Mendicino says Lucki warned him of 'urgent' threat of violence in Alberta before Emergencies Act was invoked
CBC
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino says the head of the RCMP shared with him sensitive police information the day before the government decided to invoke the Emergencies Act — and warned him that some protesters in Alberta were willing "to go down with the cause."
"This was a threshold moment for me. There is no doubt about it," Mendicino told the Public Order Emergency Commission Tuesday.
The minister said he spoke with Commissioner Brenda Lucki on Feb. 13. During that conversation, he said, Lucki updated him on plans to execute a police operation at the blockade near Coutts, Alta.
"She did call me and only me," Mendicino testified on Tuesday.
"She underlined, for me, that the situation in Coutts involved a hardened cell of individuals armed to the teeth with lethal firearms, who possessed a willingness to go down with the cause."
Court records show the RCMP had undercover officers embedded with the protesters.
"Lives literally hung in the balance," said Mendicino. "For me, this represented far and away the most serious and urgent moment in the blockade to this point in time."
WATCH: Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino describes conversation with Lucki about Coutts blockade
Mendicino was questioned about a Feb. 13 email Lucki sent to his chief of staff Mike Jones, previously entered into evidence.
In it, she wrote that police had not yet exhausted all available tools. The email chain shows Jones forwarded it onto Mendicino.
The ministers said Lucki was expressing a different view in his conversations with her.
"It also spoke volumes to me about the commissioner's state of mind, which was that we were potentially seeing an escalation of serious violence with the situation in Coutts," he said.
Mendicino said he told Lucki he couldn't keep the information about the potential for loss of life in Coutts to himself. He said he shared it with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Katie Telford, his chief of staff — but not with the cabinet table, due to the information's operational sensitivity.
"I was extremely concerned that this had reached a new height of both urgency and emergency," he said.
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