Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he now regrets calling members of the "Freedom Convoy" protest a "small fringe minority of people" with "unacceptable views" last year as the convoy made its way to Ottawa.
Trudeau made the comment during a televised address on Jan. 27, 2022, ahead of the convoy's arrival in Ottawa. Members of the anti-COVID-19 restriction and anti-government convoy and protesters supporting them remained in Ottawa for three weeks in January and February, leaving only after Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act His "fringe" remarks became somewhat of a rallying cry for protesters, showing up on signage and merchandise promoting the protests.
After a months-long national inquiry into the events last winter, the Public Order Emergency Commission concluded on Friday that the federal government met the threshold for invoking the Emergencies Act to bring an end to the Freedom Convoy protests and blockades.
However, in the executive summary of a five-volume, 2,000-page report released by the commission, Commissioner Paul Rouleau criticized Trudeau's "fringe" remark has having emboldened the protesters and further embittered them toward government authorities.
"I expect that the Prime Minister was intending to refer to the small number of people who were expressing racist, extremist, or otherwise reprehensible views, rather than to all Freedom Convoy participants," Rouleau wrote.
"However, in my view more of an effort should have been made by government leaders at all levels during the protests to acknowledge that the majority of protesters were exercising their fundamental democratic rights."
Rouleau concluded by saying messaging by politicians, public officials and the media should have been more balanced, and "drawn a clearer distinction between those who were protesting peacefully and those who were not."
When asked by a journalist on Friday during a press conference on Parliament Hill whether he regretted making the comment last January, Trudeau had this to say:
"Yeah, I wish I had said that differently. As I look back on that, and as I've reflected on it over the past months, not just freshly from this commissioner鈥檚 report, I wish I had phrased it differently. The fact is, there is a very small number of people in this country who deliberately spread misinformation and disinformation that led to Canadians deaths, that led to excessive hardship in people who believed them."
The prime minister said that while he continues to be "very firm against" those individuals, they were "a small subset of people who were just hurting and worried, and wanting to be heard."
"And as much as I tried to emphasize throughout the time, that of course, we're always going to stand up for freedom of speech and freedom to protest peacefully, I wish I hadn't said something that was able to be spread larger," said Trudeau.
He said he thinks that if he had chosen his words more carefully, "things might have been a bit easier."
With files from Senior Digital Parliamentary Reporter Rachel Aiello
