Former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly makes highly anticipated appearance at Emergencies Act inquiry today

Former Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly said last winter's convoy protests "badly exposed" issues with policing and national security in Canada, according to evidence tabled with the Emergencies Act inquiry ahead of his testimony later this morning.

Sloly, who resigned on Feb. 15, also told the Public Order Emergency Commission he does not believe a different approach by the Ottawa Police Service (OPS) would have prevented the demonstrations from gridlocking the capital last winter.

Sloly will tell more of his side of the story in his highly anticipated appearance before the commission Friday morning, set to get underway at 9:30 a.m. ET. CBC News will carry it live online.

Sloly has sat for four interviews with the commission's lawyers since late August; his most recent interview was on Oct. 5. A summary of what he said in those interviews was tabled as evidence at the inquiry earlier this week.

"Sloly does not believe that [the Ottawa Police Service] could have done anything materially differently on a big-picture level given the unprecedented national security crisis that the OPS was faced with," says the summary of Sloly's witness interview.

"There were structural problems in the national security, police and justice [structures] that long predated the Convoy events and were badly exposed during this paradigm shifting and unprecedented event."

One of the biggest criticisms levelled at Sloly and other members of the Ottawa Police Service was that they ignored warnings that protesters were going to stay in the city until their demands for a new government and a repeal of all vaccine mandates were met.

The Public Order Emergency Commission inquiry has heard that Ottawa police expected most of the protesters to leave after the first weekend and did not have a contingency plan in place after Monday, Jan. 31.

Sloly told the commission he first learned a crowd of protesters was travelling to Ottawa back on Jan. 13, when he received a report on the "Freedom Convoy" from Project Hendon, an intelligence sharing network led by the Ontario Provincial Police.

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The OPP would continue to send Project Hendon reports to the Ottawa police. 

During one of Sloly's interviews, the commission's lawyers showed him a Jan. 26 Project Hendon report warning that elements of the protests could pose a risk and some supporters supported "fringe ideologies."

Sloly responded that such risks could materialize at most major events.

"This passage therefore did not assist Chief Sloly to determine whether the Freedom Convoy posed a major problem," says his witness testimony.