How a plan to end the convoy protest came together — and why it failed

Ottawa city manager Steve Kanellakos revealed new details Monday about a last-ditch agreement between police, protesters and politicians to move trucks out of residential areas and onto Wellington Street during last winter's convoy protest in the capital — a deal that would ultimately fall apart just days before the federal government gave police special powers to end the occupation.

Kanellakos was testifying on the third day of the Public Order Emergency Commission, which was triggered when the Emergencies Act was invoked on Feb. 14.

Six days earlier, on the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 8, Kanellakos was making his way to his office in the heritage wing of Ottawa city hall when his phone rang. It was Steve Bell, deputy chief of the Ottawa Police Service (OPS).

Despite earlier assurances from police that the protesters would likely leave the city after the first weekend of demonstrations, many had remained through a second tense weekend and were showing no signs of leaving.

Two days earlier, Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson had declared a state of emergency, and the previous week then police chief Peter Sloly had declared he was becoming increasingly concerned there was "no policing solution" to the impasse.

Kanellakos was by that time convinced Ottawa police alone couldn't end the occupation, but negotiations with upper levels of government were proving fruitless and frustrating. Towing companies with the kind of equipment needed to haul away tractor-trailers refused to get involved, either out of fear for their employees' safety or sympathy with the protesters.

Bell, who would soon take over as interim chief after Sloly's resignation, was looking for a different kind of solution, but he needed Kanellakos's help.

The plan was to hammer out an agreement with protest leaders to move the vehicles clogging residential areas of Ottawa's downtown onto Parliament Hill, giving downtown residents some much-needed respite from the noise and disruption, and giving police a more manageable geographic area to work within.

Bell explained that talks between police and protesters had broken down, but protest leaders had asked for a meeting with someone at city hall.

"I was reluctant when he first told me. We never had any intention ... of meeting with the protest leaders. That wasn't on our radar or anything we were planning to do," Kanellakos testified.

"I wasn't convinced that I should meet with them because I felt that that was opening up another door in terms of a signal that we're prepared to start negotiating."

Kanellakos consulted with Watson, who he said was also reluctant because he suspected the protesters of trying to use talks with the city as a ploy to draw the federal government to the negotiating table.

"He didn't tell me not to meet them, and he didn't tell me to meet them," Kanellakos recalled. "He just thought it was a bad idea."

Despite his own reservations, Kanellakos offered to handle the meeting without getting the mayor involved.