Redactions at heart of frustrations at inquiry

Public told to read police's plan, but it can't

• After six weeks and 76 witnesses including the prime minister and much of his cabinet, public hearings on the use of the Emergencies Act are done, but crucial questions remain.

What did the government hide behind document redactions, and what was key legal advice on the act presented to cabinet?

On Friday, Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms lawyer Rob Kittredge asked the final witness, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, if he thought it was normal that the government had redacted as “irrelevant” information about an offer by the United States for tow trucks.

“Wouldn't you say that discussion of tow trucks was relevant to the discussion we're having here today,” Kittredge asked, noting that newly unredacted portions of the documents were provided to lawyers barely one hour earlier.

“I'm not the one who made these redactions. It's the professional public service,” Trudeau replied.

Canadian Constitution Foundation lawyer Sujit Choudhry asked the prime minister, who had just suggested Canadians “read” the Ottawa police's plan themselves, how they could do that if every page after the third of the plan provided by the government was redacted.

“You say we should read the plan, we can't,” Choudhry said to Trudeau. He exhorted the prime minister to instruct government lawyers to lift those redactions “for the sake of transparency for this commission.”

The inquiry is tasked with determining whether the Trudeau government met the high legal bar required to invoke the exceptional powers of the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 to end the Freedom Convoy blockades.

But no redactions have elicited as much metaphorical headbanging as the government's claim of solicitor-client privilege, which it used to keep secret legal advice it had received before invoking the Emergencies Act.

That frustration extends into commission staff itself. On Wednesday, inquiry lawyer Gordon Campbell went so far as to lament the government of Canada's lack of transparency publicly.

“We would observe that we have from the beginning of this proceeding through till now attempted to find a way to lift the veil that has made such a black box of what has turned out to be a central issue before the hearing,” he said.

“We just regret that it ends up being an absence of transparency on the part of the government.”