The mayor of Canada's national capital said officials failed to act fast enough to curb demonstrations that paralyzed his city earlier this year.

BBC News reports that Jim Watson was testifying at a public inquiry looking into whether it was warranted for Canada to invoke emergency powers to end the protests.

The so-called Freedom Convoy protests began at the end of January and gridlocked Ottawa for three weeks. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February14.

The Public Order Emergency Commission began six weeks of hearings October 13, giving a behind-the-scenes look at the confusion and frustration between the municipal, provincial and federal governments as well as local police as they sought a solution to end the protests.

In his testimony, Ottawa's Mayor Watson said his city had "lost control" of the protest site and that Ottawa police were outnumbered.

The "Freedom Convoy" arrived in the city on 28 January and was cleared by police over the weekend of 18 February.

It gridlocked much of Ottawa's city center with hundreds of heavy trucks at the time — a protest deemed an illegal blockade by police and the federal government — while smaller, shorter-lived protests blocked two key US-Canada border crossings.

The Trudeau government has insisted that the use of the Emergencies Act — for the first time since it became law in 1988 — was a necessary "last resort" to deal with unprecedented protests.