The Paul Wells Show - A cop talks about policing protests

Episode Date: February 21, 2024

Police have been facing heavy scrutiny lately over how they handle protests, from the convoy in Ottawa to pro-Palestine demonstrations. OPP Acting Superintendent Marcel Beaudin shares the police perspective on this issue. Until recently, Beaudin ran the OPP’s Provincial Liaison team that deals with demonstrations and protests. He has also been a leader in the service’s Indigenous Policing Bureau.  This episode was recorded at the Munk School. Subscribe to Paul's Substack for a premium version of this show: paulwells.substack.com

When there's something strange in your neighbourhood, who are you going to call? I've never ever spoken to a cop and said or heard, oh this would be a really good thing is to get involved with a punch-up here. No one wakes up in the morning and goes, oh, I hope that this happens. We're hoping there's not a misstep that is a flashpoint and causes a national crisis. Today, Ontario's top cop in charge of policing protests. I'm Paul Wells, the journalist fellow in residence

at the University of Toronto's Munk School. Welcome to The Paul Wells Show. Monk School. Welcome to the Paul Wells Show. Remember that mess in downtown Ottawa in 2022, the Freedom Convoy? Later they held a public commission of inquiry into that occupation and into the response of the federal government and of various police forces. To me, the most interesting witness of that commission of inquiry, by far, was a guy named Marcel Bowden. At the time, and until quite recently, he was the head of the Ontario Provincial Police's Provincial Liaison Team. He's also been a leader of the Indigenous Policing Bureau for the OPP. Now, the Liaison Team is the branch of the police force that deals with major demonstrations. So Marcel

Bowden brings a unique perspective to a problem that's coming up more and more often in these complex times, one that I've written about a lot in the last two years. How do the police respond to a big march or protest over some politically sensitive topic? On that question, Marcel Bowden has a lot of thoughts and some surprising answers. He spoke to me live at the Munk School in Toronto. Marcel Bowden, thank you for coming out tonight. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me.

One of the first things I noticed about you was that you don't pronounce your name Bow-down. Where did you grow up with a name like Bowdown and how did you become a police officer? So I was born and raised in Raleigh, Ontario. I'm a band member of Henvy and the First Nation with, if anyone doesn't know where that is, which most people don't, it's between Parry Sound and Sudbury. And how I became a police officer was really a matter of circumstance, I would say. I was a young guy last year of high school, and a couple people that I was with at a party ended up getting in a car accident and passing away. And it's interesting because since 2014, I've had the privilege of speaking to every single

recruit that comes through our police college. Just in my role. That's what I've had the ability to do. And I always ask, why did you join policing? By a show of hands, did you want to join policing because of the amazing money you'll make and how rich you'll be and the pension? And I think one person put up their hand since 2014. And then I say, or is it because you want to drive fast and arrest bad guys? And every once in a while, someone puts up their hands. And then I said, or do you want to help your community? And really for me, that's what it was all about is helping community. How do I get into a place where I can ensure that, not ensure, but make a positive impact so this doesn't happen. These tragedies don't happen to families again and how can I really support a

community from my limited skill sets I was never the smartest person in in school and and uh but I certainly just had drive and and this unwavering commitment to community have you ever run into the opinion that uh police force is no place for an indigenous man no no um no there's certainly a need and in fact i think if you were so who was supposed to be here with me tonight was uh gary miracle he's so he actually runs the indigenous policing bureau he's uh he's my boss he's an unbelievable guy i have the privilege of being uh his inspector in there. Gary's a 29-year Mohawk man from Tainanaga, and I've had the privilege of having First Nations leaders really take me under their wing under the direction or guidance of then Commissioner Gwen Boniface. She used to have

these Aboriginal leadership forums where we had the opportunity the privilege to really get together and have that mentorship from an indigenous person that's gone before me like there were certainly times where um i thought i should stay quiet on my personal uh history and what i'm all about um because of climate that I was in, but I've never once felt as though I shouldn't be there. I don't belong. Okay. So I've mentioned three roles for you and let's kind of tease them out just because people, one reason I wanted to talk to a police officer, but all this stuff is that people have a very sort of monolithic view of the police and a kind of a simplistic view of it. And they don't have a sense of all the various different things that modern police force takes care of.

