Please prove me wrong on this farcical inquiry

You know why they are playing out this farce of an inquiry into the calling of the Emergencies Act? It's because the statute that enables the act makes subsequent inquiry mandatory. And despite the hearty bypassing of parliamentary customs and conventions the Liberal-NDP government has enjoyed under the convenient umbrella offered by COVID, outright defiance on serious statutes has been, for now, off the agenda.

Give them time. The two J's — Jagmeet and Justin — are fertile in seeking convenience and shelter from parliamentary norms.

For example, they are now trying to give their ministers the power to adjourn the Parliament of Canada, without notice, till the fall of this year. And why not?

For the past two years the House of Commons has been nothing but a halting-place between vast recesses and the PM's flight-thick jet romps to international gatherings, back-and-forth flips across the country, and obligatory recuperation air-voyages to the sands and snows of Tofino and Whistler. Trudeau's carbon-offset bill is probably equal to the entire budget of P.E.I.

But as for this inquiry, already the signals are out. “Cabinet confidentiality” is being referenced, and the requirements of “national security” solemnly invoked. This latter probably has some connection to the wild theory, birthed I believe on CBC, that “the Russians” were behind or had some dark connection to the great 18-wheel “coup” of 2022. The darkest of “foreign interests.”

This talk of cabinet confidentiality and national security in the context of an entirely internal protest by a group of Canadian workers, who tweeted their every move, is just bizarre.

Are there documents, obtained by our security guardians as they penetrated the revolutionary cells of those truckers “slouching towards Ottawa,” that are too delicate for public view? Documents that even now might imperil the viability of our government, and work the demise of our beloved Confederation? What could they be?

A breakfast menu from Maud's All-You-Eat Diner on the Manitoba border? An RCMP surveillance video of the truckers buying the hot tub at Walmart? Audiotapes of truck drivers at a Tim Hortons near Red Deer checking the weather on their iPhones and discussing last night's hockey game? A recording from that night in Northern Ontario at the Best Western (location redacted) when the leaders debated “honking” as a tactic? This is a joke.

National security? Oh, please.

There was not a single moment of this entire phenomenon when there was so much of a hair's weight placed on the security of our nation's future. Sadly in these times, everyone knows where to look when a real crisis, real national security is at stake. The Liberal-NDP government should be embarrassed to talk of such matters when the world has the cruel instance of the real thing in the cities and towns of Ukraine.

Try this. Walk completely outside all partisan tents. No hard Liberal-NDPers, no hard Conservatives. And ask this question to people who live outside politics, outside the stagey game.

Is there a single adult Canadian who believes that the melodrama in Ottawa ever represented a genuine threat to Canada's stability? Who does not know it was hyped to ridiculous proportions by some sillier elements vainly trying to get a version of the U.S. events of Jan. 6, 2021?

Does any normal person believe that Jagmeet Singh and Justin Trudeau ever, ever, thought the government could actually fall without bringing in the Emergencies Act? The question itself displays the joke of the idea. They did not, could not, and most likely chuckled over the very idea. “We'll show `em.”

The idea that the protest constituted a genuine national crisis that justified the nuclear invocation of the Emergencies Act and

SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF CANADIAN CITIZENS WERE BY SIMPLE, UNEXPLAINED, FIAT TAKEN AWAY.

the suspension of the civil liberties of every Canadian is a cartoon of an idea.

But the Emergencies Act was declared. Bank accounts were frozen. The sovereign rights of Canadian citizens were by simple, unexplained, fiat taken away.

If the crisis was that serious, tell us how serious it was. And cease this comedy of calling upon “national security” and “cabinet confidentiality” to give government a shield to hide the reasoning behind this wild overreach, and whatever evidence they have.

The inquiry, if it is to have any merit, will tell two things: A. Was the Canadian state ever under genuine threat? B. If it was not, how can the Emergencies Act possibly have been justified?

The chance that it will pronounce with clarity on these questions is very highly dubious.

That the inquiry will seek with real force for the basic documents and records of deliberation that led to the declaration of the Emergencies Act is, to my mind, on a scale of remote to don't-beso-foolish. That I would be proven wrong on these assumptions would be a pleasure, and I commit, now, to recognize my error, if that occurs.