The head of Ontario Provincial Police’s intelligence unit says he was concerned with false allegations of extremism against convoy protesters by politicians and the media.
“I was concerned by comments made publicly by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact,” Supt. Pat Morris, head of OPP’s Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau, told the public inquiry into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act on Oct. 19.
Morris said his viewpoint wasn’t merely coming from a subjective perspective, because he was leading the charge on collecting intelligence on the convoy protest.
“I believed I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring,” he said.
“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 were un-Canadian and that they were not Canadian views and they were extremists, I found it to be problematic.”
Just ahead of the trucker protest arriving in Ottawa on Jan. 29, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau berated the protesters for their opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“The small, fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other,” Trudeau said on Jan. 27.
The prime minister and his senior cabinet members made similar comments throughout the protest, while refusing to meet or send representatives to talk with the protesters.
Other politicians made similar comments.
A transcript of a Feb. 8 call between Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson and Trudeau tabled at the commission shows the mayor also saying the protesters didn’t represent Canada.
‘At a Turning Point’
Morris made his comments at the commission in response to a question about an email he had sent to OPP Deputy Commissioner Charles Cox on Feb. 22, where he said the protest movement “feels marginalized in its locality but enhanced by its broad appeal nationally,” adding that it is not an extremist movement.“It is not comprised of ideologically Motivated Violent Extremists (IMVEs). The actual leaders are not extremists with histories of violent criminal acts—although events due (sic) attract unpredictable and extreme elements. The absolute lack of criminal activity across Canada, and the minimal violent crime throughout the event illustrate this,” Morris wrote.
He added that politicians and the media are giving a different picture than what he has actually seen, and noted that their claims have shaped the main discourse on the subject in society.
“But now the public discourse is dominated by political figures and the media—and the commentary is providing a very different picture than what law enforcement collectively gathered. It is painting a different picture—it speaks to extremism, it offers parallels to terrorism, it speaks of sedition. I am sending this email because I feel that we are at a turning point. It is time to calmly continue gathering information, understand what we are dealing with and monitor intentions and actions for criminal activity and public order implications,” he said.
In his Oct. 19 testimony at the commission, Morris said how media go about news reporting is important, because law enforcement officers “are informed” by those reports. But he said when it comes to news reporting by media, there are “multiple perspectives, and some of those perspectives seem to be based in confirming a worldview.”
“I saw that information, those assertions, foreign influence, money, etc., being played out by a number of people and talked about. And I would challenge that. And my point in this email was to make this point, which I believe is an ethical and moral point, and a point premised in law,” he said.
“The labelling was problematic to me.”
“These illegal blockades are being heavily supported by individuals in the United States and from elsewhere around the world. We see that roughly half of the funding that is flowing to the barricaders here is coming from the United States,” Trudeau said in the House of Commons on Feb. 17.
“We all need to be seized with the landscape as it exists around foreign interference, and any funds that may be used to undermine public safety,” Mendicino said in the House of Commons on Feb. 8
Documents presented at the commission also show the director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) saying there was no foreign involvement in the convoy.
‘Lack of Violent Crime Was Shocking’
Morris also said in his Oct. 19 testimony that the OPP was engaged “on-ground in a covert capacity” at the protest site to collect information.He said there was no intelligence to indicate that “these individuals would be armed,” adding, “There has been a lot of hyperbole about that.”
He said the force found no credible “intelligence of threats” and noted that police evaluated the accuracy of their earlier intelligence to this effect by looking at the arrests and charges during the protests.
“The lack of violent crime was shocking. … Even the arrests and charges, considering the whole thing in totality—I think there were 10 charges for violent crimes, six of which were against police officers,” he said.
Brendan Miller, one of the lawyers representing the main organizers of Freedom Convoy, ran through legal definitions of “threats to the security of Canada” that would justify the invocation of the act, and asked Morris if he saw any relevant evidence that would meet those definitions.
Morris replied that he saw no evidence of espionage or sabotage, nor any evidence of foreign influence activities.
“I saw media accounts [of foreign influence allegations], yes. I saw no information collected or intelligence produced in that regard … to support that,” he said.
He also said that he saw “online rhetoric” and “assertions” of threat of use of serious violence but that he is not aware of any “intelligence that was produced that would support concern in that regard.”
Morris added that the OPP intelligence branch collected information on “asserted attempts” at vandalism of property, such as arson, but “did we have any credible intelligence that that would occur? No,” he said.
The Public Order Emergency Commission was formed by the federal government as required by the Emergencies Act after it is invoked. The commission is scheduled to hear daily testimonies until Nov. 25, after which it will enter a second phase with a focus on policy, before Commissioner Paul Rouleau submits his report to Parliament by Feb. 20, 2023.
The Liberal government invoked the act on Feb. 14 to clear convoy protests and blockades, and revoked the act after the Ottawa protests were cleared on Feb. 23.
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