So one thing is you're Ontario's chief firearms officer. What is that? So I've been in there for a cup of coffee. I was asked to be a part of that while they find an incumbent to take over that position. So that is really regulatory in nature. It's legislative in nature. We manage firearms licensing.

We do not have comments or opinions on firearms. We save that for other people to make. Our job is to ensure that, I would say, to the best of our abilities, lawfully, whatever we can do to ensure that people that shouldn't have guns do not have guns. And every decision is based on public safety. So we're a regulatory body for firearms. Okay. That's your current role. Before that, you were involved with, I incorrectly said running, the Indigenous Police Bureau,

which essentially supplements on-reserve policing and in some cases fills in for that function in different communities. Yeah. some cases fills in for for that function in different communities yeah so when I first started as an aboriginal relations team member I knew at some point in my life that I would want to be in there on a full-time basis from day one of being a part of that community I was wanting to be there and then when I got in there like I took obviously a little bit of detours along the way with hostage rescue and emergency command and stuff like that. But when I got in there, I didn't realize the impacts that you can play in community. And so when I look at it, so we have the Ontario First Nations Policing Agreement, which oversees the administrative supports, training, hiring, right, like on behalf

of the community for 17 police services, 17 communities, 17 leaders, 17 chiefs that are all wanting us to be responsive to their needs. We also have the MMIWG implementation team, which is there to support the calls to justice and ensure as an organization, we are set up for success. Within those calls to justice, we have the Indigenous Awareness Training Unit, which basically provides training for our members so that they can be culturally responsive when they're managing things. And then we have the Provincial Liaison Team

that consists of 125 members that really were born out of the tragedies of Ipperwash, where we didn't have a communication strategy, we had no ability to manage the chaos that ensued as a result of that, and we had no opportunities for mediation or negotiation. And the commensurate level of support that's been brought into the PLT program from past commissioners, but this current one, Commissioner Creek, is likely the greatest I've ever seen. He is one of the leaders that I would follow anywhere because of the change that he brings in and his commitment to Indigenous policing. And so we also work hand in hand

with the Indigenous Police Chiefs of Ontario that oversee nine First Nations police services. So whether it's Nishnabiaski Police Service, Treaty 3, Rama, Akwasasne, they are the subject matter experts along with our OFNPA members on how to police in First Nations communities. So they have become unbelievable allies and friends to me and the Bureau. Okay. And then the third function is

this provincial liaison team, which in a lot of municipal police forces is called the police liaison team. And it's the one we're going to be spending most of the time talking about tonight. What is liaison team and what does it seek to do during a large protest of any kind? seek to do during a large protest of any kind? Yeah, so during a large protest, I think there's so many goals, right? It's interesting, it's evolution, because in 2005, when I was a constable in Northern Ontario, and then we were going to support in Caledonia, you know, there was a lot of times where we didn't have the structure, the ideas, the theories, the practice, the learned experience. And we were sent to places to say, hey, there's a big mess there. Can you help? You know, you're an indigenous guy. You're a good talker.

You seem nice. Can you go and try and make this better with however, right? Like however. ice can you go and try and make this better with however right like however and you know there was some structure to it for sure but there wasn't certainly the you know i'm not a smart guy but say the social science attached to it and i look back on on those days the infancy of that program and i remember you know talking to um a gentleman he would hate if I name him, but he was saying, it's really tough for me as an Indigenous guy trying to build relationships because some of my colleagues are saying, well, you're just going and having bonbons and coffee with

community leaders and I'm doing work, right? And not realizing that from 2005 to 2024, 19 years later, he's the guy that everyone calls. He's the person that people have built trust and confidence in. There are victims that are comfortable in coming forward. There's witnesses in coming forward. So really, we look at it pre, during, and post. So pre-event, what are we trying to achieve? So by design, we are looking at communities or groups of people that may in the future have real or perceived inequalities,

right? So if you look at by design, we have currently, I think the provinces in negotiations with 50 land claims, I think there's 80 in the hopper, right? Or so 80 total, 50 that are currently up for negotiation that are being negotiated currently. There is certainly by design an opportunity for conflict there, right? Real or perceived inequalities, however you want to look at it. And so in that pre-event stage, you want to get out, build relationships, become educated, ensure that we are doing everything that we can to be in a position that when stuff comes to a boil over point, we can ensure that protests are lawful, peaceful, and safe.

