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CBC reports: “The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) will receive $50 million in federal funding over the next five years to enhance security near Parliament Hill. The proposed funding, to be dispensed in equal $10-million annual payments beginning in 2024-2025, will help ‘bolster the Ottawa Police Services’ presence around the Parliamentary campus,’ according to the 2024 federal budget unveiled Tuesday.”
“In a report to the Ottawa Police Services Board last month, OPS said it continued to experience ‘significant expenditure pressures due to major events and demonstrations’ [including the] ‘demonstrations related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict’.”
The CBC article adds: “While the funding is specifically aimed at bolstering the local police presence near Parliament Hill [in what is known as the Parliamentary Precinct], how the money is spent will be left to the discretion of OPS.”
New provincial funding too
CBC further notes: “The province has also promised the city $48 million over three years to enhance public safety. Of that, $20 million is contingent on receiving that federal funding for ‘national protest event response and public safety’.”
Concerns about the OPS and Ottawa By-law Services
On March 26, the advocacy group Horizon Ottawa issued a media release that states: “Speakers from various local organizations advocated for a mutual goal: to demand the city uphold the right to protest in response to over $23,000 worth in tickets leveraged against activists and protesters in recent months.”
Photo: Sarah Abdul-Karim of the Palestinian Youth Movement. Photo by Ottawa Citizen.
Their statement adds: “In recent months, Ottawa By-law and Ottawa Police Service have ramped up tickets for megaphone use against Queer and Trans defence protesters, picketers and those protesting the federal government’s policies on Palestine, including Ottawa Centre MPP Joel Harden.”
Hassan Husseini, an organizer with Labour 4 Palestine in Ottawa, has also stated: “I can tell you we’ve got individual police officers pushing and shoving young women demonstrators. And in one instance, when I confronted the police officer, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ And he said, ‘She pushed me first.’ Completely childish […] behaviour by the police in trying to intimidate our community.”
February 4 incident
The Fulcrum adds: “Both Husseini and [Sarah] Abdul-Karim [of the Palestinian Youth Movement] point to a recent incident where six police officers and bylaw followed two young women into an underground parking lot to ticket them. Bystanders immediately stood up for the women by calling the police out on the intimidation tactic, and ultimately no charges were issued.”
January 28 incident
The Palestinian Youth Movement has posted: “We’ve all seen the distressing footage from last week’s protest: police officer Craig lunged at protesters to target an individual who was simply chanting. This resulted in Craig hitting one of our community marshals. The Ottawa Police’s attempts to silence and intimidate protestors are shameful and must be addressed before they escalate further.”
OPS to develop a “permanent Special Events Team”
Notably, CTV adds: “New Chief Eric Stubbs and his staff have been working on creating a ‘permanent Special Events Team’ to plan and manage events and demonstrations in Ottawa. A report for the March meeting of the Ottawa Police Services Board said the team would ‘ensure community safety prior to, during, and after events and demonstrations.’”
OPS Chief Stubbs and the C-IRG
At the time of the announcement of his appointment as Police Chief, le Droit reported: “In recent years, Eric Stubbs has been involved in the management of protests on traditional Wet’suwet’en territory, in opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline project.”
Photo: The RCMP C-IRG arrest Freda Huson and Pocholo Alen Conception, February 10, 2020. Photo by Amber Bracken/The Narwhal.
Sam Hersh of Horizon Ottawa has commented in the Ottawa Citizen: “In his previous role as assistant commissioner with the British Columbia RCMP, he was heavily involved in the police raids on Wet’suwet’en territory. These raids saw armed violence brought upon the Indigenous community, along with the unwarranted arrests of journalists.”
Hersh has also noted: “We are unsure how a Police Chief who played a big role in raids of Indigenous territory is supposed to make BIPOC and other equity-seeking communities in Ottawa feel safe – quite the opposite”.
The C-IRG as a “national best practice”
In February of this year, The Tyee reported: “The RCMP sent a controversial policing unit, which was originally formed to respond to clashes over resource extraction, to events protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, framing the demonstrations as ‘pro-Hamas’ and supportive of terrorism.”
The RCMP unit was called the Community-Industry Response Group (C-IRG).
That article added: “C-IRG’s approach to public disorder has been adopted as a ‘national best practice’, according to senior media relations officer Staff Sgt. Kris Clark, and a rebrand is underway to reflect its expanded role in B.C.”
The unit, now renamed the Critical Response Unit or CRU-BC, is currently under systemic investigation by the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission (CRCC). This investigation follows nearly 500 complaints about the unit including allegations of excessive force, illegal tactics, unprofessional behaviour, racism, discrimination and violations of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
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