Ottawa People’s Commission (OPC)
The OPC has heard from over 200 residents who have bravely shared the impact of huge trucks blocking streets, spewing exhaust fumes, unrelenting honking, and harassment and intimidation during the three-and-a-half week convoy occupation last winter.
Through 13 public hearings, six community consultations, and over 75 written submissions, Ottawa-Gatineau residents sounded the alarm at the violence they endured, the gaslighting and abandonment by the city and police, and the ways in which the community stepped up to keep each other safe.
Working closely with the Centretown Community Health Centre, OPC is proud to have partnered with Wisdom2Action, Kind Space, the Good Companion’s Seniors Centre, The Well, and others to host community consultations with residents who were disproportionately affected by the disruption. These included precariously housed and unhoused folks, the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, seniors, people with disabilities, and racialized residents.
Alex Neve, one of the four OPC commissioners and the former secretary-general of Amnesty International Canada, said, “We’ve heard loud and clear from those most affected that, for them, the convoy’s impact isn’t over. There is trauma that people were still carrying, there are answers people still need, and there was a strong desire and need for justice and accountability that has not been met.”
The OPC will release the first part of its report on January 30, marking the occupation’s one-year anniversary. This installment will focus on “what we heard,” reflecting and amplifying the community’s experience of violence and abandonment, which has been largely overlooked in the federal inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act.
Part two of the report, with further analysis and recommendations, is set to come out in the spring.
On the OPC’s approach to consultations, Neve said, “Human rights [are] at the heart of everything we’re hearing and we’ve been thinking as we process our findings and frame our recommendations, because at its core everything that happened in Ottawa in February is about human rights.”
Interested in hearing what your neighbours had to say? Visit our website at opc-cpo.ca to sign up for our newsletter and check out OPC’s crowdsourced timeline of the convoy occupation.