By Jerome Desilets

The dust continues to settle more than three years after the people of Canada made their pilgrimage to Ottawa to express frustrations over aggressive Covid policies and mandates.

The RCMP’s response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy was detailed in their recently released National After-Action Review.¹ This report revealed many issues faced by members, from operational strains and overbearing political pressures to a complete misrepresentation of their reporting to government officials, which involved manipulating reported facts for political gain.

While the talking heads of government painted a picture of coordinated action and cooperation on the ground, with officials like Marco Mendicino (Public Safety Minister at the time) touting the complete independence of the RCMP’s authority and decision making, free from political influence and pressures, what we now see from behind the scenes paints a very different picture.

In truth, the report described a “highly politicized” Ottawa response, where elected officials badgered RCMP for rapid action. Many of the officers tasked to oversee the convoy felt uneasy with the invocation of the Emergencies Act (EA), citing unclear legal grounds and insufficient training, viewing its invocation as politically motivated to suppress protests.

As events continued to expand, fueled by Trudeau’s refusal to speak to the concerns of the people, numerous government officials began to demand more and more frequent briefings from RCMP members on the ground, disrupting intelligence efforts and circumventing the chain of command. “The pressures from government (and the public) to resolve the blockades were high during the convoy,” the report reads.

Misinformation ran rampant, with details being shared as fact from unverified social media accounts and partisan reports, further confusing RCMP threat assessments.

Examples included reports from the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, falsely claiming antisemitic propaganda existed within the convoy, and outright lies being promoted as fact by mainstream media such as those surrounding a nearby attempted arson at a residential building which was reported as an act perpetrated by convoy participants, even after it was known to be unrelated. Each of these lies were used and amplified to paint convoy participants in the worst possible light and prompt a more aggressive response against them, both publicly and amongst police ranks.

Other details were being suppressed entirely, such as all the community support offered by convoy participants—cleaning streets and memorials, offering food to the homeless or supporting businesses that were allowed to remain open. Even an early court ruling was suppressed; one that deemed the convoy a legally legitimate action by the people.

Government interference is at the heart of every issue that was outlined in this report. Government interference caused misinformation to be shared both with officers in the centre of events, who relied on facts to determine their course of action, and with the public, whose voices and anger (in response to the misinformation) fueled the fervour, pushing for an end to the convoy.

Of course, the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) was bound to find the invocation of the EA justified because they, too, were highly politicized and under scrutiny to support their political affiliates. They cited public safety risks as their justification, from economic disruptions to apparent threats uttered at the Coutts location, all while criticizing RCMP intelligence coordination.

In January of 2024, the Federal Courts had their say, ruling the EA illegal. The justification for this finding is that the EA, as a tool, was entirely disproportionate (when compared to the issues to be addressed), and a violation of our Charter rights; a complete contradiction to the POEC’s conclusion.

According to Mendicino, “The federal government has been there from day one to support the City of Ottawa”. If manipulation, interference and outright lies were the kind of help they felt the police needed, then I hope they do us all a favour and stay well out of the way next time. In this digital age, it is hard enough to discern fact from fiction, without our own government officials exacerbating things further.

Much went wrong in the handling of the Convoy, just as much went wrong in the handling of Covid. We hope that lessons will be learned on all sides, and we can expect a more honest and direct approach if there is a next time. In reality, that is highly unlikely, as long as politics are allowed to continue influencing the systems we rely on.

1. publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2024/grc-rcmp/PS64-220-2024-eng.pdf