselves should be policed.
Evidence already presented has made clear that law-enforcement attempts to maintain public order failed miserably. Senior officials testifying at the inquiry have identified two reasons.
First, the various police forces at the scene were either unable, or unwilling, to work together.
The inquiry has been told that when a team of police experts sat down with Ottawa’s police chief. Peter Sloly. to offer support, they were met with suspicion and hostility.
Several witnesses recalled that Sloly appeared unwilling to share power with other police services.
There was also ongoing confusion as to how many officers were available to keep order.
When the RCMP claimed they had “sent over three shifts of 70 each,” the mayor’s chief of staff accused them of “flat out lying.” It turned out a good number of the officers had been assigned to protect the homes of the Governor General and the prime minister.
The second problem was that the three levels of government involved, municipal, provincial and federal, failed to give early and firm guidance to law enforcement, even as the situation deteriorated.
Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson told the inquiry that his city lacked sufficient police resources to handle the protest. But when he approached federal cabinet ministers for help, nothing meaningful was done. “We were filled with angst,” he reported.
Efforts were then made to get the Ontario provincial government involved. But when Premier Doug Ford was asked to attend a meeting aimed at resolving the situation, he refused.
Ford’s response was that politicians should not become involved in specific police operations. When he was summoned to appear before the inquiry, he declined and filed a legal brief contending that his parliamentary privilege was being infringed.
From there the situation marched downhill until, other options exhausted, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act.
The critical question is whether politicians are in fact prohibited from directing specific police operations, as Ford and others have argued.
Here in B.C., we’ve seen protesters block highways and impede access to schools and hospitals, while local police officers stood aside. Although both municipal and provincial politicians criticized some of those protests, there was clearly a reluctance to become more directly involved.
No one would suggest that local politicians should oversee the police in day-to-day operations, such as investigating a break-in or tracking an offender.
But when police departments are unable to work together effectively, or lack the resources to enforce the law, there is every reason for governments to intervene.
Likewise if a police force makes a policy decision that it is better to let an illegal protest go ahead rather than risk a confrontation, that is no longer a purely operational matter.
Whether and at what cost the law should be enforced is a public policy question, to be answered, if required, by parliament and provincial legislatures.
We’ll see what the inquiry concludes. But after the shambles in Ottawa, the claim that politicians must never get involved in police operations cannot be sustained.
