At the Public Order Emergency Commission Inquiry on Monday, Ottawa Police Interim Chief Steve Bell said he didn’t think invoking the Emergencies Act was necessary.
“I do believe there was other – there could have been other opportunities,” he said, as reported by True North.
It took a few hundred questions for Bell to make this concession. He’d been testifying for about seven hours.
Bell spent most of the day shining a positive light on the Emergencies Act, and a negative one on protestors. But when asked the right question by lawyer Brendan Miller of Freedom Corp, he dealt a blow to Trudeau.
“So you’re saying that there was existing laws that you could have done the same thing under – is that right?” Miller asked.
“We had a plan. We were going to execute a plan,” Bell admitted.
Miller asked no further questions.
Ottawa invoked the Act in February for the first time in Canadian history to deal with Freedom Convoy demonstrators who were peacefully protesting COVID-19 restrictions like vaccine mandates in the nation’s capital.
The Public Order Emergency Commission is an inquiry into whether Trudeau was justified in invoking the never-before-used Act.
While the inquiry is meant to be independent of the government, some skeptics question the fairness of Trudeau getting to choose the judge – a former Liberal staffer – to preside over the verdict.
Last week, two liberty organizations said the Trudeau Liberals were “not justified” in invoking the legislation to grant themselves extreme power. Additionally, the superintendent of the OPP’s Intelligence Bureau, Pat Morris, testified that the lack of violence was “shocking.”
Earlier in the day, Bell seemed to spend the day arguing otherwise as he framed Trudeau’s decision in the best possible way.
“Our communities were dramatically exposed to violent activity over that period of time,” Bell said.
Miller later asked Bell to clarify what he meant by “violence.” Bell said he meant “the trauma that the community felt.”
Miller subsequently got Bell to admit this woke definition of violence doesn’t meet the criteria required under the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act’s definition.
Bell also conceded that only one charge of “intimidation by threat of violence” took place.
But Bell did his best to frame things in favour of Trudeau. He stated that the Emergencies Act may have helped clear out the protestors in multiple ways.
Bell was the interim Ottawa Police Chief who replaced Chief Sloly right before Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to trample out Ottawa protestors.
Bell also stated he was unaware that some protestors were allegedly put in cars by police, driven out of the city and left in the middle of nowhere during the frigid Ottawa winter “with no shelter or resources.”
Monday was day nine of testimonies, of about 30 days total.