Because I love that we live in Canada. I love that we live in a place where if I have a grievance, I can air that grievance. I can say, hey, this isn't good for us. This isn't working. We should look at policy. We should do something about it. But if it's not lawful, peaceful, or safe, then there's an expectation for police to be there, right? To preserve the peace, maintain order, ensure that there's no property or victimization of people. And so anyway, so when it comes to the big events, at best, it would be amazing. It would be amazing if we can talk everyone off, right? We can say, hey, lawful, peaceful, safe.

And they go, oh, thank you for educating me. I'll go to the sidewalk and I'll move this truck, right? But the reality is, if you look up the makeup of crowds and when I'm going to a scene, so like when I'm sent to different places to try and support it from a command perspective I'm asking like I'll walk down the street like this or I'll walk down the street like this young man in the front row here with the glasses and I'll basically ask four questions right like so I don't identify as a police officer I just say what does success look like for you in this? Like the words of that

effect, right? Like what are we trying to achieve out of this, right? What is your goal? What can someone say or do to get you to leave, right? And what's really the expectation here and what's the expectation of police? And when you start asking those questions, you start not looking at positions, right? The positional fixation of the member, you're actually looking at positions right the positional fixation of the member you're actually looking at okay what are the underlying factors and what can people do to support this person and getting what i would say is a perceived win or a real win and they can feel good about themselves and they can go home because if you know if we're heavy-handed or whatever, quite regularly, we have the opportunity or the misfortune of galvanizing a crowd against us. And if we're unpredictable, worse things happen.

So our job, I think, and sorry for rambling on. No, that's what we're here for. Okay, perfect. Thanks. So our job, I think, at best, is to get people to leave. The second best is if there is a large crowd to reduce the footprint, to identify people that are willing to leave. Because if I were to say to this group, I'd say, who here is willing to get arrested? And maybe this lady and this lady are willing to get arrested but likely most people aren't right and you saw that in a variety of protests recently right and so I think our job is to get the

footprint to the lowest amount possible the people that are on the fence as to whether they're willing to get arrested and give up their piece of pie for that day to be reduced, and that our interactions will encourage people to leave. And so that the public order people that end up coming in have really the least amount of resistance, it's the safest way possible, and that it really maximizes our ability to use the least amount of force possible. Because I've never, ever spoken to a cop and said or heard oh this would be a

really good thing is to get involved with a punch up here no one wakes up in the morning and goes oh I hope that this happens you know there's days where I'm walking on like I'm not sleeping because I'm concerned about what's happening the next day because I'm obviously well aware of the police operations. And I think that's with everyone in command is that we're hoping there's not a misstep that is a flashpoint and causes a national crisis or causes an issue for community or other, right? So you've identified two different groups

that often deal with large demonstrations. There's the PLT whose ambition, as you put it, is to get the largest possible number of people feeling good about themselves and going home. And then there's a public order unit whose function, if needed, is to have some of those people wind up arrested, cleared out in kind of more coercive ways. All the time I hear from people, why don't we just start with the second group? If there's a bunch of protesters and they're troublemakers and they're annoying and I disagree with them, why don't we just round them up and ship them off to processing at the police station? Everything's situational, right? Like there's times where if there's a single person on a road and he's waiting for his group of friends to come, you know, there's opportunities, right?

Like you have to have the means, opportunity, intent to carry out an act. And you have to have that as a police officer too, to ensure that there's safety. So if there's opportunities where we can ensure that it's done safely and there's one person then likely we'll take that opportunity um you know i've seen it where there's a person on on um a road blocking a road and i've been asked to reach out to community leadership because we certainly don't want it to turn into okay this is now a community issue against the police, right? So quite often I've reached out to community leaders saying, hey, do you know, we'll say Frank for the sake of this conversation, Frank's out on the road. Like, is this something

that your community is supporting or like, what does this look like to you as a leader? And they'll say, no, Frank's one of our community members. He's not speaking on behalf of our community. And it's almost like Patrick Swayze in Roadhouse, where he's like, you can ask him to leave, but be nice. And that's what a lot of the conversations are. That's like, do whatever you need to do, but please just be nice. Right. And I think really that's when we're policing those is it's a matter of being nice.

