JUDGE SAYS RESPONSE TO TRUCKER PROTEST WAS APPROPRIATE

A public commission announced Friday that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government met the “very high threshold” for invoking the Emergencies Act to quell the protests by truckers and others angry over Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions last winter.

For weeks, hundreds and sometimes thousands of protesters in trucks and other vehicles clogged the streets of Ottawa, the capital, and besieged Parliament Hill, railing against vaccine mandates for truckers and other COVID-19 precautions and condemning Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Members of the selfstyled Freedom Convoy also blockaded various U.S.Canada border crossings. And police arrested 11 people at the blockaded border crossing at Coutts, Alberta, opposite Montana, after learning of a cache of guns and ammunition.

Justice Paul Rouleau concluded most of the emergency measures were appropriate. He said he does not accept the testimony of protest organizers who described the demonstrations as lawful and peaceful.

“The measures taken by the federal government were for the most part appropriate and effective and contributed to bringing a return to order without loss of life or serious injury to people or property,” Rouleau said.

Rouleau said the Cabinet had reasonable grounds to believe that there existed a national emergency.

The Public Emergency Commission examined the basis for the decision to declare the public order emergency, the circumstances that led to it and the appropriateness and effectiveness of the measures. Trudeau, Cabinet ministers, protesters and others testified last fall.

Trudeau noted guns were found at the border blockade in Alberta.

“There was a real risk that people promoting ideologically motivated extremism could act or that they could inspire others,” Trudeau said. “The situation was volatile and out of control.”

Trudeau said he regrets calling the protesters a “fringe minority.”

“I wish I had said it differently,” Trudeau said. “If I had chosen my words more carefully or been more specific, I think things might have been a bit easier.”

He said it is important to speak out against a very small number of people who deliberately spread misinformation and disinformation.

The emergencies act allowed authorities to declare certain areas as no-go zones. It also allowed police to freeze truckers’ personal and corporate bank accounts and compel tow truck companies to haul away vehicles.

Rouleau said there was a failure to provide a clear way for those people who had assets frozen to have them unfrozen when they were no longer engaged in illegal conduct. But he concluded that freezing assets was appropriate to prevent the protests from being financially sustained over the long term.