Chief Bell’s Speaking Points for City Press Conference Monday, June 27, 2022

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Monday, June 27, 2022   11:00am 

Thank you Mayor.

The Ottawa Police Service and its partners have built a comprehensive public safety plan to ensure all residents and visitors can celebrate Canada Day in the Capital this week.

This is expected to be a unique Canada Day, with larger crowds and a larger event footprint.

We developed our plans in the shadow of the unlawful protests and Rolling Thunder.

We have been speaking with community members and businesses. We are very aware of the lingering trauma and the concern about what they are hearing about these events.

We have been gathering intelligence, speaking with organizers and observing open source online commentary.

All of these factors have guided our planning.

Given what we know and what we are faced with, we have taken an enhanced and extended posture that starts well before the 1^st of July and extends well past to ensure we properly protect our city. 

This will be no small task but together we will do everything within our power to keep our city and residents safe.

Operational Plan

Our planning teams have been hard at work for weeks.

They have created an operational plan encompassing all levels of events, including:

• The Canadian Heritage events at LeBreton Flats
• Downtown core festivities, and suburban & rural community events
• It also includes multiple lawful measures to manage demonstrations, protests and threats of occupation by convoys.

We have developed options for multiple scenarios. We are reaching out to our policing partners to gather the resources necessary.

Multiple police services including the OPP and the RCMP are coming forward with support. 

While we are receiving support, to staff this plan we have had to take unprecedented measures to ensure every available officer and police member is deployed.

I want to thank all police members – sworn and civilian – who will be working this event.

The priority for us is public safety.  This includes, the community, crowd and officer safety measures.

We have the people, skills and equipment to ensure that these events are safe and peaceful.

We expect there to be demonstrations. This is a right of all Canadians and it will be protected.

We will not accept unlawful behaviour and we will not allow vehicle-based demonstrations in the motor vehicle control zone.

Visitors and community members will see a significant police posture and presence throughout the city. 

This is necessary to support our ability to swiftly control the core for public safety reasons or support the city’s vehicle control zone.

We have multiple resources including public order units, traffic teams, tow trucks and quick response teams.

We are prepared to take decisive and lawful action to deal with threats, occupation attempts and other unlawful behaviour that we observe.

We have also been in regular contact with the Crown Attorney to ensure they understand our plans and are able to pursue criminal matters into the Courts and support charges.

We have authorities to enter public and private property on behalf of the property owner to remove anyone attempting to occupy or set up structures.

Officers are being briefed and informed of their authorities under multiple federal, provincial and municipal acts.

Any enhanced security posture is a balancing act for police.

We do not want to overshadow the festivities.

We are also aware that there is a great deal of public interest in our public safety planning.

We will ensure that residents are kept fully aware of all information we are able to provide.

This has been a hard two years and Canadians deserve to be able to recognize this day.

Canada Day is important for this country.

It gives us an opportunity to celebrate our country and reflect on how far we have come and how far we still need to go.

Our police service and our partners will be here to ensure we can all celebrate Canada safely.

To keep up with all important updates I encourage you to follow us on Twitter at Ottawa Police.

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Tel: 613-236-1222, ext. 5366