But when it comes to bigger events, you know, in the absence of the ability to move people right away, like some of the larger, larger events, especially if there's a defensible position, you certainly need more people for that. Right. But if you have to muster people in the absence of that, right, like there's no sense of me sending me and you down there paul because like as strong as you are and as strong as i am likely we won't succeed if we're battling a bunch of people but if we have the opportunity to minimize that then we do the other thing is really unpredictable behavior by police right so if you're if you're telling people what you're doing you're educating them before you do enforcement you are not being aggressive in nature because aggressive police tactics typically produce aggressive behavior from a crowd right so

we do not want to start aggressively we want to make sure that we're giving enough notice this is what's happening it's interesting because the one protest we were at, one of our liaison members misspoke and they promised the protesters, they said, because there's women and children there and there were some elderly people. And the one person said, if you're coming down, can you let us know if you're coming here to arrest us? And she said, I promise I will let you guys know so you can get the women and children and the elderly out of here. And then, uh, I remember being in the command post and the incident commander was, was not thrilled with that. Right. Cause our thing is we will not break promises, right? Like, and I used to be really good at handcuffing people. Like I handcuffed a lot of bad people

in my life. And, um, I've never been so good that I've surprised them with handcuffs right like I've never been like hey look at your hands you're in handcuffs right but I but I've certainly um done it quickly and they know that I'm there and there's certainly an element of surprise that you don't want to give up but for the sake of a protest it was actually a really good tactic in building trust and confidence with the community at large afterwards. Because what ended up happening, we go give them three minute notice, five minute notice, say, hey, just so you know, the police are here. Those that want to be arrested, you know, just stay here. Those that don't, please walk this way.

And people ended up leaving. And I was thanked by the community members afterwards for us holding up our promise, right? Let's translate it to the first circumstance where I became aware of your work, which is the Ottawa Convoy. Hundreds of trucks parked in downtown Ottawa, not going anywhere, with a very strong political viewpoint.

And a lot of people on the scene and across the country who were very upset by their presence there have a hard time understanding how the police force, how any police force could ever be interested in hearing these people out, helping them make their point, and not simply rounding a bunch of them up with handcuffs. I know that you don't want to be justifying or criticizing any particular police action, especially one that you weren't directly involved in. But, I mean, translate that across any number of circumstances.

There are strong opinions, and there are people who always think the police are too rough on the demonstrators they agree with and way too easy on the demonstrators they dislike. Is that a challenge for you? Yeah, I think most things are challenging right now. That's what makes the work so interesting, right? Because everything's different. But one of the tenets of our framework, so luckily, like, we have critical policies

that are enshrined within the OPP police orders, right? So there is critical policies. So critical doesn't mean bad. Critical means these are a priority, right? And one of them is police preparedness for Indigenous critical incidents. And that's where we really learn the lessons from Iprewash, and we continue to learn lessons

and continues to be updated. We also, and I said that Leslie Jean's here with me, and she was one of the people that really put together the national framework on behalf of the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police. And in those documents, well, in the national one, one of the tenets for success is really impartiality. And when it comes to the OPP, it's about impartiality.

I certainly have my own opinions on different things, but my job is not to take sides or talk to a person a certain way because I feel different about them or engage in a different police tactic because i have a differing opinion from whatever is happening and whatever the political or other issue that is being grieved is so when it comes to those places and we've had a we've had a few of them where people are entrenched and they're they're in a position defensible position where we have to bring some people in there's no opportunity to put hands on right right away like there is some stuff that becomes red herrings like if you know if we start looking at people are bringing gas cans to these protesters and then that ends up becoming something that actually takes away from what success looks like for us because we have a mission statement that we use as police and this is our our mission statement is to in whatever situation is typically to open roadways normal

traffic flow get the city back to where it needs to be right and so if we're doing stuff that takes away from that or provoking protesters or whatever because when you look at the dynamics or dimensions for decision-making, as far as a person, it's risk reward, provocations, excuses, and effort, right? So if something takes more effort, then typically people won't do it. This is just in decision-making, right? If there is a low risk, people will likely do it. If there is a lot of reward, people will likely do it. If I'm provoking them, people will likely do stuff, right? And if they have excuses, people will likely do that. If anyone has kids, you'll know that, right? And so we try and work with those dynamics to make sure that people are influenced to come to their own outcomes by some of the stuff that we end up

