National Post (National Edition)
Canadians owed answers by government
If there's one thing you can take from this week's developments in the continuing fallout of the Freedom Convoy's occupation of Ottawa and the blockading of border crossings in several provinces, it's that the government thought it was an emergency.
Well, yeah. Fair enough. It was an emergency. The occupation and the blockades not only prevented Canadians from going about their daily lives, it also undermined the rule of law by making Canadian police forces and governments, in multiple jurisdictions, look inept and helpless in the face of a — let's face it — not particularly sophisticated threat.
The haplessness on display was an invitation for more lawless behaviour, and only a decisive show of government authority could, and eventually did, correct that massive failure — a failure that was so obvious and meaningful that it constituted an emergency unto itself. So, by all means, let's grant that it was an emergency. That's what the federal government wants us all to admit. But that's not really the issue here.
Yes, we must study the blockades and the protest, to learn all that we can about the organizers, their tactics and their motivations. But the Canadian public also demands accountability from their governments — the elected and appointed officials from across the land that allowed the emergency to continue as long as it did. And thus far, what do those officials have to say? Just that it was an emergency.
The events in February have been basically swept from the headlines, and the public discourse, by all that's happened since. Another surge in COVID-19 cases and a literal land war in Europe will do that, one supposes. There were two big events this week, though, that have put the blockades and the occupation back into the news: earlier this week, as required by law, the federal government announced a public inquiry into the matter, and on Tuesday evening, a parliamentary committee of MPs and senators also began hearings, with testimony from Justice Minister David Lametti and Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino.
The inquiry won't report back until early next year at the soonest, so there wasn't much to be learned from its announcement. The parliamentary testimony, though, which unfolded over hours, at least held the promise of revealing something new to the public. No such luck.
Actually, perhaps that's a bit unfair — there was an interesting moment, when Mendicino said that the government made the decision to declare a public-order emergency after law enforcement agencies told the government it was required to deal with the border blockades.
There were also some careful comments by David Vigneault, the director of CSIS, who noted that his agency devotes nearly half of its counterterrorism resources to ideologically motivated violent extremist threats in Canada (as opposed to religiously motivated, the other major concern) and said that, based on what the spy agency knows, the presence of extreme factions in the protests did not surprise him.
This statement aligns with other reporting suggesting that the protests were infiltrated, if not driven, by radicals. (Prior reporting had also revealed that the Ontario Provincial Police believed there were elements of the protests that constituted a national security threat.)
So, fine. There was that. But not much more than that. The line, repeated over and over, that this was an emergency and only the Emergencies Act could solve it, appears to be how the government intends to play it.
Lametti repeatedly cited cabinet confidentiality when pressed for details on the government's decision to invoke the act; neither he nor Mendicino would commit to waive confidentiality to disclose at least some documents that would aid both the independent inquiry and the parliamentary committee in their work.
This is a problem. Even if we grant, as we should, that the events of last February constituted an emergency, the bar for the Emergencies Act is set much higher than that. The act is only intended to be invoked when an emergency “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” Based on what we eventually saw, and what has been publicly reported on, the protests were eventually ended by large and co-ordinated police actions ... but not so large and co-ordinated as to require the Emergencies Act.
It's very possible that the government possesses information that has not been made public for valid national security reasons, which informed its decision-making, and led cabinet to believe the Emergencies Act was warranted.
But it's also possible that a series of police and political errors allowed the protests to spiral out of control, and the enormous and rapidly growing public pressure to do something pushed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's cabinet, already exhausted from two years of COVID-19, into overreaching for the Emergencies Act.
No one outside the corridors of power knows which of those scenarios is true, or at least closer to the mark. And that's bad. The reason the Emergencies Act contains provisions for an automatic review is because extraordinary accountability is needed to oversee its extraordinary powers. If the government tries to obscure the point here — did it know something that truly made the act the only option? — behind cabinet confidentiality, that accountability will be dead on arrival.
This government has already earned itself a deserved reputation for relying on dramatic gestures in place of tangible results. It does not deserve the benefit of the doubt from the Canadian people at the best of times, and certainly not in moments as serious as these. Accountability doesn't mean asking people to take your word for it. It means having the courage to make your case, as fully as possible, before the public, and trusting in them to reach the right conclusion.
All reasonable Canadians know that some secrets must remain secret. All reasonable observers, though, are skeptical of this government when it sets up a scenario where only it can fully judge its own actions. Lametti and Mendicino owe the Canadian people answers, backed up with as much information as can be safely disclosed.
EVENTS IN FEBRUARY HAVE BEEN BASICALLY SWEPT FROM THE HEADLINES.