HELLO OTTAWA
🛻 City Auditor General on the Convoy Last spring, both the City and the Police Services Board asked the Ottawa Auditor General Nathalie Gougeon to make an independent evaluation of both organization’s responses to the Convoy siege. The reports were releasd earlier today. - Audit of the City of Ottawa’s Response to the Convoy Protest
The auditor said:
During the three-week protest, while the City created a process to assist impacted residents with access to basic needs (e.g., food, shelter, medication delivery), the means of accessing this support was not adequately advertised to some residents affected by the emergency. Further, due to the reliance on community partners to assist residents in need, the City should formalize the roles and responsibilities of both the Human Needs Task Force (HNTF) and of community partners during an emergency, to ensure there is mutual understanding and agreement on the expectations the City has, and the supports required.
Based on our assessment, in the early days of the protest, although an analysis had been undertaken, Legal Services did not present City Management with all possible options, along with the merits and potential downfalls of each option for which an injunction could be sought.
Another area for improvement we noted was the need for better documentation during the emergency to keep track of directions and requests made to the City to ensure each was actioned appropriately.
🗒️ The full report
- Audit of the Ottawa Police Service’s Response to the Convoy Protest – The Role of the Ottawa Police Services Board
The auditor said:
We found that in the early stages of the protest, the Board did not clearly understand its role relative to a major event but sought out legal expertise and support to guide them through the rapidly changing event. As time went on and, in an attempt, to fulfill its mandate, the Board took steps to request operational information and asked questions of the Chief of Police; however, for most of the three-week convoy protest, this information was not provided, which impacted their ability to effectively undertake their oversight responsibilities.
Further, we noted that elements of the infrastructure supporting the Board have the potential to impact their overall effectiveness, including: skills and expertise, orientation and training and support available to Board members.
🗒️ The full report Audit of the Ottawa Police Service’s Response to the Convoy Protest – Collaboration with the City of Ottawa
The auditor said:
1. OPS did not consider the OEM as a prime partner in pre-planning
The OPS reached out to specifically implicated City departments including Transit Services, Traffic Management, Fire and Paramedics to involve them in pre-planning for the protest. The OPS did not reach out to the City’s Office of Emergency Management (OEM), the central unit within the City that is responsible for coordinating emergency planning.
Although each City department had a responsibility to raise significant concerns to management, once the magnitude of the event, the possibility of it being high risk and the likelihood of significant impacts to the City were known, the OEM should have been notified by the OPS.
2. Intelligence shared by OPS with the City was insufficient, impacting the effectiveness of the City’s planning
Given the large number of vehicles and protesters expected, a key aspect of planning for the convoy was traffic management. The OPS had developed a 46-page traffic plan as of January 26, 2022, based on the intelligence available at the time, but did not share the plan with the City. Only a brief single page plan showing police unit posts was shared with the City’s Traffic Management unit on January 29, 2022.
As an impact of this, without being provided the traffic plan, Transit Services did not get sufficient information to properly plan for bus service impacts. Transit Services found itself in the position of having to re-route, create detours, post signage, and get information out to the public all at the last minute. Having the OPS’s traffic plan would have at the very least made Transit Services aware of the planned road closures, road restrictions, staging / stacking areas, and ingress and egress routes.
3. OPS did not consistently engage City resources in traffic management throughout the convoy protest
During the first two weeks of the convoy protest, the OPS did not leverage the expertise of, nor collaborate with the Traffic Management unit for ongoing traffic management. The City found itself reacting to OPS requests (e.g., assistance with setting up barriers) related to traffic. Traffic Management found the situation chaotic as requests were being made of them (which were not always feasible), but they were not privy to the communications related to the traffic plan behind the requests. Despite this, the City did not formally request that the OPS include them in traffic planning prior to the convoy’s arrival, nor throughout the first two weeks of the event.
🗒️ The full report
– Martha and Darren |
.png?1672861609027){kind=small}