working through right so in the absence of the ability to move in so even if you had the ability even if you had a thousand cops that were dressed up you should still go in and have some sort of opportunity to at the minimum get people that don't want to be a part of that out of there. And so I think it's, one, reckless, and two, it's clearly, like I've had the displeasure of seeing issues go bad in policing. And when you see that, you don't want to see that ever again. I think that everyone has the, you know, sometimes we lose sight of that. And when you look at, we get called regularly to enforce the rule of law right and when you look at the rule of law it's textured in nature there's a lot of

different considerations whether it's reconciliation with indigenous people whether it's support for victims certainly there's enforcement of court orders in there, but it's textured and multifaceted when it comes to the rule of law. Now, you say all of this was in its infancy when you became an officer in 2005. I'm right in saying that that's because a lot of the thinking about this liaison work, as opposed to just simple, heavy-handed enforcement came out of the experience of the Ipperwash occupation in the late 90s is that right yeah so I came on in January of 2003 and in 2005 they started doing these aboriginal relations team courses and I

think it was a really smart move by leadership at the time of the organization, because in May of 2007, the IPRWASH recommendations come out. And in there, it talks about the commensurate levels of support for Indigenous awareness training, for a liaison approach, for the Aboriginal relations team at the time. And it was really great forethought and putting that into action by the leadership of the organization to be responsive to some of the mistakes that were clearly going to be identified in that inquiry. So what happened at Ipperwash? There were a bunch of Indigenous protesters who were occupying land to which they thought they had a superior claim. And the police went in to clear those protesters out. And one man, Dudley George, was shot and killed. And for political reasons, it was only many years later that there was a commission of inquiry. And one of the conclusions of the commission of inquiry was, hey, the police should be in the business of finding a much more subtle way of dealing with this kind of situation than what they did.

So the OPP set up the Aboriginal Relations Team originally. Yes, sir. And the Major Event Liaison Team. Yes. Which were two groups that were designed to handle Indigenous protest on the one hand and non-Indigenous protest on the other.

And after several years, they merged them because it turned out it didn't work too well if you had two different groups. Yeah, it certainly appeared as though there was two-tiered policing, right? Like the appearance, whether we liked it or not. And it really made the members on grounds jaw. Like from a command perspective, maybe they wouldn't have noticed, but it was certainly the members on ground saying, listen, I'm getting yelled at over here because I'm not giving the same attention to this group, or this is the perception on ground is that we're treating this group better, or we're treating this group better. And really, when you look at the Aboriginal relations team or the major event

liaison team, like you say, they were doing the same job, but one was focusing on Indigenous issues and the other one was focusing on everything else. And it's interesting in a sense where when we merged them, it was one seamless and it made the teams better. And when you look at our critical policies around Indigenous protests or any protest, it's not specific to Indigenous protests. The tenets, the framework, the's not specific to Indigenous protests. The tenants, the framework, the stuff that we do works anywhere. I always say the framework itself, there's no issue with.

It's sometimes the application. And there's always this, like you had mentioned before, this underlying conversation around, should we have gone in earlier? Should we have given it a couple of days? And it's really this balancing act of likely zero wins, but with the best opportunity for success at the time. Right? Okay. And one of the first tests, once the OBP set up separate indigenous liaison team and non-indigenous liaison team was when both got sent into Caledonia because there were indigenous protesters.

There were people from the broader community who were super mad at the indigenous protesters. And you had two different groups from the same police force trying to maintain order. And just almost inevitably, someone said, how come they've got kid gloves and these guys are assholes? Yeah, and it goes back to the original comment of,

you know, it depends on what side of the of the issue that you're on is certainly your perception of a reality and as we all know my perception of reality is my own reality and that's how that's how i will see life from now on and and if you want to get more information on it christy blatchford had written a book that was very very uh scathing towards towards the work of the organization at that point, for sure. I do wish Blatch had survived to hear us talk tonight because she sure didn't like the whole idea of police talking to protesters.

She thought the police were getting rolled. They were naive and they were getting fleeced by a bunch of crooks. Right. And you know what? That's absolutely an opinion. I say, you know, you look at the numbers. So when we were dealing with the shutdown in Canada, which was the Wet'suwet'en solidarity demonstrations

across the province, right? Like that was unbelievably taxing um from from my perspective i think it's interesting because my the financial lady that used to work in my office said i think you got your numbers wrong i don't think that anyone could work that much but there was 200 and some protests provincially one of which was a rail line shut down for several weeks this is the beginning of 2020. This is just before COVID? This is just before COVID. Yeah.

