Rouleau lays much of the blame for Ottawa’s occupation where it belongs—with Doug Ford

OTTAWA—Ontario Premier Doug Ford was missing in action when the convoy thugs took over the nation’s capital and prompted a national political crisis, Justice Paul Rouleau has made clear in his Feb. 17 report on the incident. Rouleau doesn’t mince words when it comes to Ford’s hands-off approach to the blockade of streets and the lawlessness around Parliament Hill in February 2022. He puts the whole mess down to a failure of the local police and the refusal of Ford’s government to accept responsibility for controlling the situation. He reminds everyone that, under Canada’s federal system, restoring order in an Ontario city in the midst of near-riotous conditions is the remit of the Ontario government. In a section entitled “Ontario’s absence,” he says many witnesses at the inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act “saw the province as trying to avoid responsibility for responding to a crisis within its borders.” As proof of Ford’s indifferent attitude toward the Ottawa blockade, Rouleau’s final report quotes Ontario deputy solicitor general Mario Di Tommaso’s testimony that “when the concern was such that the protest was spreading to other parts of the province … that’s when the premier decided to act.” The report also notes that the Ford government refused to engage at the political level in federal-provincial-municipal talks intended to co-ordinate an integrated response to the situation in Ottawa. “Premier Ford told Mayor Watson that he did not believe these meetings would be productive. Solicitor General Jones was of the view that responding to the protests was a law enforcement issue” to be dealt with between the Ottawa police and OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, Rouleau points out. Further, the report says that in a discussion with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Feb. 9 of last year, Ford expressed frustration about the way Ottawa officials were dealing with the protests there. But “Premier Ford indicated, however, that the bigger issue was the Ambassador Bridge” blockade in Windsor. The gist of the commission's findings is that, had the Ford government lived up to its responsibilities after the Ottawa police bungled the job, the federal government would not have been forced to use the Emergencies Act to regain control of the trucker-occupied capital. Ontario Premier Doug Ford leaves 90 Elgin St. in Ottawa on Feb. 7 after a health-care meeting with fellow premiers and the prime minister. The Hill Times photograph by Andrew Meade In summing up what the commission learned, Rouleau says the Ottawa blockade was not just a policing failure, but a failure of governments and their leaders to uphold their responsibilities under federalism. While he doesn’t name Ford, it’s pretty clear who Rouleau is talking about when he writes: “In Canada, our federal system of government enriches democracy by striving to maintain national unity while supporting regional diversity. But fulfilling these promises depends on co-operation and collaboration. Responding to situations of threat and urgency in a federal system requires governments at all levels, and those who lead them, to rise above politics and collaborate for the common good. Unfortunately, in January and February 2022, this did not always happen.” Rouleau adds: “It was the failure to anticipate such a moment (of post-pandemic unrest) and to properly manage the legitimate protests that emerged, especially the protest in Ottawa, that resulted in the 2022 Public Order Emergency. “Had various police forces and levels of government prepared for and anticipated events of this type and acted differently in response to the situation,” the report concludes, “the emergency that Canada ultimately faced could likely have been avoided.” Rouleau’s mention of the failure of leaders “to rise above politics” brings us back to the question of what was really going on here. Ford and Jones claimed parliamentary privilege and refused to be interviewed by the commissioner, so there was no opportunity to delve into their motivation. Consequently, it’s still not clear if the plan to land the whole problem in Trudeau’s lap was co-ordinated by the Harperites around Ford. But his government seemed very much aligned with his federal Conservative counterparts, who were advised in an email from then-interim party leader Candice Bergen during the blockade not to urge the truckers to leave Ottawa. “I understand the mood may shift soon,” Bergen wrote. “So we need to turn this into the PM’s problem.” Les Whittington is a regular columnist for The Hill Times. The Hill Times

Rouleau lays much of the blame for Ottawa’s occupation where it belongs—with Doug Ford

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Rouleau lays much of the blame for Ottawa’s occupation where it belongs—with Doug Ford

He reminds everyone that, under Canada’s federal system, restoring order in an Ontario city in the midst of near-riotous conditions is the remit of the Ontario government.

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