OTTAWA — The intelligence chief of the Ontario Provincial Police told a federal inquiry Wednesday that he saw no “credible” information of a national security threat or extremist violence during the self-styled “Freedom Convoy” protests.
The statement appears to contradict assertions from the federal government, which cited the threat of political violence as part of its justification for invoking the Emergencies Act to deal with the demonstrations last winter.
Supt. Pat Morris, the head of the OPP’s Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau, told an inquiry probing the use of the Emergencies Act that his unit turned up no direct evidence of a threat of extremist violence after weeks of analysis and information-gathering on the protest participants.
“Everybody was asking about extremism. We weren’t seeing much evidence of it,” Morris said during his testimony Wednesday evening.
Morris also suggested that fears of extremist violence stemming from the protests were exaggerated by unnamed political leaders and unspecified news reports. “There always seems to be an overreach that comes with this politicization,” Morris said.
He said that politicians’ comments and media reports during the convoy conveyed an inaccurate “problematic” picture of what was going on.
“I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring. So when I read accounts that the state of Russia had something to do with it, or that this was a result of American influence, either financially or ideologically, or that Donald Trump was behind it, or that it was un-Canadian, or that the people participating are un-Canadian, that they were not Canadian views and they are extremists, that’s problematic.”
The formal emergency declaration the Liberal government tabled in Parliament last February cited as part of the justification for the law that the ongoing blockades were “being carried on in conjunction with activities that are directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence against persons or property, including critical infrastructure, for the purpose of achieving a political or ideological objective within Canada.”
That borrowed directly from the language used in the criminal code and other laws which deal with extremism or terrorism.
Morris objected to broad characterizations that used the word extremism to describe what was going on in the convoy protests.
He said the OPP had no credible intelligence that pointed to a threat of extremist violence or even evidence of criminal activity. He said in the end, the lack of criminal activity at the mass protest “was shocking.”
Morris conceded under questioning by Brendan Miller, a lawyer for convoy participants, that the OPP had no credible intelligence of espionage, sabotage or threats of physical violence or damage to property that might be committed by individuals with political, religious or ideological motivations.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino last winter said that police services had asked the government to declare a federal emergency later saying he was misunderstood. He continued to insist police services believed the powers were critical to ending the protest.
At the outset of the inquiry, a lawyer for the OPP said the police agency didn’t believe the federal Emergencies Act was needed to resolve the protest crisis.
At the time of the emergency declaration, Mendicino also pointed out that the RCMP had seized a cache of guns and body armour and arrested 13 people associated with the weeks-long blockade in Coutts, Alta. And called it a “cautionary tale” about what police are dealing with across the country.
Mendicino alleged the protesters that occupied the streets of downtown Ottawa and inspired border blockades in several provinces were led by a “very small, organized group that is driven by an ideology to overthrow the government through whatever means they may wish to use.”
In the wake of the Emergencies Act invocation, opposition politicians, legal experts and civil liberties groups have raised questions about whether the government’s claim of a threat of violence related to a specific and imminent risk or was more general in nature.