Yeah. And in that movement, Leslie Jean and I had just authored an article in Police Chiefs Magazine. And it was about provincial liaison teams. been approved by the CACP to run a national course on liaison work and a measured approach to protest in November of 2019. This article comes out in January, shutdown Canada happens and everyone in the country now from, I would say likely Halifax, correct me if I'm wrong on any of this, likely from Halifax to British Columbia are calling. And then we also have 200 plus protests here. But if you look at those numbers,

the majority of those were lawful, peaceful, and safe. And people had a grievance around treatment of Indigenous people, hereditary leadership, governance issues, and people were all coming together as a result of that. And then when you look at in the wake of the death of George Floyd, we had the police reform defund the police movement, right? And we had 200 plus protests in that. And I would say all of them turned into lawful, peaceful, and safe. And I've shared with you before about during that, I said, you know, this is an opportunity

for us to reach out to our community contacts, our community leaders, and say, like, I'm seeing what's happening on TV. I'm seeing what's happening in, you know, urban centers. I'm seeing what's happening in, you know, urban centers. I'm seeing what's happening on the streets. Is this reflective of your opinion of us, the OPP, the organization policing itself? And, um, and my members weren't happy with that idea. They said, we don't want to call them now. We're going to get our heads ripped off. And I said, okay, well I'll call two people, two of which are sometimes vocal towards our

organization and see what they have to say. And if, and if they start yelling at me or if they treat me in a certain way, I'll, you don't have to do it. Cause I would never ask any of our members to do something I'm not willing to do. And so I reach out to the one and he said, oh

my goodness, Marcel. I said, thank you so much for calling. He said, this is amazing. One, I love that you're doing this. Two, yeah, no. The one thing that I want is we need more police here we're underfunded for police we actually want more of you in here and we want you guys to maybe look at policing a little bit differently as opposed to coming in and giving us

tickets and arresting us for trivial things i want you to be a part of our community come and have coffee take part in ceremony right i would love see that. And then the other one was like, no, we have no issues whatsoever. And out of the, I believe 68 people that we talked to, one had mentioned, yeah, I don't think you guys should be funded the way you are. You're a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. So when you look at one out of 68, certainly wasn't reflective of what was going on. But, and then when you look at the Freedom Convoy too, there was multiple protests, demonstrations, occupation. Well, the occupations weren't good.

The protests and demonstrations for the large bulk of them were decent and it took a matter of conversations to make happen. And there's so many interesting times where you know sometimes it's again the application of the framework or people's perception of what police should be saying at the time but i've got multiple instances because i look at some of the people that i've worked with and how funny they are and what they're thinking and how they get caught up and stuff and the one gentleman uh so the guys were going to take over the road and he was getting really stressed and he kind of said something inappropriate to the guy. And he said, we had a deal, like we had a deal that you weren't taking the road.

Because a lot of this stuff, like people don't want to break their word, right? So these preexisting relationships have the ability for me to say, hey, Paul, so if this is going on, can we just agree that you'll do this? Because you've already made me aware of it. Because we have this and we reach out to communities. And then you go, yeah, you know what? We won't take the road. We won't do anything unlawful. And if anything changes, I'll let you know. Right. And so this guy says, and we don't teach this, but he might have said an inappropriate comment. And then he said, we agreed. We agreed and you're breaking your word. And he says, you're right. I did say that.

I'll tell everyone we're not taking the road. And then he goes back and they don't take the road. And so when we're looking at protest groups, like what I'm looking for is leadership. I'm trying to test their leadership because anyone can say you're a leader, but if no one's following you, you're not a leader. All right. So if people say, oh yeah, I'm the leader of this group. And then we go, Hey, can you move all the vehicles on that side

of the road so that ambulances can get by? So if you can't do that, it tells me one of two things. Either you're not willing to work with police, so I need to find someone that can, or you're not a leader, right? And then you're testing compliance, you're testing resolve, you're testing resilience, right? And you're doing all these things while you're talking. And the more that you're talking and the more that you're testing people, the more opportunity that we have to identify pathways forward to safe resolution to these incidents. So, I mean, I dwell on this because it's so counterintuitive in a bunch of different ways. First of all, there's a bunch of people who are doing outrageous things and saying outrageous

