Contradictions and Dubious Claims: Some Hard Questions Must Be Asked—and Answered—by Emergencies Act Inquiry

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino rises during question period in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Feb. 17, 2022. (The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

Commentary

Assuming Justice Paul Rouleau takes his role seriously as the commissioner of a public inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act earlier this year, it is going to be difficult for the government to justify its actions.

The Emergencies Act is the most powerful piece of legislation the federal government has. Through the invocation of the act, civil liberties of citizens can be suspended in response to an emergency. Exercising such power can never be taken lightly. That is why the modellers of the act built a clause into the legislation requiring an independent inquiry to be held within 60 days of the use of the act. This inquiry could cause a lot of trouble for the Liberal party and the NDP alike, as the leaders of both parties acted together to invoke the act.

The government will have to prove they were forced into invoking the act, and as information emerges from parliamentary committee hearings on the issue, it doesn’t appear as if the government has a good case to make.

Per the act:

“For the purposes of this Act, a national emergency is an urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature that

• (a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or
• (b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada

and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.”

There are some questions based on that definition I hope and expect will be asked in the judicial inquiry.

To begin with, was the truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest a national emergency? In being just set up around a part of the city of Ottawa, it’s hard to claim it had any impact on the rest of the country. While Parliament Hill is the seat of power in Canada, we had recently seen it demonstrated how government can continue doing business through Zoom in times of crisis. If indeed it was an emergency, it was a local rather than national one.

Did the protest seriously endanger the lives, health, or safety of Canadians?

Police confront demonstrators participating in the Freedom Convoy protest opposing vaccine mandates in Ottawa on Feb. 19, 2022. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

The answer has to be no. While the protest lasted weeks and annoyed and inconvenienced local residents, nobody was endangered nor was anybody hurt or had their health compromised. It is remarkable how peaceful such a large and enduring protest was.

Dubious claims had been made of attempted arson by protesters and that firearms had been seized from protesters. Both of those claims have been disproven, but that didn’t stop Public Safety Minister Mendicino from trying to link such incidents to the convoy protest. There were no substantiated claims of violent or dangerous actions or intent linked to the protest.

Did the protest seriously threaten the sovereignty or territorial integrity of Canada?

Not a chance.

There was a bizarre “memorandum of understanding” making the rounds on the internet where some fringe group was claiming they could compel the leader of the Senate and the governor general to displace the prime minister and install some sort of national governing committee. The document had no basis in reality and most of the people taking part in the protests hadn’t even heard of it. While the handful of people who drafted that statement may indeed have wanted to overthrow the government, it clearly was not a serious threat.

Finally, was it impossible to deal with these protests under any other law in Canada?

Not according to several police chiefs. While Mendicino has repeatedly claimed that police requested that the government invoke the Emergencies Act to deal with the protest, not a single police chief can be found to corroborate that claim. Now Mendicino is claiming he was somehow misunderstood. Few are buying that, and I expect his excuse won’t hold much water in a formal judicial inquiry. Police may have been asking for extra resources to deal with the protest, but none felt they couldn’t get them under control under existing Canadian laws. Police cleared the blockade at the Windsor border crossing without any need for extraordinary powers. Given time, they could have done so in Ottawa as well.

The government dearly hopes Canadians will forget what happened in Ottawa in February. Justice Rouleau’s inquiry is going to bring that event back into focus in a few months. If the government’s case for the invocation of the Emergencies Act is as weak at the inquiry as it has been before special committees, Rouleau is going to be forced to rule that the invocation was unjustified.

Unless Trudeau and Singh can pull some kind of rabbit out of their hats, I don’t see how the inquiry can end any other way.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.