Ottawa learned of Coutts, Alta., 'individuals armed to the teeth' day before Emergencies Act, Mendicino says

Canada's public safety minister told the inquiry into the Freedom Convoy he learned of the lethal threat presented by protesters at a major border crossing in southern Alberta a day before the government invoked the Emergencies Act.

Marco Mendicino is one of seven federal cabinet ministers scheduled to testify at the inquiry and, on Tuesday, he told the commission the government had been closely monitoring the situation in Coutts, Alta.

The minister also said RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki shared confidential information with him about a group of individuals in Coutts who were considered dangerous.

That information came to his attention shortly before the federal government made the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.

"I spoke to the commissioner that day – on Feb. 13," he said. "She did call me, and only me – this was a conversation between her and I, to be clear, to express her very grave concerns about the situation in Coutts.

"The situation in Coutts involved a hardened cell of individuals who were armed to the teeth with lethal firearms who possess a willingness to go down with the cause."

Mendicino says this information came from undercover RCMP who were deployed in amongst the protesters there and said that information was critical because "lives literally hung in the balance."

"This represented, far and away, the most serious and urgent moment in the blockade to this moment in time," Mendicino said.

"We were potentially seeing an escalation of serious violence with the situation in Coutts."

He says he told Lucki he could not keep that information to himself and needed to share it with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"All of this was occurring within hours of the invocation of the Emergencies Act."

Mendicino says once he shared details about the Coutts situation with Trudeau, he "was asked" to keep it confidential.

"We were on the precipice of engaging in an operation in Coutts where people were armed with a significant number of lethal firearms, where they possessed body armour, where there was intelligence or information that they had ideologically extremist views."

While the Coutts investigation was the sole incident, Mendicino added there was information from many agencies, including the RCMP, included in the decision to initiate the Emergencies Act.

"It was consistent with the advice we were getting contemporaneous to the invocation of the Emergencies Act around tools to address the gaps that existed," he said.

"The need to deploy RCMP officers, the need to procure essential services, importantly the need to declare 'no-go' zones or prohibition of assemblies."

Mendicino added that even the Canada Border Services Agency had expressed concerns over its authority and jurisdiction to clear roads on the way to the border.

That situation, along with the events in Ottawa, showed the movement was a nationwide concern, Mendicino said.

"This was not just an isolated incident. These events were occurring across the country," he said.

"Our paramount concern is restoring public safety and by then, there were countless reports of the very dire consequences that had been visited upon Canadians. But that could never be a licence for assuming the roles and the responsibilities of police when it came to making the tactical and operational decisions around how to restore public safety.

"We had to strike a balance."

TRUDEAU 'SCREWED THE POOCH': KENNEY

In more testimony on Tuesday afternoon, the inquiry heard about a text message conversation between Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Alberta's former premier Jason Kenney.

During the course of those messages, Kenney accused the federal government of "holding the bag on enforcement" and denying a request from his province for military equipment to remove protest vehicles.

In an apparent reference to Trudeau, Kenney wrote, "Your guy has really screwed the pooch," and called the vaccine mandate for truckers "dumb political theatre."

Kenney went on to say labelling protesters as Nazis "hasn't exactly helped" and says he was unable to find tow trucks to remove protesters - whom he called "crazies" - because of concerns some were making death threats.

This is the final week of hearings at the Public Order Emergency Commission's inquiry into the federal government's use of the Emergencies Act.

Trudeau is expected to testify on Friday.

(With files from The Canadian Press)