things, things that some people perceive as outrageous. and saying outrageous things, things that some people perceive as outrageous. And your job is to go in, chat with them, help them make their point, and see them on their way. Until next time. And I think the other thing that's surprising to a lot of people is that a lot of the police officers who do this work come from Indigenous backgrounds and are informed by Indigenous protests, but apply these lessons in non-indigenous contexts all the time. Do you find people who have a hard time wrapping their

head around that? Yeah, I sometimes have a hard time wrapping around it myself from time to time, and sometimes I get lost in a little bit of the complexities of it. It may seem simple in a sense where these people are doing this, but it certainly has the ability to come back on us. And the other thing is the police have nothing to do with the underlying issues, right? Like we have nothing to do with it at all, but we're called to the table whether we like it or not to ensure public safety because that's what we signed up for.

And when you look at the outrageous things, so if people are saying outrageous things, and I've heard them, so two things give me oh-ohs, like, uh-oh, that's going to be problematic. One is when people have no skin in the game, but they show up and they want to cause problems, because there's nothing I can do for that person.

Like, there's now a division of issues on ground that we may have multiple fragmentations within a larger group that makes that even more complex. Or the person's there to cause problems. And then the other OO is when people say things that I cannot obtain. That there is no ability to obtain that. I'll only go home if. I'll go home if you leave Canada. Yeah. And I'd have to say, hey, Katie, the kids and I,

and you have to leave Canada or these guys are staying here. That's something that's been said. All right. And so I can't leave Canada. I love it here. But when people are saying stuff like that, there's no reasoning, right?

So you're really trying to identify things that can, you can obtain and we've had them like we've had some, right? Like we've had some instances where it was very achievable. I used to have this really good friend as the, in the negotiation branch within Indigenous Affairs. And, um, we would talk all the time and i'd say hey can you help me from this perspective and i the person that's in there now is extremely nice to me we chatted this morning but i would say how do i get this done because i think this

is really simple and then they'd say yeah this is the avenue this is what i can do for you like there was times where i've sat on calls with multiple different layers of government that are can provide or something that we can do, or like even during the Windsor Bridge before, people were saying, yeah, we'd like to talk to government. And then government provided them with a letter, right? Saying, we'll meet with you. You got to leave now, though. We'll meet with you, but please get off the bridge.

And then they didn't get off the bridge and then they didn't get off the bridge so that tells us as any normal people they're not there to really solve anything or have a meeting they're there there to create chaos right okay do you ever see something that's plainly illegal and decide you got to let it slide because of the dynamics of the situation? So, so there's plainly illegal stuff when people take the roads and we let that slide because of the dynamics of the situation. There, when it comes to violence against people,

issues against people, stuff that we cannot let slide, right? So it depends on what it is, right? But there's certainly times where we have to use discretion, obviously, as part of our job to make sure that we are doing things in a timely manner, that it is targeted strategic enforcement, which is something that I was talking about during the Federal Commission of Inquiry, and maybe grabbing people when they're away from there, like by grabbing people, sorry, for the arresting people or other when they're away from there, right? Because it would jeopardize the safety of people that are there, it would jeopardize the safety of our officers, and ultimately, it would potentially cause bigger issues right and so so that's a case of sort of essentially taking and well taking a name or noticing a a a physical description of something

somebody yeah and getting around to them later yeah and and you look at it right like so when we look at risk right so if i had a protest in an area and something was coming up and there was a place that is always protest i'd put up cameras i would put up jersey barriers i would put up i would harden the target and i would make it extremely risky for people to be doing unlawful um unsafe acts in that area because i would know that it would be recorded. I would know that it would, there would be circumstances or consequences to my actions afterwards. And I would just make sure that, um, it was well known that these are the rules of engagement, right? Like we, we, as in liaison people on a daily basis say, if you're going to protest, we have a handout that we give. It used to be like a, a restaurant kind of foldy thing. But then they

