PMO staff say Bergen privately acknowledged concerns over engaging with protesters

Staff in the Prime Minister's Office are suggesting the former Conservative interim leader, Candice Bergen, privately acknowledged concerns about engaging with self-styled Freedom Convoy protesters last winter while publicly urging the prime minister to listen to them — something Bergen denies.

A summary of interviews with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's senior aides was released by the public inquiry looking into the federal government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.

The document said Trudeau's chief of staff, Katie Telford, asked whether Bergen could help and the two leaders discussed reaching out to protesters in a Feb. 3 phone call.

"Ms. Telford added that during the call, Ms. Bergen acknowledged that there were significant concerns about whom the federal government could engage with and setting a bad precedent," the summary said.

The conversation happened on Bergen's first day on the job, when she publicly challenged Trudeau's government in the House of Commons for not offering an "olive branch" to the protesters.

During question period she charged that the prime minister needed to come up with a plan to make protesters "feel they have been listened to." Instead, she told MPs, Trudeau was "threatening Canadians with more vaccine mandates."

In a statement posted to Twitter on Friday, Bergen called reports about the call "misleading" and said Trudeau has "a long habit of mischaracterizing conversations and interactions he has with people."

"I agreed with the PM that though he could not necessarily acquiesce to demands of protesters, that people needed to be heard and that involved dialogue," she said.

But, Bergen said, characterization of the call is not her main concern.

"The interpretation and semantics surrounding a read-out of a private conversation between myself, and the prime minister is not the issue here.

"The issue is the unjustified invocation of the Emergencies Act by a prime minister who is still acting like a coward by manipulating, misleading and twisting the truth." 

Trudeau testified at the inquiry on Friday.

Bergen had said Thursday that she had a different recollection of that Feb. 3 call with Trudeau. She said the prime minister called to congratulate her on becoming leader, and that they discussed a number of things.

"I asked him if he would consider reaching out and extending an olive branch to the people who had come to Ottawa," Bergen wrote in an email Thursday. "He said he didn't want to set a precedent by speaking to protesters in that way."

The document released by the commission says federal officials considered possible engagement with the protesters "more than once as a possible option" to bringing an end to the blockade.

Ultimately that option had little support across government, Telford told the commission Thursday.

"There were too many unanswered questions," she said.

"There was no clarity in terms of who the discussion would be with on either side of the discussion, and what the discussion would be about and what it might result in."

Trudeau's senior staff appeared on the second-last day of public hearings held by the commission, which is probing the federal government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to protests that gridlocked downtown Ottawa and blockaded the Canada-U.S. border.