Emergencies Act inquiry: Peter Sloly testimony continues

OTTAWA –

A lawyer for the Ottawa police suggested Monday that former chief Peter Sloly was concerned about losing his job and was looking for someone to blame several days into the protests against COVID-19 mandates in the capital city last winter.

“You were pretty concerned that you would lose your job and be blamed for what had happened?” Ottawa police lawyer David Migicovsky said while Sloly was testifying at the public inquiry into the Emergencies Act.

Sloly emphatically denied the suggestion.

“Absolutely not, sir,” Sloly responded.

“And what you were looking for was to blame somebody else?” Migicovsky continued.

“Absolutely not, sir,” Sloly said.

The testimony of Sloly, who resigned as Ottawa police chief at the height of the weeks-long “Freedom Convoy” protests that gridlocked the city, continued Monday at the Public Order Emergency Commission.

The commission of inquiry is examining the circumstances around the Liberal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time in history on Feb. 14, the day before Sloly stepped down from his role.

The Emergencies Act is meant to be used when an urgent, critical and temporary situation threatens the lives, health or safety of Canadians, the provinces are thought to lack the capacity or authority to respond and the crisis cannot be handled effectively with existing laws.

In another exchange at the hearing, Migicovsky said Sloly was looking to blame Steve Bell, who was then his deputy chief, for failing for plan for the protest, and presented notes from another deputy chief, Patricia Ferguson, that made a similar accusation.

“Advised chief is looking for emails to support I/we purposely left him out of the information look on the demo coming,” said Ferguson’s notes from Feb. 14. The documents were submitted as evidence to the inquiry.

Sloly said that accusation was “absolutely incorrect,” and that he took offence to the notion.

The former police chief did confirm he took a more direct role in the police response to the protest after he lost some degree of trust in his deputies.

He said he was concerned after his deputies named a new event commander without telling him, but that he never fully lost confidence in them.

The officer who was appointed to the role without his knowledge was still under review at the time for his leadership after a 2021 street party got out of hand following a University of Ottawa football game, Sloly said.

Sloly has been repeatedly accused of creating confusion and dysfunction in the ranks of the Ottawa police during the protest by not abiding by the chain of command.

Sloly says all of those accusations have come second-hand.

“Absolutely everything asserted about because come through a rumour or something that went around the station. That’s the only thing that I’ve heard so far,” he told the commission.

The inquiry has so far painted a picture of conflict and confusion within police services and among all levels of government after the convoy’s arrival in Ottawa in late January.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 31, 2022.