One of Premier Doug Ford's appointees to Ottawa's police oversight board took part in protests against governments' public health rules that paralyzed the nation's capital for weeks, QP Briefing has confirmed.
Robert Swaita is one of three members of the Ottawa Police Services Board who was installed by the provincial government. QP Briefing can confirm Swaita attended protests near Parliament Hill a few days after they started.
Ottawa's police have been blamed for not taking protesters seriously, nor preparing adequately for their arrival.
The civilian police services boards do not direct the police. Boards set budgets, objectives and priorities for the police force, recruit and appoint chiefs of police, and monitor the chief's performance.
Thousands of protesters originally rallying against a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for cross-border transport truck drivers began arriving in Ottawa in droves on Jan. 28. They would occupy the city's downtown for more than three weeks, gaining international notoriety in the process.
To end the protests, police brought from across Canada used never-before-invoked powers to conduct an operation unlike any before it in Canadian history and forcibly remove demonstrators and their vehicles from Ottawa.
At the time QP Briefing can confirm Swaita was at the protests, none of the three jurisdictions of government had declared an emergency yet, as they all eventually did.
On the first weekend of the protests, demonstrators drew widespread ire for desecrating the National War Memorial, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and the Terry Fox statue near Parliament, and for Confederate and Nazi flags being seen at the protests. Swaita was uninvolved in these incidents, as far as QP Briefing is aware.
Reached by phone on Wednesday morning, Swaita declined to answer questions from QP Briefing about attending the protests.
"I'm not sure what you're talking about," Swaita said when asked about attending demonstrations.
Asked if he denied attending the Ottawa protests, Swaita did not.
"I'm not interested in talking to you about it," he said. "I'm not sure who you really are and how you got my number, so I'm not really interested in talking about it with you."
QP Briefing confirmed through another source that Swaita was in fact at protests a few days after they started.
Swaita is not barred by Ontario's Police Services Act, or any other laws, from peacefully protesting — which everyone in Canada has the right to do.
As protests in Ottawa persisted through a third week, and demonstrators made clear they wouldn't leave until all Canadian governments ended all COVID rules and restrictions, Ottawa's police chief Peter Sloly resigned.
The Ottawa Police Services Board is made up of seven members: three provincial appointees, including Swaita, as well as three city councillors, and one citizen appointed by city council. This makeup is outlined in the Police Services Act.
The day after Sloly resigned as Ottawa's police chief, city council voted to remove the police board's chair, Coun. Diane Deans, from the board. The other two councillors on the police board who were members before the crisis resigned from the oversight group during the same meeting. The board's citizen-appointee, Sandy Smallwood, resigned on the same day.
In the same week, Ottawa's newly-appointed police chief, Matt Torigian, quit after two days following reports that the board bypassed a competitive process to hire him.
The board hasn't hired a new chief of police yet, and is still in shambles itself. Its last public meeting was planned to be held on Monday, but it was cancelled.
The only members of the police services board that are left who predate the Ottawa occupation are the Ford government's appointees: Swaita, Bev Johnson and Daljit Nirman.
Swaita was appointed to the Ottawa Police Services Board in March 2020. His term lasts until March 2023.
Local MPPs of the governing party are sometimes asked by cabinet to suggest who the government should appoint to a city's police board.
Swaita is also a well-known local businessman and member of Ottawa's Lebanese community. He also at one point had political ambitions: he ran against Deans, the police board's former chair, in the last municipal election.
The Progressive Conservatives hold three seats in Ottawa. Its Ottawa MPPs are cabinet ministers Lisa MacLeod (Nepean) and Merrilee Fullerton (Kanata–Carleton), and Jeremy Roberts (Ottawa West—Nepean).
Two well-placed sources QP Briefing spoke to, under the condition of anonymity, suspected MacLeod played a role in approving Swaita’s appointment. QP Briefing could not confirm this prior to publication.
Swaita and MacLeod are friends, which the minister has said in the legislature.
After this story was originally published, a spokesperson for MacLeod told QP Briefing MacLeod did not recommend Swaita's appointment.
Since 2014, Swaita has donated $5,597 to Progressive Conservative riding associations and candidates, according to Elections Ontario disclosures. His donations haven't significantly favoured any candidate or riding association in particular, but the highest amount he's given to any individual entity is $1,830 to the PCs' Ottawa West—Nepean riding association, where Roberts is MPP.
Police board appointees are also typically vetted by the solicitor general, which is a position that Sylvia Jones has held since 2019.
The last donations Swaita made to PC causes were in 2020.
Two sources also told QP Briefing that Swaita had grown increasingly disgruntled with the government over the pandemic, because of personal opinions he holds toward vaccination, as well as the impacts that COVID rules and restrictions have had on his restaurant business.
Clarification: The first version of this story stated that sources suspected Swaita was appointed at MacLeod's recommendation. That has been clarified to say they suspected she played a role in approving his appointment. More on that here. This story was updated at 12:10 p.m. on May 25.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.