Source: Trudeau to call emergency
Canadian provinces split on best option against protests
OTTAWA, Ontario — Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has decided to invoke emergency powers across all of Canada to quell the protests that have paralyzed Ottawa and blocked border crossings in anger over the country’s covid-19 restrictions, a senior government official said Monday.
The prime minister met virtually with the leaders of Canada’s provinces.
In recent days, Trudeau rejected calls to use the military but otherwise said “all options are on the table” to end the protests, including invoking the Emergencies Act, which gives the government broad powers to restore order.
The government official who confirmed Trudeau’s plans gave no details on precisely how Trudeau intends to use his emergency authority. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
For more than two weeks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in trucks and other vehicles have clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital, railing against vaccine mandates for truckers and other covid-19 precautions and condemning Trudeau’s Liberal government.
Members of the self-styled Freedom Convoy have also blockaded various U.S.-Canadian border crossings, though the busiest and most important — the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit — was reopened Sunday after police arrested the last of the demonstrators and broke the nearly weeklong siege that had disrupted auto production in both countries.
“This is the biggest, greatest, most severe test Trudeau has faced,” said Wesley Wark, a University of Ottawa professor and national security expert.
The Conservative premier of Ontario, which is Canada’s most populous province and includes Ottawa and Windsor, indicated support for the emergency action before the meeting with Trudeau.
But at least three other provincial leaders — in Quebec, Alberta and Saskatchewan — warned Trudeau against taking emergency action, some of them cautioning that such a move could inflame an already dangerous situation.
“At this point it would not help the social climate. There is a lot of pressure and I think we have to be careful,” said Quebec Premier Francois Legault. “It wouldn’t help for the polarization.”
The protests have drawn support from right-wing extremists and armed citizens in Canada, and have been cheered on in the U.S. by Fox News personalities and conservatives such as former President Donald Trump.
Other Canadian conservatives pushed Trudeau to drop the pandemic mandates.
“He’s got protests right around the country and now he’s dropping in the polls, desperately trying to save his political career. The solution is staring him in the face,” said opposition Conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre, who is running for the party’s leadership.
“All he has to do is listen to the experts, do what other countries are doing, and that is eliminate these mandates and restrictions, and to let the protesters, including the truckers, to go back to their jobs and lives.”
In other developments, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said they arrested 11 people at the blockaded border crossing at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana, after learning of a cache of guns and ammunition.
Police said a small group within the protest was said to have a “willingness to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt the blockade.” Authorities seized 13 long guns, handguns, sets of body armor, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high-capacity magazines.
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney also said protesters in a tractor and a heavy-duty truck tried to ram a police vehicle at Coutts on Sunday night and fled.
“This is extremely concerning,” he said. “There is, at least in that case, a small cell of people who wanted to take this in a very dangerous and dark direction.”
Over the past weeks, authorities have hesitated to move against the protesters around the country. Local officials cited a lack of police manpower and fears of violence, while provincial and federal authorities disagreed over who had responsibility for quelling the unrest.
Invoking the Emergencies Act would allow the federal government to declare the Ottawa protest illegal and clear it out by such means as towing vehicles, said Wark of the University of Ottawa. It would also enable the government to make greater use of the Mounties, the federal police agency.
An earlier version of the Emergencies Act, called the War Measures Act, was used just once during peacetime, by Trudeau’s late father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, to deal with a militant Quebec independence movement in 1970.
Invoking emergency powers would be “a signal to both Canadians across the country and also an important signal to allies like the United States and around the world who are wondering what the hell has Canada been up to,” Wark said.