were all over the streets after. So we'd be like, hey, here, this is... So now it's like a little card with a hole in it. So if you have a carabiner, I don't know if you have a carabiner on that, and then you can just hook it on. QR code so you can go to this is what you're allowed to do. Do this or not. So it's just providing that not an ability to have an excuse when something happens to you right and and sadly you know there's young kids not young kids but young adults that are in universities that are you know sometimes told hey you should go and join that that's really important And they don't recognize the consequences sometimes associated to their actions, right? So it's really our responsibility to everyone

to make sure that people are aware of what they're doing, whether it's wrong, whether it's not, and then allowing them to make an informed decision. There's a lot of people who would say, this is all very fun and interesting and so on, but boy, that convoy in Ottawa is the classic case of a place where you could not have

gotten anything done. These people were entrenched in very large vehicles. They weren't going home anytime soon and they wanted the government of Canada overthrown. Surely there's no talking to people like that. All you can do is arrest them. there's no talking to people like that.

All you can do is arrest them. Yeah. And I think you saw that on the arrest days, that was completely done. Right. And, and the people that needed to be arrested were arrested at that time. But, but when you look at it,

like when I walked through there, right. I was asking people, hey, what are you doing here? I'm not identifying as a police officer. What are you doing here? How long are you going to be here? What does success look like for you?

What are you trying to achieve out of this? And there's one young guy, I felt really bad for him because he's like, I don't know how long I'm going to be here. I was sponsored by a community to come here and I feel obligated that I have to be here but if there's something I'm ready to go home right like if there's anything I'm good I'm good to go and um and then there was certainly radicalized people as well right and that's with any crowd right like you have literally people on every spectrum that's there and you know there was certainly there was certainly opportunity for people to leave there was certain like and not not opportunities where they took it there was opportunities for us

to ensure that that happened you look at confederation park there i don't know if anyone followed the news but there was the liaison guys that ended up going down there i think it was february 5th. And they go down, they talk to some leadership from Kitigan Zibi, which is a community, Algonquin community over that way. And they say, can you come down and talk to these guys? And they said, this is our traditional territory. We don't want you on here.

There's also a pile of letters that came from Anishinaabek Nation, other First Nations Indigenous political organizations saying, we don't agree with this. We don't want this on our traditional territory and they ended up going down to confederation park took them a day but the whole park was cleared and then um steve bell who was the acting or deputy chief at the time you know he said because of the liaison officers this is what happened right and so when that happens it tells me one there's a leader right so one someone was able to get that park cleared and two some people are willing to work at the very least with indigenous leadership and at hopefully at the best

with police officers so there was certainly opportunities to continue to do that. Like that's a momentum thing too, right? It's crowd psychology and it's the ability to leverage what's happening in different areas, right? You know, there was certainly tow truck issues when it came to resourcing, but there was also other things that could be done. And I don't want to be critical on anyone. I think, you know, the command there that was there at the time likely was under more political pressure than I have ever, or have ever felt and ever want to feel. And the guy that's there now came from British Columbia.

I was saying he had flown us out to BC to help support his liaison training out in BC, and he's a great- This is Eric Stubbs, the new Ottawa police chief. Yeah, that's right. Eric Stubbs. Who was the deputy commissioner of the RCMP in British Columbia during some protests there. Yeah.

And so he's more than capable of supporting that organization. There were some unbelievable officers that were there. Like I remember going into the one room and everyone's so dedicated and committed, but they're also beat up. Like I've never seen morale that low before, right?

Like there was people that were wanting to quit policing, a profession that before that time they really loved being a part of, right? You are the kind of person I'm in journalism to meet. the kind of person I'm in journalism to meet, someone who's working on a difficult long-term challenge, bringing fresh thinking to it, and eager to help people understand it better. So thanks for sharing your time and your experience with us tonight. Thank you, Paul.

It was a privilege for me. Good night. Good night. Thank you. Thanks for listening to The Paul Wells Show. This episode was recorded at the Munk School, where I'm the journalist fellow in residence. The Paul Wells Show is produced by Antica in partnership with the University of Toronto's

Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Our producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producers are Laura Reguerre and public policy. Our producer is Kevin Sexton. Our executive producers are Laura Reguer and Stuart Cox. Our opening theme music is by Kevin Bright and our closing theme music is by Andy Milne. Go to paulwells.substack.com to subscribe to my newsletter. You'll also get a premium version of this show with bonus content. We'll be back next Wednesday.