Justice minister enquired about Emergencies Act two days into Freedom Convoy protest

“I was being prudent.” David Lametti Justice Minister

OTTAWA – Canada’s Justice Minister David Lametti told his public safety counterpart that he “needed” to get the police to move on Freedom Convoy protesters, use the military “if necessary,” and enquired with staff two days into the protests about using Emergencies Act.

Text messages sent by Lametti to either Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino or his chief of staff Alex Steinhouse during last winter’s convoy protests shed fascinating new light into how frustrated the justice minister was at the “occupation” and how strongly he wanted authorities to remove protesters.

The texts were released by Public Order Emergency Commission lawyers as Lametti testified publicly. The inquiry is mandated to determine if the federal government met the legal threshold when it invoked the exceptional powers of the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.

Two days after Freedom Convoy protesters first arrived in Ottawa on Jan. 28, Lametti asked Steinhouse if the government had a “contingency” for the trucks to be “removed” within the next two days.

“What normative authority do we have or is some order needed? EA?,” he asked, referring to the Emergencies Act.

Lametti was asked by commission lawyer Gordon Cameron what he meant by that, noting that this was only the third day of protests “and your mind goes straight to the Emergencies Act.”

“I was being prudent,” Lametti explained. “I knew that we had to begin thinking about it, whether or not it was ever going to be an option.”

The commission also saw another set of messages from Feb. 4, where a meeting among justice department officials to discuss the Emergencies Act was being discussed.

Lametti said those meetings weren’t about invoking the act or even discussing, but about how it would work and what it could do.

“It was about preparing for the possibility not preparing for in any way for the introduction of the act.”

Lametti was asked to explain one of the central issues of the inquiry, which is how the government decided that the convoy protests presented a threat to the security of Canada as defined under the CSIS act, despite CSIS stating it never found one.