OPP intelligence chief reported 'ethical' qualms about calls for background checks on some convoy protesters

The head of the Ontario Provincial Police intelligence bureau said he had "professional and ethical" concerns about requests he was getting from police and political leaders for background checks on participants in last winter's convoy protest who had not engaged in illegal activity.

In documents tabled with the public inquiry studying the federal government's handling of the convoy protest, Supt. Pat Morris, commander of the OPP intelligence bureau, pushed back at what he described as requests for background checks that fell outside his bureau's legal mandate.

"On the ethical front, several requests do not relate to the parameters that the state/police should consider in intelligence operations," Morris wrote in a memo to OPP Deputy Commissioner Chuck Cox on Feb. 2.

"The potential 'targets' are not engaged in criminal activity nor do we have reasonable grounds to believe that they will be. They may oppose government policy and engage in protest."

Morris said in the documents he had professional concerns about the number of different people and government departments that were asking his section to dig into the backgrounds of convoy protesters.

"There appears to be an incredibly heightened appetite for any/all information on entities that cause discomfort to the status quo — be they companies, school boards, government authorities or political leaders." Morris wrote. "And this appetite is being articulated in irresponsible ways — attaching urgency to requests."

As the convoy protest paralyzed downtown Ottawa and blocked border crossings to the U.S. last winter, much of the intelligence that informed the response by police and governments was coming from the OPP's Provincial Operations Intelligence Bureau (POIB), which had been monitoring the people and groups behind protests such as Shut Down Canada since late 2019 as part of the Hendon Project.

The Hendon Project reports warned in mid-January that the convoy protest that ended up tying downtown Ottawa in knots for three weeks could end up being larger and more durable than anyone was expecting at the time.

In the course of its work on the convoy protest, the POIB produced 87 "person of interest profiles," according to a list provided to the inquiry.

Most of those reports have been heavily redacted before being released by the inquiry. They include information gleaned from open sources such as social media, criminal record checks, photos, biometric data such as height and weight, home addresses, phone numbers, employers, names of spouses, information on firearm ownership, driving records, address history and photos of vehicles and homes.

Testifying before the inquiry on Oct, 19, Morris said his section also conducted surveillance and covert operations on the convoy protest as part of its intelligence gathering.

In his Feb. 2 memo to Deputy Commissioner Cox, which came after the first weekend of the convoy protest in Ottawa, Morris said requests for POIB intelligence were on the rise.

"POIB is increasingly receiving requests for information, intelligence, open source scrapes, background checks etc. on a wide array of social actors," Morris wrote.

"Many of these entities are social movements that have perspectives that diverge from the mainstream — they may not be engaged in criminal activity, nor do we have grounds to believe or suspect that they are. These requests are emanating from many clients internal and external to the OPP at an escalating rate — and with great urgency."