Tories send warning as debate over act begins
The political division over the use of the federal Emergencies Act became as solidly entrenched as the concrete blocks now ringing Parliament Hill as debate over the unprecedented use of the law began Thursday in the House of Commons.
Where the Liberals argued threats to national security are so severe as to require time-limited but sweeping new powers for police and other authorities, the Conservatives saw a national unity crisis being fanned by the prime minister himself.
Using the act to create new rules and regulations aimed at ending a three-week-long occupation of the national capital is an erosion of the rights and freedoms of Canadians and a complete overreach, the Conservatives said Thursday.
“This is not a game,” said interim Conservative Leader Candice Bergen as she laid out the reasons her party won’t support the declaration of a public order emergency.
“It comes at the cost to Canadians’ rights and freedoms,” she said. “Parliament should not allow the prime minister to avoid responsibility in this way. I urge all members of this House, proceed with extreme caution.”
But the Conservatives’ own position did not escape attacks from the Liberals or the NDP, who continued to point out that many MPs have vocally supported the so-called Freedom Convoy in recent weeks, even as its rhetoric and harassment of local residents heated up.
A truck parked just across the street from the House of Commons bears a flag calling for Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre to become the next prime minister. Poilievre is so far the only candidate in the race to become his party’s next leader.
What MPs will vote on specifically is a motion confirming a declaration of a public order emergency, a requirement of the Emergencies Act that was invoked on Monday night. With it came a slew of new policing and other powers to cut off and criminalize sources of funding for the protesters, as well as the ability for people to join in further protests and blockades.
Liberals insist that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms will be upheld and peaceful protests will be allowed to continue, but say the economic and social threats posed by the “Freedom Convoy” demonstrators must come to an end.
“We are not limiting people’s freedom of expression. We are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly. We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally. We are, in fact, reinforcing the principles, values and institutions that keep all Canadians free,” Trudeau said.
If MPs fail to vote in favour of the declaration, it would be revoked immediately.
For now, the New Democrats are on side, although Bloc Québécois Leader Yves-François Blanchet — who opposes the declaration — said he was going to talk to NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh to see if they could reach a “mutual understanding.”
The Bloc opposes the emergency declaration on the grounds that it steps too far into Quebec’s jurisdiction, and that the border blockades in Alberta and Windsor that have been used in part to justify its invocation were cleared without using any of the extra powers provided by the act.
The government could have found a strategy somewhere “between playing Pontius Pilate and attacking with the atomic bomb,” Bloc MP Alain Therrien said at one point during the debate.
Singh has been pressed to defend his support of invoking the act by the Tories and BQ. They noted that then-NDP leader Tommy Douglas had opposed the use of the War Measures Act — the precursor to the Emergencies Act — in 1970, when prime minister Pierre Trudeau invoked it in response to the kidnapping and eventual murder of Quebec’s deputy premier.
Singh said that while what’s happening in the streets of Ottawa goes beyond a peaceful protest, questions must be asked about the failure of local police to solve the problem — and why it appeared some may even be in support of the demonstrations.
“Occupiers get hugs from the police, while Indigenous and racialized protesters are met with the barrel of a gun,” he said.
The daylong debate seized on many elements of law, and the new rules, including pressure for the Liberals to provide further proof of their allegations of foreign extremist funding, and evidence of other steps they’d taken to try and solve the various protests prior to bringing out what the Tories called a “sledgehammer.”
The debate will continue throughout the weekend, with the vote scheduled for 8 p.m. Monday.
‘‘ This is not a game … it comes at the cost to Canadians’ rights and freedoms.
CANDICE BERGEN INTERIM CONSERVATIVE LEADER