Empty stores, `trapped' residents
COMMISSION HEARS OF `CRIPPLING' IMPACTS FROM PROTEST AS OFFICIALS UNABLE TO COPE
Advocates for Ottawa businesses said former police chief Peter Sloly told them he was “scared” by the Freedom Convoy protests in the days following the first weekend of blockades, the Public Order Emergency Commission heard Friday.
Nathalie Carrier, with the Vanier Business Improvement Area, said she became seriously concerned about the Freedom Convoy blockades on a call with other business owners, municipal authorities and Sloly in the days following the first weekend of protests last January.
“I remember the chief saying at one point, ‘You guys are scared I get it. I’m scared’,” Carrier said. “And I thought, the chief of police is scared, something much bigger is happening here than a protest,” she continued, adding that a lot of people on that call were also “shaken.”
“These are people that we rely on,” Carrier said about Ottawa Police as she held back tears. “I remember being scared personally.”
Sloly has not yet testified at the commission but through his lawyer disputed the quote. Tom Curry suggested that Sloly was trying to empathize with residents and businesses.
“Sloly is going to say he didn’t say that. But instead he was expressing that he understood people were frightened,” said Curry.
In a note to Ottawa businesses in the days before the first weekend of protests, police described the incoming Freedom Convoy as a “significant and extremely fluid event that could go on for a prolonged period.”
Carrier said they didn’t get the information they would have received for a similarly large event, like Canada Day, and the information they did receive was different from that note.
“We were told ... by the end of the weekend, everything should be good and everyone will likely be gone.”
Carrier said the overall impact of the three-week occupation on local businesses was enormous because they couldn’t rely on any services.
“Businesses were completely crippled and that has to be understood by this commission, because there were no deliveries, there was no loading zone, there was no Uber Eats. There were no clients in the stores.”
Carrier said she kept in touch with businesses near a secondary location for the convoy — a large parking lot outside a baseball stadium and they reported being harassed by protesters for wearing masks.
She said a Canadian Tire manager told her that in one weekend he had sold out of knives and bear spray, which she found alarming.
The commission showed video filmed by Carrier of a significant encampment of trucks and trailers set up on a lot on Coventry Road, a few kilometres from Parliament Hill, on the Sunday of the first weekend of protests.
“To me personally, it was clear that the 70-kilometre train of trucks that crossed the country was not coming in for a small protest of one day,” she said. “They were coming to the city of Ottawa as the representatives of what they thought, and they were going to stay there until they were heard.”
Ottawa residents also testified Friday and said the convoy left them with anxiety and sleep deprivation and long-term throat and lung issues after having to navigate downtown streets littered with excrement and illegal bonfires.
Victoria De La Ronde, who is visually impaired, testified she felt abandoned and trapped by the convoy because it made it difficult to navigate the streets.
“It was such an experience of helplessness, especially during the event, where the horn blowing was so loud and continuous,” she said.
She flinched as a recording of the horns resounded in the conference room for the benefit of the commissioner of inquiry into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act to end the protest on Feb. 14.
De La Ronde said she couldn’t navigate the streets alone, couldn’t get any deliveries like groceries and couldn’t get public transport or taxis to come to her apartment.
“There was just no escape to that, so I felt trapped and helpless.”
Zexi Li, another downtown resident who is also the lead plaintiff in a classaction lawsuit against convoy organizers, said she couldn’t sleep while the convoy was there.
“It was almost impossible to get a good night’s sleep or a full night’s sleep,” she said. “If anything, it would be a low quality, and often interrupted by a sudden loud horn.”
Li said that she also saw the effects of the “occupation” on her neighbours.
“They were literally having mental breakdowns because of the stress and the noise and just the terror they felt.”