Canada’s security agencies drawing on lessons from ‘extraordinary’ convoy blockade

As one other convoy rolls towards Ottawa, Canada’s public security minister says the nation’s intelligence company has discovered classes from the weeks-long blockade of the capital earlier this 12 months.

Public Security Minister Marco Mendicino dedicated Wednesday the federal authorities was prepared to supply “no matter instruments and sources” essential to Ottawa police to keep away from a repeat of February’s convoy protests, which police have beforehand described as an “occupation.”

Whereas the so-called Freedom Convoy organizers and supporters had been upfront with their intentions, the protest-turned-encampment in late January and February appeared to catch the Ottawa Police Service off guard.

The demonstration – together with blockades at key Canada-U.S. border crossings – finally led to the federal authorities implementing unprecedented emergency powers to carry the protests to an finish.

One other demonstration, dubbed the “Rolling Thunder Convoy,” is deliberate for the nation’s capital this weekend, and Ottawa’s interim police chief mentioned Tuesday he has “no intention” of permitting it to show into one other blockade.

Requested if Canada’s intelligence businesses had discovered from the Freedom Convoy ordeal, Mendicino mentioned “sure.”

“It was an unprecedented emergency state of affairs. There have been many blockades on the border that brought on a variety of disruption to commerce and even to the motion of individuals between each international locations, so it was very, very troublesome. Right here in Ottawa, companies had been closed,” Mendicino mentioned.

Mendicino additionally defended using the Emergencies Act to clear the protest, suggesting “the recommendation that we had acquired from police forces was that the powers that existed on the time weren’t enough to revive public security.”

Talking earlier than a joint Home of Commons and Senate committee Tuesday night, CSIS Director David Vigenault mentioned the company was not “stunned” by the convoy protests and the alleged extremist parts that participated in them.

“We’re continuously trying on the motion of ideologically-motivated violent extremists, so we now have a reasonably good understanding of the dynamics at play … I’d not say that we had been stunned,” Vigneault instructed parliamentarians.

“We additionally noticed up to now variety of these parts who’re making an attempt to make use of protest and demonstrations to infiltrate and take benefit, to interact in exercise that may meet the edge of CSIS to be a risk of terrorism.”

World Information reported final month that CSIS devotes virtually as a lot consideration to ideologically-motivated extremism – the company’s catch-all time period, which incorporates right-wing extremism and anti-state teams – as religiously-motivated extremism. That’s a big change from even six years in the past, when the company had shuttered their rolling investigation into right-wing extremism.

Vigneault confirmed Tuesday that the company now devotes roughly 50 per cent of its consideration and sources to “ideologically-motivated extremist violence.”

The joint Home of Commons and Senate committee is one among two fundamental our bodies probing the Liberal authorities’s invocation of emergency powers to clear the convoy protests that floor downtown Ottawa to a halt and blockaded main border crossings with the U.S.

In justifying their recourse to the Emergencies Act, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cupboard referred to the financial harm the border protests had been wreaking, together with the disruption to not solely the individuals who reside in downtown Ottawa, however the affairs of Parliament.

World Information reported Monday the financial toll of the protests might have been exaggerated. Based on World’s evaluation, cross-border commerce in Ontario and Alberta – the 2 provinces with probably the most high-profile border blockades – was really up 16 per cent with the U.S. in February.

On the similar time, political stress on each side of the border – together with from the Biden administration and particular person American lawmakers – was apparent throughout the protests. Commerce discovered a means within the brief time period, however the blockades weren’t with out a minimum of a political price.

“Sure, we had been involved on the time, and my considerations are ongoing,” Mendicino instructed the parliamentary committee Tuesday night, concerning the financial impression of the blockades.

The Liberals introduced on Monday that an Ontario appeals court docket decide, Paul S. Rouleau, will lead an unbiased public inquiry into the circumstances main as much as their use of emergency powers and using these distinctive powers.

Beneath the Emergencies Act declaration, the Liberals gave police the flexibility to freeze some financial institution accounts associated to convoy funding, declare zones throughout the nation illegal for authentic protest, and in the end precipitated the police crackdown that evicted the entrenched Ottawa protest.

Rouleau’s inquiry should report again to Parliament by Feb. 20, 2023.